European consumption threatens tropical forest

European Business & Biodiversity Campaign - News

European consumption threatens tropical forest

Will EU laws stop the destruction? From 1990 to 2020, the world lost an estimated 420 million hectares of forest, 90% of which was tropical forest. The expansion of agriculture is the main cause of forest loss worldwide: according to a recent FAO evaluation, nearly 90% of deforestation is due to it. After China, the European Union is the second largest importer of deforestation.

© Monika Neumann / Pixabay
24 August 2022: In a recently published study, the transparency initiative Trase analyzed how much tropical deforestation German consumption caused between 2014 and 2018: it is 229,600 hectares. Within the five years studied, there is no clear increase or decrease in deforestation. In the calculation, indirect imports (e.g. palm oil from Indonesia, which is exported to Germany via the Netherlands and consumed here) and inputs (e.g. beef from Brazil, where soy was fed) are taken into account in addition to direct imports.

Read more in the German press release by OroVerde
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