Heidi Kingstone is a journalist and author covering human rights issues, conflict and politics. Her most recent book is “Genocide: Personal Stories, Big Questions.” Slavery is alive and thriving, and it’s wrapped inside shiny chocolate bars that promise to be “fair trade,” “child-labor free” and “sustainable.” In West Africa, which produces more than 60 percent of the world’s cocoa, over 1.5 million children still work under hazardous conditions. Kids, some as young as five, use machetes to crack pods open in their hands, carry loads that weigh more than they do and spray toxic pesticides without protection. Meanwhile, of the roughly 2 million metric tons of cocoa the Ivory Coast produces each year, between 20 percent and 30 percent is grown illegally in protected forests. And satellite data from Global Forest Watch shows an increase in deforestation across key cocoa-growing regions as farmers, desperate for income, push deeper into forest reserves. The bitter truth is that despite decades of pledges, certification schemes and packaging glowing with virtue — of forests saved, farmers empowered and consciences soothed — most chocolate companies have failed to eradicate exploitation from their supply chains. Today, many cocoa farmers in the Ivory Coast and Ghana still earn less than a dollar a day, well below the poverty line. According to a 2024 report by the International Cocoa Initiative, the average farmer earns only 40 percent of a living wage. Put starkly, as the global chocolate market swells close to a $150 billion a year in 2025, the average farmer now receives less than 6 percent of the value of a single chocolate bar, whereas in the 1970s they received more than 50 percent. Then there’s the use of child labor, which is essentially woven into the fabric of this economy, where we have been sold the illusion of progress. From the 2001 Harkin-Engel Protocol — a voluntary agreement to end child labor by the world’s chocolate giants — to today’s glossy environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports, every initiative has promised progress and delivered delay. In 2007, the industry quietly redefined “public certification,” shifting it from a commitment to consumer labeling to a vague pledge to compile statistics on labor conditions. It missed the original 2010 deadline to eliminate child labor, as well as a new target to reduce it by 70 percent by 2020. And that year, a study by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center found that hazardous child labor in cocoa production increased from 2008 to 2019. “We covered a story about a ship carrying trafficked children,” recalled journalist Humphrey Hawksley, who first exposed the issue in the BBC documentary called Slavery: A Global Investigation. “The chocolate companies refused to comment and spoke as one industry. That was their rule. Even now, none of them is slave-free,” he added. As it stands, many of the more than 1.5 million West African children working in cocoa production are trafficked from neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali. Traffickers lure them with false promises or outright abduction, offering children as young as 10 either bicycles or small sums to travel to the Ivory Coast. There, they are sold to farmers for as little as $34 each. And once on these farms, they are trapped. They work up to 14 hours a day, sleep in windowless sheds with no clean water or toilets, and most never see the inside of a classroom. Last but not least, we come to deforestation: Since its independence, more than 90 percent of the Ivory Coast’s forests have disappeared due to cocoa farming. In 2024, deforestation accelerated despite corporate commitments to halt it by 2025, as declining soil fertility and stagnant prices pushed farmers farther into the forest to plant new cocoa trees. But as Reuters Correspondent for West and Central Africa Ange Aboa described them, such labels are “the biggest scam of the century!” | Lena Klimkeit/Picture Alliance via Getty Images Certification labels like “Rainforest Alliance” and “Fairtrade” are supposed to prevent this. But as Reuters Correspondent for West and Central Africa Ange Aboa described them, such labels are “the biggest scam of the century!” Complicit in all of this are the financiers and investors who profit. For example, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is the world’s largest