Ten Proposals from Belém

Our Ten Proposals from Belém for address of climate change and biodiversity are proffered in the context of a European arena.

We met a wide range of NGOs, government delegations and institutions in Belém where they received a positive response.

1. Renewable Energy & Climate Change Strategy (RECCS)

Ongoing promotion of our RECCS programme seeks cessation of commercial scale forest bioenergy.  The action programme proposed by the RECCS Report involves reallocation of subsidies, expected to reach 35 bn Euro annually in Europe alone by 2050 if Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) is adopted. These subsidies, geared by matched funding, should be redirected to three alternative means of addressing climate change:

• Genuine renewables: wind, solar, heat pumps, marine, geothermal – together with infrastructure
• Demand suppression enterprise: insulation, recycling, fuel efficiency, key sector decarbonisation
• Investment in carbon absorbent ecosystems, as a mainline element in climate strategy

In addition to producing 25% of the EU net zero target by 2050, the RECCS strategy offers massive comparative economic benefits by that date for the European Union economy: for Gross Value Added (over 90 billion Euro annually), energy cost reduction (40 bn Euro annually) and high-tech employment (an extra 1.6 million jobs).

This programme supports the EU competitiveness, counter-inflation and energy security agendas – alongside biodiversity recovery and climate change address. Wide interest has been shown in Europe, including at meetings with most of the EU Commissioner cabinet representatives. And beyond, with particular interest from East Asia and the USA.

2. A full ecosystem service component for the Bioeconomy Strategy

A healthy bioeconomy strategy has an important role to play in any economy. But at present the Bioeconomy Challenge in Belém, and its EU Bioeconomy Strategy counterpart launched in Brussels in November, are too heavily focused on extractive products. 

Of course circumstances between the two regions are very different, but these strategies need to be rapidly balanced with greater emphasis on the environmental and economic role of non-extractive ecosystem services.

Non-extractive ecosystem services have a highly significant role to play, not merely in addressing the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss – but also supporting economic growth and employment at regional and community level.

In Europe, these services already offer massive potential funding for protection and restoration of natural ecosystems: for climate mitigation and resilience, flood and drought alleviation, air and water purification, nature tourism, recreation, health and therapeutic benefits.

Alongside grants, philanthropy, corporate sponsorship, bonds, earned income and other forms of conservation finance, in the EU there are mechanisms for generating carbon credits, and biodiversity credits are also now being developed.

Collectively, the economic and environmental worth of these services is growing fast and in many areas already exceeds the extractive ‘product related’ value of forests. 

To ensure successful delivery of this Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) agenda, infrastructure development needs to be speeded up: 

• ‘markets’ matching supply and demand of funding
• verification and linkage of intermediate agency networks
• stricter environmental criteria for objectives and outcome monitoring
• comparative economic valuation in support of environmental benefit assessment
• capacity building for all parties (see item 3. below)

This approach for a more balanced Bioeconomy Strategy should be promoted in tandem with the EU Forest & Biodiversity Strategies, to land user associations, governments and institutions such as the European Development Bank for its new 2025 Route Map (where Wild Europe has provided detailed input).

3. A capacity building strategy for all sectors

A comprehensive Capacity Building Strategy, with short, medium and long term elements, is urgently needed.

For the conservation sector, it has become increasingly apparent that economic, finance and enterprise related approaches can significantly reinforce (not replace) environmental arguments, particularly given the shift in political balance towards greater short-term prioritisation of “competitiveness” and other agendas. It is equally in the interests of extractive user, financial and corporate sectors to acquire greater understanding of environmental standpoints.

For all sides, this points to the need for accelerated capacity building.

