Unsustainable and Ineffective: Why EU Forest Biomass Standards won’t stop destruction

The report criticizes the EU's REDII sustainability criteria for forest biomass, arguing that they prioritize legal formality over actual ecological sustainability. It contends that the criteria allow destructive forestry practices to continue by equating the existence of national laws with sustainability, while failing to provide rigorous verification mechanisms or incorporate NGO evidence. Through five case studies in Canada, Estonia, France, Portugal, and Finland, the document demonstrates that current rules would not prevent the logging of old-growth or high-nature-value forests for energy production.

• The REDII sustainability criteria conflate the existence of national laws with actual sustainability, meaning countries are often deemed compliant simply because they have logging laws and monitoring systems, regardless of those laws' effectiveness.
• Current EU criteria fail to address the fact that the EU forest carbon sink has decreased by 15% since 2005 and may reward bioenergy that increases greenhouse gas emissions over the next 50 years.
• Member States have limited accountability under Article 30 of REDII, as they are not required to verify the reliability of sustainability information provided by biomass operators.
• REDII restricts eligible evidentiary sources to governmental reports, effectively ignoring the role of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and creating a system where authorities monitor their own enforcement.
• Case studies demonstrate that REDII criteria would fail to stop the logging of primary forests in British Columbia, high-nature-value forests in Estonia, natural forests in France, pine forests in Portugal, and 300-year-old forests on Sámi territory in Finland.

APA

ClientEarth (2021). Unsustainable and Ineffective: Why EU Forest Biomass Standards won’t stop destruction. https://www.clientearth.org/media/m3uah2x1/unsustainable-and-ineffective-why-eu-forest-biomass-standards-won-t-stop-destruction.pdf

Chicago

ClientEarth. Unsustainable and Ineffective: Why EU Forest Biomass Standards won’t stop destruction. 2021. https://www.clientearth.org/media/m3uah2x1/unsustainable-and-ineffective-why-eu-forest-biomass-standards-won-t-stop-destruction.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=ClientEarth |title=Unsustainable and Ineffective: Why EU Forest Biomass Standards won’t stop destruction |date=May 2021 |url=https://www.clientearth.org/media/m3uah2x1/unsustainable-and-ineffective-why-eu-forest-biomass-standards-won-t-stop-destruction.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{clientearth2021unsustainable, author = {{ClientEarth}}, title = {{Unsustainable and Ineffective: Why EU Forest Biomass Standards won’t stop destruction}}, institution = {ClientEarth}, year = {2021}, month = may, url = {https://www.clientearth.org/media/m3uah2x1/unsustainable-and-ineffective-why-eu-forest-biomass-standards-won-t-stop-destruction.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }