Testimony to the Environmental Audit Committee

Evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee Inquiry ‘Sustainable Timber and Global Deforestation’, 9 November 2022

I was invited to give evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee’s inquiry on global deforestation.

I argued (transcript here) that the UK can still have a truly world leading approach if the government gets secondary regulations to Schedule 17 of the Environment Act right and uses the Financial Services and Markets Bill passing through Parliament now to introduce new due diligence requirements for UK financial services to prevent deforestation financing and human rights abuses.

- The UK financial sector provided $16.6 billion to just 20 agribusinesses implicated in deforestation in the five years following the Paris Agreement, according to Global Witness's Deforestation Dividends report.

- Over £300 billion of UK pension money is invested in companies and financial institutions with high deforestation risk, according to Make My Money Matter.

- The UK financial sector faces up to £200 billion in risk exposure in Brazilian beef and soy supply chains and Indonesian palm oil supply chains alone, according to WWF-UK.

The Committee’s final report published in January 2024 concluded the UK is far off track from the 2030 goal to halt and reverse forest loss - and called for three urgent reforms to the UK's approach:

💰 Introduce a new due diligence law to stop British financial institutions providing billions to companies with inadequate systems to prevent deforestation.

🌎 Amend the Environment Act to prohibit the import of ALL deforestation goods. We need trade which is not just legal (the bare minimum), but also sustainable.

✊ Ensure our human rights expectations are explicit in the Environment Act.

Watch my oral evidence here: https://lnkd.in/emCjGgG4