Conference Agenda

For over three decades the Europe Union and its member states have helped develop, promote, and in some cases, administer a range of global policy interventions for reducing tropical deforestation. From promoting eco-labelling initiatives such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), to participating in establishing criteria and indicators for sustainable management following the Rio Earth Summit, to subsequent efforts on forest legality compliance, the EU has played a key role in global efforts to develop sophisticated market mechanisms to help maintain, conserve, and restore, tropical forest ecosystems.

The purpose of the semi-plenary and dialogue is to stimulate thinking and generate knowledge about potential challenges and opportunities in the EU’s latest attempt: focusing on fostering “deforestation free” supply chains known as the “European Union’s no deforestation regulation”. This effort is narrower, and in many ways bolder, than the EU’s emphasis on “voluntary partnership agreements” (VPAs) as a means to foster and reinforce domestic forest sustainability initiatives.

What do we make of this latest effort by the EU? Will it become yet another policy tool marked by the cycle of “policy creation euphoria, implementation depression” often experienced in global environmental governance? Or, will it be seen as a form of “green protectionism” that, as highlighted by EU-US debates over domestic green subsidies, has spurred a range of cross border adjustment mechanisms targeting production and responsibilities beyond national and regional borders? Or, will it be designed to help foster and accelerate what is now a flurry of decarbonization efforts taking place at multiple scales and levels?

IES is organizing a semi-plenary and a close door policy dialogue,
to bring together ESG network scholars and EU based policy practitioners to explore these questions and to generate insights about how to engage in, and consider policy calibration and settings in the EU context that might enhance, rather than detract from, just transitions and tropical forest conservation.

Moderator:

Prof. Benjamin Cashore, (Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES), Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy – National University of Singapore)

Speakers:

• Prof. Metodi Sotirov (University of Freiburg) will discuss the implications of EU’s deforestation regulation policy changes on the demand-supply dynamics in Europe (EU and UK), non-European consumer regions (USA, Australia, and China) and other tropical trade partners specifically Indonesia, drawing on his ongoing research in this direction.
• Prof. Constance L. McDermott (University of Oxford), will examine the framing and design of EU’s deforestation regulation policy and its implications (challenges & opportunities) on supply-side countries based on her ongoing research in Ghana.
• Prof. Georg Winkel (Wageningen University), will explore the impacts of EU deforestation regulation policy on timber supplying countries- opportunities and challenges for governance restructuring and inclusive socio-economic development.