Fields of activity

The organisation currently actively addresses many areas that have a direct or indirect impact on forests and forest peoples’ rights issues. To achieve its aims, FERN follows many conventional environmental organisation methods, such as lobbying politicians and attendance at meetings. In addition to these activities, FERN supports both Northern and Southern NGOs in putting their case to the EU institutions and, where needed, helps NGOs with fundraising and strengthening its advocacy skills.

FERN advocacy activities aim to link different movements and organisations and create effective networks to campaign on issues the organisation believes to be important. Among its advocacy activities FERN links issues, stimulates informed discussion and develops joint strategies in areas that are of critical environmental and social concern, in most cases, but not exclusively, focused on EU institutions. Some of FERN’s most outstanding co-ordination and facilitation work is the organisation of NGO meetings on various issues, such as the annual Forest Movement Europe meeting.

FERN publishes a monthly bulletin entitled EU Forest Watch, specialised briefing notes and reports on selected topics (e.g. illegal logging, export credit agencies, forest certification, EC aid).

Campaigns

FERN currently has six different campaigns.These are: illegal logging; forest certification; climate change; export credit agencies; European forests and biodiversity; and development aid. In all these campaigns, FERN works closely with environmental as well as social NGOs in Europe and the South.

FERN’s work on European forests and biodiversity works to ensure that existing EU forest-related and rural development policies are implemented to aid the restoration and protection of biologically diverse, well-managed forests in the EU as well as to ensure that international government policies will positively contribute to halting the forest crisis, by reversing the trend of increasing forest and biodiversity loss and addressing the underlying causes that lead to forest loss.

In addition to the work on European forests, other FERN’s campaigns tackle the underlying causes of forest loss outside the EU. The EC development aid campaign aims to improve the quality of EC aid so that it contributes both to the protection and sustainable use of forests and to ensuring respect for forest peoples’ rights. The illegal logging campaign works to ensure that effective measures are developed and implemented so as to allow EU Member States to control the import of illegal timber and to support processes for forest law reform in wood producing countries which will lead to legal and sustainable forest management. FERN’s climate change campaign aims to ensure that climate policies and international climate agreements address the root causes of climate change and deforestation and refuse carbon trading as an unsuitable approach to avert climate chaos and respect the rights of forest peoples affected by carbon trading and carbon ‘offset’ projects (see FERN''s SinksWatch initiative). Moreover, FERN’s work on forest certification issues is well known and advocates to improve existing forest certification schemes so that they contribute to improved forest management and to ensure that all certification schemes accepted at EU level contribute to this aim.

Other FERN campaign is the Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) and trade and investment campaign, which aims to secure mandatory procedural environmental and human rights standards for European ECAs, set at a significant level, and drawing upon international ‘best practice’ standards and relevant EU legislation.

Achievements

Some of the most visible FERN achievements include the rejection of the scientifically flawed concept of planting trees to reverse climate change (‘carbon sinks’) by the European Parliament; highlighting the undue and unjust influence by large companies on environmental and social laws in host countries when executing large projects, such as the Chad-Cameroon pipeline; improved integration of environmental concerns and demands for recognition of indigenous peoples rights’ into EC aid programmes and policies and the creation of networks of Southern NGOs to improve the quality of EC aid; the presentation by the Commission of an EU Action Plan to combat illegal logging followed by legislation to halt illegal timber imports; and successfully co-ordinating the European network for reforming export credit agencies leading to the adoption of environmental guidelines for export credit agencies.

Although are successes are foremost at policy level, they impact on local people’s lives as most policy decisions trickle down. Some of FERN’s successes have already reduced threats to local livelihoods as well as contributed to significant positive improvements. For example, FERN’s work on highlighting the flaws in carbon sinks and direct correspondence with the CDM board, has led the CDM board to reject all plantation projects put to it, many of which such as V&M in Brazil, would have had serious negative impacts on people. Also, the EU Action Plan to combat illegal logging would not have been drafted without FERN. This Action Plan –if implemented properly- will create a leverage point to get customary rights accepted as ‘legal’ in countries as Indonesia, Malaysian, Ghana and Cameroon: the lack of recognition of these rights is arguably the most significant obstacles to poverty alleviation, justice and even democracy.

Moreover, the campaign on reforming ECAs has led to halting ECA funding and subsequently cancelling some projects, which would have had serious negative consequences for local people, such as in the case of the Ilisu Dam in Turkey which would have led to the replacement of around 80,000 people, with women suffering most. This was a clear success despite current attempts to revive the project