By Pippa Heylings and Alex Sobel, Co-chairs of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Deforestation
Today Defra launched a consultation on deforestation regulations. This is a very welcome step. Robust deforestation regulations are essential if the UK is to make progress towards the Glasgow Leaders Declaration goal of halting and reversing forest loss by 2030.
Regulations are long overdue. It is five years since the Environment Act received royal assent and the Government promised regulations which would ban the use of forest risk commodities produced on illegally deforested land.
The importance of the regulations is underlined by new analysis from Global Witness which finds UK imports linked to 59,213 hectares of deforestation in the 5 years since the act was passed. That is an area more than five times the size of Manchester.
In summer, we saw the Government announce its intention to move towards a deforestation-free standard. Focusing on illegal deforestation alone, as the UK legislation has been designed, is not enough to stop UK imports driving the clearance of forests around the world.
Today is the Leaders’ Summit Event on Forests at the UN climate summit in Antalya, and it is five years since the UK led more than 140 countries in pledging to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030 at COP26 in Glasgow. With little more than three years left to meet that pledge, the UK cannot afford further delay.
The government’s own national security assessment, published in January, warns that global ecosystem degradation and collapse threaten UK national security. It names the Amazon and Congo rainforests among the ecosystems most significant for the UK. That threat, to biodiversity, to human rights and to our own security, demands an urgent response.
We call on the government to:
- Publish a date for the laying of regulations under Schedule 17 of the Environment Act in 2027
- Commit to primary legislation introducing a deforestation-free standard with stronger protection of human rights, and publish a timetable for it
- Commit to making London a deforestation-free financial centre, and advocate for global action to end the financing of deforestation and to align financial flows with nature. This should include introducing legislation on mandatory due diligence on deforestation for financial institutions
We will continue to press for progress in Parliament. As COP31 gets under way, the UK has the opportunity to show that it will honour the commitment it made in Glasgow.
Notes:
The Global Witness analysis uses HMRC trade data from November 2021 to July 2026 (the most recent available from HMRC) of forest-risk commodities including cattle, soy, palm oil, soya beans, rubber, and coffee, combined with FAO agriculture production data, and commodity-driven deforestation figures from an academic study.
The government set out its approach to deforestation regulations on 23 June 2026.