investor, and Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) is a shareholder in 9,000 corporations, including Nestlé, Mondelez, Hershey, Barry Callebaut and Lindt — all part of the direct chocolate cluster. NBIM also has shares in McDonald’s, Starbucks, Unilever, the Dunkin’ parent company and Tim Hortons — the indirect high-volume buyer cluster. “The richest families in cocoa — the Marses, the Ferreros, the Cargills, the Jacobs — are billionaires thanks to the exploitation of the poorest children on earth,” said journalist and human rights campaigner Fernando Morales-de la Cruz, the founder of Cacao for Change. “And countries like Norway, which claim to be ethical, profit from slavery and child labor.” The problem is, few are asking who picks the cocoa. And though the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which was adopted last year, requires large companies to address human rights and environmental abuses in their supply chains, critics say the directive’s weaknesses, loopholes, and delayed enforcement will blunt its impact. However, all of this could still be fixed. Currently, a metric ton of cocoa sells for about $5,000 on world markets, but Morales-de la Cruz estimates that a fair farm-gate price would be around $7,500 per metric ton. To that end, he advocates for binding international trade standards that enforce living incomes and transparent pricing, modeled on the World Trade Organization’s compliance mechanisms. “Human rights should be as binding in trade as tariffs,” he insisted. The solution isn’t to buy more “ethical” bars but to demand accountability and support legislation that makes exploitation unprofitable. “We can’t shop our way to justice,” he said. So, as the trees in the Ivory Coast’s forests fall, the profits in Europe and North America continue to soar. And two decades after the industry vowed to end child labor, the cocoa supply chain remains one of the world’s most exploitative and least accountable. Moreover, the European Parliament’s vote on the Omnibus simplification package last month laid bare the corporate control and moral blindness still present in EU policymaking, all behind talk of “cutting red tape.” “Yet Europe’s media and EU-funded NGOs stay silent, talking of competitiveness and green transitions, while ignoring the children who harvest its cocoa, coffee and cotton,” said Morales-de la Cruz. “Europe cannot claim to defend human rights while profiting from exploitation.” However, until the industry pays a fair price and governments enforce real accountability, every bar of chocolate remains an unpaid moral debt.

BRUSSELS — The European Union’s environment ministers struck a deal watering down a proposed 2040 target for cutting planet-warming emissions and set a new 2035 climate plan. Following marathon negotiations all day Tuesday and into Wednesday morning, ministers unanimously approved the bloc’s long-overdue climate plan, rescuing the EU from the international embarrassment of showing up empty handed this month’s COP30 summit. The plan, which is a requirement under the Paris Agreement, sets a new goal to slash EU emissions between 66.25 percent and 72.5 percent below 1990 levels until 2035. That plan is not legally binding but sets the direction of EU climate policy for the coming five years. The range is similar to an informal statement that the EU presented at a climate summit in New York in September. Ministers also adopted a legally-binding target for cutting emissions in the EU by 85 percent by 2040. The deal mandates that another 5 percent reduction be achieved by outsourcing pollution cuts abroad through the purchase of international carbon credits. On top of that, governments would be allowed to use credits to outsource another 5 percentage points of their national emissions reduction goals. Ministers also backed a wide-ranging review clause that allows the EU to adjust its 2040 target in the future if climate policy proves to have negative impacts on the EU’s economy. The deal also foresees a one-year delay to the implementation of the EU’s new carbon market for heating and car emissions, which is set to start in 2027. Hungary, Slovakia and Poland did not support the 2040 deal, while Bulgaria and Belgium abstained. The rest of the EU27 countries backed it. Lawmakers in the European Parliament now have to agree on their own position on the 2040 climate target and negotiate with the Council of the EU before the target becomes law. 

