Natural disasters prompted by climate change are putting pressure on EU forest resilience, but the bloc’s Forest Monitoring Law could help forest owners, researchers, policymakers and civil society address these risks.
Austria's agriculture and economy ministers have urged European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to postpone the implementation of the new EU anti-deforestation regulation (EUDR), scheduled for January 2025, according to a letter seen by Euractiv.
French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to plant one billion trees in France over 10 years, but environmentalists and researchers question whether this programme will achieve its stated biodiversity and climate objectives.
Portuguese eucalyptus forests are helping to replace plastics, but as the country's climate warms up, this highly flammable tree is a growing threat to people and biodiversity.
While only around a third of the world’s rivers “remain free flowing,” according to campaign group International Rivers, the situation is worse in Europe, where the number of ‘wild’ or free-flowing rivers can likely be counted on both hands.
Ireland has seen a dramatic decrease in its woodlands, from trees covering 80% of the country 6,000 years ago to 1% by the end of the 19th century and around 11% today, according to Ireland's Agriculture and Food Development Authority.
In the run-up to this week's vote in the European Parliament on the draft packaging waste regulation, a Euractiv event looked at the impact of packaging on Europe's forests. Here are the key points.
The European Commission on Wednesday (22 November) proposed a forest monitoring system that will use satellites to track threats such as climate change-fuelled wildfires and illegal logging.
Restoring and connecting forests through community-driven action can capture up to 226 gigatonnes of carbon, roughly equivalent to a third of what humans have released since the beginning of the industrial era, according to new research.
Businesses remain sceptical that a new EU certification framework for carbon removals is sufficient to generate a self-sustaining market, arguing Brussels must do more to make removing carbon from the atmosphere financially attractive.
Environmental groups are taking the UK government to court on Monday (13 November) over plans to spend billions on Biomass with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), a technology aimed at removing CO2 from the atmosphere that is also being promoted by the European Union.
While big producers of palm oil, cocoa or coffee are ready to implement EU’s newly adopted anti-deforestation regulation, governments in Malaysia and Indonesia say more time is needed for small producers to meet the EU's bureaucratic requirements.
Pastureland has been included in the category of agricultural land eligible for afforestation using funds from the recovery plan, according to an emergency decree issued by the Romanian government on Thursday, which “rectifies” parliament’s earlier removal of pastureland as an eligible category.
European Parliament lawmakers voted Tuesday (24 October) to uphold plans to certify carbon removals in the European Union, paving the way for new technologies to suck CO2 directly from the atmosphere.
In a show of diplomatic strength, the prime ministers of Sweden and Finland have invited EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen to visit their country's forests and refrain from overburdening the sector ahead of an election year.
Three environmental NGOs have urged the EU Commission to enforce a memorandum on Romania's illegal logging in an open letter addressed to Commissioner Sinkevičius.
After a destructive summer in southern Europe, European experts and MEPs are calling on the European Commission to take steps to increase forest fire prevention as current measures are proving inadequate.
While the Greek government has been quick to blame global warming for the summer's devastating wildfires, some experts argue that poor planning is at least as much to blame.
The European Parliament’s agriculture committee proposed to go beyond the scope of the recently unveiled EU framework for certifying carbon sinks in farming by providing for the remuneration and trading of negative emission certificates.
Hundreds of Greek firefighters were battling a huge blaze on Monday (28 August) that has killed at least 20 people over the past 10 days, Europe's deadliest wildfire so far this summer as record-setting heatwaves unleash blazes across the continent.
Eight Amazon nations agreed to a list of unified environmental policies and measures to bolster regional cooperation at a major rainforest summit in Brazil on Tuesday (8 August), but failed to agree on a common goal for ending deforestation.
EU negotiators met on Wednesday (19 July) to hash out the details of the EU’s Nature Restoration Law, following a nail-biting victory for the proposal in the European Parliament last week.
The scented stands of pine trees stretching along France's southwestern Atlantic coastline were reduced to charred stumps and stacks of blackened timber by the massive fires that ravaged the tourist hotspots of the Landes forest last summer.
The South American trade bloc Mercosur opens a two-day summit Monday (3 July) with a deal with the European Union on the agenda, but few expect leaders to reach consensus on how to fulfill EU demands on environmental protections.
