Monday,
"Cameroonians rally today for a bold EU policy: rubber products linked to deforestation must be kept out of the European market. Europeans cannot vote with one hand for a Green New Deal and use the other one to buy commodities or finance plantations that erase our forests and displace our people," said Nkolo Thade, a Baka indigenous leader who spoke at the rally.
The rally marks the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, after 10,000 hectares of rainforest in the South of
Nevertheless, rubber from plantations such as this is being processed and marketed undisturbed to markets around the world, including the EU's. Furthermore, European banks are financing such plantations: in
"The people in the EU unwittingly consume rubber from deforestation areas, and EU banks are financing the land grabs. If the rubber industry gets away with trashing our rainforest, it will continue to do so with rainforests everywhere," said
While youth activists rally today, the Greenpeace European Unit and Greenpeace Africa handed over a letter to the ambassador of the EU delegation in Yaoundé, calling for the adoption of ambitious and effective legislation on forest-and-ecosystem-risk commodities (FERCs).
New EU legislation is urgently needed to regulate the placing of forest-and-ecosystem-risk commodities on the EU market. Greenpeace
Greenpeace demands:
Sustainability requirements for all risk commodities - including meat, soy, palm oil, and rubber - must address human rights impacts, deforestation, forest degradation, and the conversion or degradation of natural ecosystems other than forests.
The new legislation should apply to natural rubber as a key forest and ecosystem risk commodity in particular and set sustainability requirements for all forest and ecosystem risk commodities and products placed on the EU market, and address human rights impacts, deforestation, forest degradation, and the conversion or degradation of natural ecosystems other than forests;
The new law should cover the financial sector, obliging financial actors to abide by due diligence obligations and sustainability requirements equivalent to those for commodities and products;
Finally, it must establish requirements for supply chain transparency and traceability, as well as a comprehensive enforcement framework as laid out in this briefing by the Greenpeace European Unit [3].
Photos and videos
Files will be shared here, as soon as the rally ends.
Notes
[1] Greenpeace Africa, Sudcam's Assault on Human Rights,
[2]
[3] Greenpeace European Unit, A new EU Law to protect the World's Forests,
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