BRUSSELS — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has pledged to adjust key green laws to secure support for a new climate target.  In a letter to national leaders circulated on Monday, von der Leyen outlined plans to change the EU’s carbon pricing and existing climate targets for forests, among others.  The Commission president’s unusual intervention comes days before leaders are set to debate the EU’s new overarching emissions-reduction target for 2040 at their European Council summit. Governments have been unable to agree on the new target, with several EU countries expressing concern about the economic impact of the bloc’s new and existing climate measures. Leaders will discuss the link between competitiveness and climate on Thursday in Brussels.  In her letter, von der Leyen defends the upcoming target, insists that Europe’s future competitiveness requires a decarbonized economy — and hints that this means leaving some sectors behind.  “If a robust, resilient, sustainable and innovative economy is our goal, then dogmatically clinging to our existing business models, whatever their past successes, is not the solution,” she writes. “For the EU’s economy to take its rightful place in the global economy, we must be among those who are driving the response to the challenges of our time.”  Those challenges include “the scientific reality that we are increasingly putting our prosperity and our social models at risk, while our communities risk becoming uninhabitable,” she adds, while warning that the EU cannot afford complacency given China’s accelerating dominance in clean technologies and raw materials.  Yet von der Leyen also offers several key concessions to leaders, acknowledging that “no one should be able to submit our economic and social fabric to so much tension that it breaks down.”  GREEN DEAL TWEAKS Her Commission has proposed slashing the bloc’s planet-warming emissions by up to 90 percent below 1990 levels by 2040, albeit allowing countries to outsource up to 3 percentage points of this goal by purchasing carbon credits from other nations rather than achieving these reductions with domestic measures.  In her letter, von der Leyen opens the door to an increase in credit use, writing: “Part of the target — 3% in the Commission’s proposal, which ministers will further discuss — can be reached with high-quality international credits. Our domestic target … can be lower than 90%, as long as this is compensated by similar … reductions outside of the EU.”  She also responded to a key demand from governments to adjust the bloc’s new carbon price on transport and heating, plans that were controversial from the beginning as they are expected to lead to higher fuel bills for most consumers.  On Tuesday, she writes, the EU’s climate chief Wopke Hoekstra will announce specific tweaks to the measure, addressing “concerns of too high or volatile prices.” The Commission is looking at a “more robust price stabilisation system” as well as options to provide additional support for households to cope with the increased bills.  On Tuesday, she writes, the EU’s climate chief Wopke Hoekstra will announce specific tweaks to the measure, addressing “concerns of too high or volatile prices.” | Christophe Petit-Tesson/EPA Von der Leyen also said she shared some governments’ concerns about the carbon price the EU currently imposes on heavy-polluting industries such as steel, and promised a “realistic and feasible” future trajectory, without providing details.  She then pointed to upcoming changes in the EU’s targets for how much carbon dioxide is absorbed by forests and soils, known as LULUCF. Several governments have described the current goals as unrealistic, with some pointing to increased wildfires and others to the needs of their forestry industry.  “Already we can see the challenges that several of you are facing …. We are working on pragmatic solutions to alleviate these challenges, within the existing LULUCF Regulation,” von der Leyen writes.  Carbon markets and the LULUCF rules, together with national emissions targets, are the core sub-targets of the bloc’s climate framework.  The letter also reiterates already announced tweaks and plans, such as an accelerated review of the bloc’s combustion engine phaseout, and contains a lengthy annex outlining all the upcoming announcements.

BRUSSELS — The European Union is suffering its worst wildfire season on record, surpassing 1 million hectares burned on Thursday. Fires have burned 1,016,000 hectares — an area larger than Cyprus or around a third of the size of Belgium — since January, data from the bloc’s European Forest Fire Information System analyzed by POLITICO shows. This is the first time the EU hits the 1 million hectare milestone since EFFIS started keeping records in 2006. The previous worst wildfire season, in 2017, clocked just below 988,000 hectares. Nearly two-thirds of losses occurred since Aug. 5, when EFFIS showed only 380,000 hectares burned. The vast majority of the fires have occurred in the Iberian Peninsula. Spain accounts for more than 400,000 hectares burned, while in much-smaller Portugal, flames have consumed more than 270,000 hectares — or 3 percent of the country’s entire territory. In Spain, where records stretch back to the 1960s, this year is the worst fire season since 1994, according to government data. Both countries have endured searing heat in recent weeks, desiccating forests and turning the peninsula into a tinderbox. Climate change is exacerbating wildfire risk, bringing more frequent and intense heat waves and droughts. But scientists say that the main driver of the catastrophic fires in Spain and Portugal is an overabundance of flammable vegetation on abandoned land and authorities’ failure to take preventive measures. Spain’s special prosecutor for environmental issues this week opened an investigation into the lack of fire prevention plans. Wildfires also release large amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide, with the EU on track for a potential new record for fire-related pollution as well, EFFIS data shows.