For the conservation sector, eg: 

• economic valuation to strengthen environmental arguments
• ability to co-design and manage financial instruments for private sector funding    
• enterprise implementation – to maximise local community & land owner benefits
• wider application of legal approaches, including mechanisms for long-term protection  

For ecosystem service providers, financiers and intermediary agents, eg:

• environmental principles and definitions
• ecological criteria in design of financial instruments 
• ditto for target setting and monitoring of projects
• stronger environmental impact assessment, better linked to economic valuation 

If properly delivered the Capacity Building Strategy can enable more even balance between usage and protection in the wider bioeconomy. It can also provide significant supplementary funding for Biodiversity and Forest Strategy objectives – both for the EU and globally. And it can strengthen common ground, fostering greater cooperation between different sectoral interests.

For climate change, clear proof and projection of costs to the overall economy from insufficient action, alongside demonstration of benefit from the Green Economy, is the only way of winning against the entrenched interests of atmospheric polluters.

Wild Europe is proposing a summary model for this capacity building. We have already liaised on this in workshops with the UN Paris Committee on Capacity Building (PCCB) at the 2025 Bonn COP, the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg and others. In a European context there is no single organisation with a remit to deliver such a strategy, but a valuable potential role could lie ahead for the EC as facilitator.

4. Development of alliances beyond the conservation sector

There is considerable potential to identify common ground and common approaches between different interests. 

Perverse subsidies, eg for forest bioenergy, are expensive for consumers and taxpayers, most of whom are also unaware of their environmental damage. Beyond that, land owners, relevant corporates and land user associations are all interested parties. 

Such joint linkages can greatly strengthen individual campaigns, and will be boosted by capacity building to enable greater mutual understanding.

Agriculture, forestry and fisheries in the EU together represent under 3% of Gross Value Added (GVA), yet these costs are relevant to the remaining 97% of the economy. Indeed they also apply to agriculture, forestry and fisheries – with growing impact of climate change evident across all three sectors on enterprise as well as environment.

5. Closer coordination between NGO climate change networks

Closer links are needed between fossil fuel and forest bioenergy campaigns, recognising that wood bioenergy has higher CO2 equivalent emissions than fossil fuels. Success in curbing use of the fossil fuels, vital though that is, can merely add to demand for bioenergy. 

Co-firing is another perverse outcome, perpetuating use of coal and also aggravating climate change. The overall unifying slogan should change from “end fossil fuels” to “end carbon fuels”. Wild Europe met with Powering Past Coal Alliance directorate and others in Belém, discussing cooperation to renew in 2026 our 2022 webinar initiative involving Ville Ninisto MEP (then European Parliament rapporteur for LULCF reform) and Mike Norton (then Head of Environmental Policy for European Academies of Science Advisory Council (EASAC) together with some 40 NGOs from both campaigns.

6. Resolving misuse of carbon accounting rules

With emissions counted at the point of felling and then ‘lost’ in national land use inventories, power stack emissions are counted by the feedstock importing country as carbon neutral. This is at the heart of why we continue to subsidise worsening of climate change through forest bioenergy use.

It should be the role of IPCC as key provider of information for policy making to ensure proper use and intended outcomes for their information. Should failure to do so with sufficient vigour and thus effectiveness count as failure in Duty of Care? Lawyers watch this space.

Meanwhile concepts of “carbon neutrality” and “sustainability”, of management practice and supply in particular, are too heavily mutilated by lobbying and often wilful misinterpretation to be reliable. The investment community is increasingly aware of this as a danger to its own credibility – and even to the credibility of the climate change hypothesis itself in the face of growing cynicism (witness the absence of USA from Belém).

Cutting the Gordian Knot of this bureaucratic muddle, the interim way ahead here is simply to use straightforward measure of CO2 equivalent emissions adjusted for lifecycle. These, again, show wood bioenergy to have higher emissions than the fossil fuels it is meant to replace, even coal – a point now widely agreed on all sides, but scarcely acted on.

7. Model nature protection initiatives to address climate change 

Even with substantial funding available, it will ultimately prove difficult if not futile persuading poorer countries to maintain massive tracts of their national realm in undeveloped natural ecological condition, unless the developed world assumes a higher moral high ground through mega-scale restoration and protection on its own territory. 

