Open Letter to the Prime Minister on World Amazon Day 2021

Global Canopy signs a letter, as part of the NGO Forest Coalition, urging UK action on tropical deforestation.

With deforestation still at record levels and fires burning in the Amazon, a coalition of NGOs, Indigenous People’s groups, scientists and academics is urging the Prime Minister on World Amazon Day to act on tropical deforestation.

In Brazil, the Congress is currently considering new legislation that would legalise illegal land grabbing in the Amazon. Such destruction of the Amazon has dire implications for the Amazon’s Indigenous peoples and local communities, and for global efforts to avoid dangerous climate change. The UK Government has a unique opportunity to act to reduce these impacts.

The letter sends a clear message that the current proposals in the Environment Bill do not go far enough and calls for five key changes to strengthen the Bill:

• Ensure that UK forest risk commodity supply chains are not complicit in any form of deforestation – not just deforestation which is defined as illegal under producer country laws
• Address the role of UK finance in deforestation;
• Ensure UK businesses act in accordance with the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities as set out under international law;
• Strengthen the review mechanism to ensure that the due diligence framework, its implementation, and enforcement are progressively improved;
• Adopt a requirement to introduce a target to significantly reduce the UK’s global environmental footprint by 2030.

Read the letter

Image: Roads open by loggers inside the Menkragnoti Indigenous Land, Novo Progresso, Pará State.