BRUSSELS — Exhausted firefighters. Traumatized evacuees. Charred villages. Red horizons, all flames and smoke.  The dramatic images from wildfires tearing through Spain and Portugal year after year have become a mainstay of Europe’s increasingly blistering summers, a symbol of the devastation wreaked by climate change.  But while global warming fuels the flames, the Iberian Peninsula isn’t destined to turn into a fiery hellscape every year. Experts say that most of the damage is, in fact, preventable — if only authorities at regional, national and European levels would act.  “Climate change plays a role here, that’s for sure, but it’s not the main cause, and this cannot be used as an excuse for what governments must do in terms of prevention,” said Jordi Vendrell , director of the Pau Costa Foundation, a nonprofit focused on wildfire management.  This year’s fire season is already the worst on record. Across the European Union, blazes have consumed more than 1 million hectares so far this year — an area larger than Cyprus. Most of that land has burned over the past two weeks in the Iberian Peninsula, where at least six people have died. The scale of this year’s disaster has kicked off an unusual reckoning in both countries as to why Spanish and Portuguese citizens are exposed to such a deadly threat each year.  “My house, my neighbor’s house, my entire town of Castrocalbón has gone up in flames because our authorities are incompetent,” 74-year-old Josefina Vidal cried out at a protest in the central Spanish city of León on Monday. Across the border in Portugal on Tuesday, mourners at a firefighter’s funeral declared Prime Minister Luís Montenegro persona non grata.  Politicians on both sides of the border are keen to avoid being held responsible, and are taking pains to blame the fires on uncontrollable factors like climate change and arson, or past decisions taken by their political rivals. At best, the debate centers on firefighting resources.  Yet experts say that preventing destructive blazes is both simpler and cheaper than fighting them. And the conditions that create firestorms are largely due to how countries manage — or rather, don’t manage — their land. THE CLIMATE FACTOR That’s not to say climate change isn’t playing a role.  The global increase in temperatures, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, does not spark fires. But it creates conditions for flames to spread with ease: More intense and frequent heat waves — such as the searing heat Spain and Portugal endured in recent weeks — dry out soils and plants, rendering forests and land more flammable.  Scientists stress that while halting global warming is crucial to avoid even worse heat waves and droughts, governments must also urgently minimize the risk of climate-fueled disasters. The scale of this year’s disaster has kicked off an unusual reckoning in both countries as to why Spanish and Portuguese citizens are exposed to such a deadly threat each year. | Brais Lorenzo/EPA In the case of fires, that mostly means ensuring there’s less stuff for flames to feast on.  While climate change is ratcheting up fire risk, “the fires we’re seeing are the result of decades of rural exodus and the absence of forest management,” said Arantza Pérez Oleaga, vice dean of Spain’s Official College of Forestry Engineers.  LEAVING THE LAND As more and more farmers and shepherds migrated to cities in recent decades, uncontrolled vegetation took over the forests, meadows, orchards and cropland they once managed. An estimated 2.3 million hectares of Spanish land are now abandoned.  This provides abundant fuel for catastrophic wildfires. The amount of biomass in Spain has surged by 160 percent over the past 50 years, said Eduardo Rojas Briales, forest expert at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.  Halting land abandonment is the key to preventing fires, experts say. Yet currently, with the rural population aging and struggling to make a living, it’s a trend that’s expected to continue.  “We need a strong primary sector,” said Víctor Resco de Dios, forest engineering professor at the University of Lleida. Crops such as olive orchards “traditionally served as firebreaks,” he added. “Now we have the problem that with rural abandonment, crops are less common.”  The wild shrublands and young forests that sprang up in their place may look like land returning to its natural state. But Resco de Dios says that the romantic “Disney ecology” vision many Europeans have of untouched nature is not only a fantasy — it’s actively dangerous.  “We need to make people understand that cutting trees is not an ecological crime,” he said. “On the contrary … if we plant trees and then we forget about them, then we’re just planting the fires that we’ll have in 20 or 30 years from now.”  