One such initiative already underway in Europe is being developed by Fundatia Conservation Carpathia, originating as a private sector partnership alongside local communities and the Romanian government, to establish a 250,000 hectare National Park. This will be bequeathed to the nation. A trans-national model for even wider vision is currently being assessed.

8. A rebalanced agenda for state forest agencies

Again, the need for a healthy timber producing sector should be recognised, particularly in countries where it occupies a larger element of the economy. In Europe, we have for the last decade also promoted a wider role for non-extractive ecosystem services to senior management in EUSTAFOR, the State Forest Association for Europe, representing agencies managing 40% of its forests. Two of the four policy areas in their 2022 – 2026 Strategy after all do cite the aim of addressing climate change and biodiversity issues. 

To support this aspect of their public sector responsibility, and in recognition of general public and taxpayer opinion, we have in particular proposed formation of a Working Party to collate member state agency experience of projects promoting these non-extractive services for protection and restoration of high nature value, old growth and primary forest set aside. 

Equally, we are seeking to assess how further policy reform could facilitate improved access and use of the Payment for Ecosystem Services agenda by state agencies. Although focused on Europe, this approach could have wider application – particularly in achieving better a balance within Forest and Bioeconomy Strategies between production for timber, other raw materials and bioenergy, and protection for address of climate change and biodiversity.

In a sector whose timber production represents well under 1% of European GDP, this positive approach can only bring benefit to all parties. What should be avoided are short-term policies which may serve the requirements of short-term collective lobbying, but may not be in the medium to long-term interests of association members – in addition to those of the remaining 99% of the overall economy.

9. Reinforcement of key conservation policies

Democratic politics are by definition an arena of fluctuating priorities. It is for the conservation sector to craft policies whose benefits appeal across the party spectrum, thus avoiding major shifts in approach when the demands of a healthy environment clearly necessitate long-term, stable strategy.

This currently applies in particular to two climate & biodiversity related policies:

The Forest Monitoring Law (FML), withdrawn in the EU by the EC due to opposition from foresters concerned about administrative costs, and governments eager to argue sovereign rights. Yet a comprehensive, standardised FML in Europe and elsewhere has to be a key plank of any strategy – in the interest of those same users and a much wider audience. 

A key means of reintroducing the FML should be rapidly reconstructed. The Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) agenda, in particular existing carbon and developing biodiversity credits among other services, could be a key link here. Without an effective FML, whether overseen at EU or MS level, land users cannot access PES funding, and the rest of the voting economy will wake up to the longer-term damage when inappropriate management results, however inadvertently.

EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). Delay and potential dilution by the EU merely serve to hamper implementation. Alongside its environmental consequences, has appropriate economic assessment been undertaken of the impact on future forests (timber producing or otherwise) of aggravated climate change?

We proffered this suggestion to the Head of Climate Policy at the Austrian Chancellery in Belém, and will follow up.

10. Reforms to the representation of conservation interests

The sector could consider the following reforms:

• There is scope for strengthening the scientific basis for conservation arguments, which must retain primacy, with greater use of economic, financial, enterprise and other specialisms – particularly in the current political context. Whether to establish relative value for securing appropriate policy priority, funding support, land use or successful project implementation engaging all interests. Systematic capacity building is needed for this.

• Development of comprehensive ‘maps’ for contact targets in the forest bioenergy campaign, providing tailored information for representation. Information shared among NGOs can ensure comprehensive coverage, particularly where resources are limited, with identification of priorities and gaps for joint action. Under 50% of appropriate audience reach is currently achieved with even fairly basic information.

• Promotion of long-term alliance with other sectors, per Section 4 above. There is considerable opportunity, as well as need, to identify and operate from common ground which is often overlooked as a basis for progress.

• There should be greater focus on the important role played by large natural ecosystem areas under a strictly protected, non-intervention regime of management by natural processes. Among other benefits this is a highly cost-effective form of management which can generally deliver significantly more effective climate mitigation and resilience than managed habitats, particularly with natural forests.