Vienna/Brussels, 19 October. Deforestation and forest degradation, mainly due to agricultural expansion, lead to the loss of roughly 9 million hectares of natural forest per year. This has severe social, economic, and environmental consequences, including the dramatic loss of biodiversity, since forests are home to 80% of all terrestrial biodiversity. Also, in the period 2007-2016 some 23% of global carbon dioxide emissions stemmed from deforestation and forest degradation contributing significantly to the pressing climate crisis. Not least, governments, responsible companies and local farmers are losing billions of US Dollars each year due to poor governance of international markets. Scientists say that while there has been a lot of innovative development of public, private and mixed forest policy instruments at regional and local levels, these efforts are thwarted by a highly fragmented, incomplete and ineffective forest policy regime at the global level. With a view to the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference, there is an opportunity for climate policymakers to capitalize on some of the key lessons learned from mistakes, and success stories, of international forest policy.

Most deforestation takes place in the Global South, and it is driven not only by domestic, but also by international markets and demand for agricultural commodities, bioenergy, and other bioeconomy needs in the Global North. We refer to this as 'imported deforestation "', explains Dr. Metodi Sotirov from the University of Freiburg in Germany. "While unsustainable or illegal timber use is still an important driver of deforestation, agricultural expansion for cattle breeding and cultivating soy, palm oil etc. is much bigger However, international policy and governance are still not addressing the issues at stake: there is still a need for an effective and coordinated global policy response covering all deforestation-related commodities - timber, forest risk agricultural commodities, bioenergy, mining, etc. - and policy, market, societal, ecological challenges that need to be addressed to reduce the further disappearance of the world's forests."

In the last three decades, large numbers and varieties of global forest policy initiatives and institutions have evolved; each of them addresses different aspects of forests and their management while there are also overlaps. As a result, global forest governance is greatly fragmented and strongly influenced by certain key policies, such as international climate policies, including the Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation REDD+, and global efforts to combat illegally sourced timber trade, including Forest Law Enforcement. Governance and Trade referred to as 'FLEGT'.

"Many of the international initiatives aiming to stop deforestation such as forest certification and timber legality mechanisms, or REDD+, consider deforestation as a forest sector problem due to forest management and Jogging. However, the vast majority of deforestation is due to conversion for agriculture, which is largely unaddressed by international forest governance initiatives", explains Dr. Sarah Lilian Burns, Assistant Professor at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata in Argentina and Group Leader at the Institute of International Forestry and Forest Products of Technical University Dresden, Germany. "Market-based instruments in global forest governance, such as forest certification, including Forest Stewardship Council FSC and the Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification PEFC, deforestation-free supply chains, and REDD+, do not resolve the inequality in timber trade between big and sma// timber producers. On the contrary, they even have the potential of reinforcing such inequalities. This is where the crucial role of states comes in, as governments have a considerable potential to correct ecologically or socially unacceptable market failures." [...] 

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