Forestry experts, scientists and even conservationists agree: Letting Europe’s nature grow wild, without active management, is fueling the devastating fires.  Prevention, they say, means creating diverse landscapes, felling trees to create fire breaks, and developing a rural policy that ensures farmers and shepherds can make a living.  Crucially, it also means letting some fires burn, as long as they don’t spin out of control — ending what experts call a counterproductive policy of extinguishing all flames. In the Mediterranean, “our landscapes, they burn in the past, they are burning in the present, and they must burn in the future,” Vendrell said .  PREVENTION PARADOX Yet political debates about fire management tend to focus on fighting the flames when the land is already burning. In Spain, for example, conservative-led regions and the left-wing central government spent the past week trading blame over firefighting resources.  Experts say that preventing destructive blazes is both simpler and cheaper than fighting them. | Pereira Da Silva/EPA But governments more readily invest in firefighting equipment than prevention. Spain’s firefighting budget is double that of its prevention spending, even though preventing fires is much cheaper than fighting them.  “If we want firefighters to be able to stop a fire, of course, they have to have the means,” said Resco de Dios. “But … they cannot do their job, even if they have all the resources in the world, because the landscapes that we have do not allow them to work.”  Still, the task governments are facing isn’t easy, or cheap. Halting land abandonment will take significant long-term investment in rural communities, said Pérez Oleaga.  Stimulating demand for material such as wood is essential, she added. “There is a reason why there are fewer fires in places like Soria or the Basque Country,” where “the forests are pruned and managed because you still have sawmills and other businesses that make a living from the forests.” The Spanish environment ministry, which also oversees policies related to demographic change, did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Portugal’s environment ministry blamed the fires on extreme weather, but said that the country was planning to invest €246 million a year until 2050 in measures to boost forestry industries and land management.  There are signs that fire prevention is getting more attention amid growing frustration over how authorities handle the fires. On Thursday, Spain’s special prosecutor for environmental issues opened an investigation into the lack of forest management plans in connection with the fires.  But all experts interviewed acknowledged that politicians have few incentives to take preventive action, given that the results are often not visible for years or decades after the next election.  “For a politician, the calculation is simple,” said Pérez Oleaga. “You can take a picture next to the firefighting plane you bought with EU funds, but you don’t get to have a ribbon-cutting ceremony when you use public cash to clean up a forest.”

The European Commission is threatening to withdraw new rules designed to protect the health of European forests — the second time in less than a week the EU executive has made such a threat. Last Friday the Commission threatened to withdraw another proposed green law, the Green Claims Directive, although for very different reasons. With green claims, the Commission said member countries were pushing for the laws to go too far. But this time, in a draft statement seen by POLITICO, the Commission said that member countries’ position isn’t ambitious enough. “The Commission hopes that its main concerns can be addressed in the course of the legislative procedure,” warns the statement. “If the current draft Council position were to be confirmed by the co-legislators, the Commission might consider withdrawing the proposal.” The forest monitoring law sets out rules for collecting data on the health of Europe’s forests, with the goal of improving management and protecting them from the effects of climate change. The proposed changes in the draft Council position, which is to be adopted Tuesday by EU agriculture ministers, include deleting key indicators that were meant to monitor forests’ health through the EU’s Copernicus earth observation program. Member countries also push for deleting requirements to share information, which the Commission said would mean countries were subject to “unnecessary burden” of data collection, without any of the benefits of data sharing. The option to abandon the file has been floated by the Commission during negotiations in recent months, POLITICO reported last week. Meanwhile, MEPs are still working on their position on the file. A vote on the Parliament’s report originally expected next month has been moved to Sept. 23, according to a Parliament official, to give extra time to resolve the deadlock around this piece of legislation.

BRUSSELS — The European Union is “well on track” to reach its 2030 goal to cut 55 percent of planet-warming emissions, according to new findings released Wednesday.  The European Commission, the EU’s executive, based the conclusions on countries’ updated climate plans, which governments have been filing in recent months. The assessment — which shows the EU on track to cut 54 percent of emissions by 2030 — reflects progress for the bloc, which previously said it was at risk of falling short of its 2030 goal based on prior climate plans.  “When we play our cards and instruments in a smart manner, we deliver as a continent,” EU competition and climate chief Teresa Ribera told POLITICO ahead of the presentation. But the updated figure — which is measured against 1990 emission levels — also relies on countries delivering on fresh promises despite a green backlash and surging focus on defense spending. The Commission warned the EU not to rest on its laurels, noting in its analysis that the bloc isn’t doing enough to address energy poverty and support left behind in the green transition.  Governments are also falling short on a few targets, including a drive to create enough “carbon sinks” via healthy forest and land area to absorb the equivalent of 310 million tons of CO2 annually by the end of the decade. EU members are also behind on energy efficiency goals. The bloc is projected to reduce energy consumption by only 8.1 percent — short of an 11.7 percent target for 2030. Meanwhile, Belgium, Estonia and Poland have not submitted updated climate plans.  “This is the first time that the aggregated result is align[ed] with the Paris Agreement: That is good news,” said French centrist MEP Pascal Canfin, who was involved in negotiating the European Green Deal, referencing the landmark 2016 global climate accord.  Yet he cautioned that the findings also reveal “the weakness of our carbon sink as a consequence of the deteriorating state of our forest,” which “is worrying and needs to be addressed.” On its renewable power goals — which require installing energy sources like wind and solar — the EU is on pace to generate 41 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030, just shy of the 42.5 percent goal.  The assessment also calls on countries to better prepare and adapt society for climate change’s inevitable ramifications. Only a handful of countries are addressing increasing water scarcity, for instance. And it bemoaned the work being done to end fossil fuel subsidies, saying “a list of existing fossil fuel subsidies, concrete timelines, and measures to phase them out are largely missing.” Reaching all of these goals will be expensive, the report conceded. The EU will need roughly €570 billion annually until 2030 to get there, the Commission said. But it noted that the bloc spent €430 billion on fossil fuel imports in 2023.  That cash “could be redirected to invest in the clean transition toward a more autonomous and secure EU,” it said. The EU will soon unveil a proposal to cut 90 percent of emissions by 2040 — although with some new “flexibilities” on how countries can get there. 

Emmanuel Macron is on a collision course with his own allies in Brussels after he called for ethical supply chain rules to be scrapped — a cause first championed by the far right. On Monday, the French president stunned many when he said he wanted to repeal the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, a European Union law that requires companies to monitor their entire global supply chain for human rights abuses and environmental damage. His call echoed similar comments from Germany’s center-right chancellor, Friedrich Merz, bringing Europe’s two most powerful leaders onto the same page. But Macron’s own liberal political family is having none of it. Pascal Canfin, an influential French member of European Parliament with Macron’s centrist Renew Europe group said he would not support repealing the law.  “I will defend the revision of the Directive to make it more manageable for companies, just like the French government has done so far in the negotiations — in coherence with the fact that it has already set up a strong due diligence law in 2017,” he told POLITICO in a written statement. “Removing all obligations would create an uneven and fragmented Single Market.” The CSDDD, which was adopted last term, has been reopened by the EU executive as part of the first omnibus simplification bill, and is currently being negotiated in Parliament and the Council of the EU. The omnibus bill proposes watering down the law, but the window is now wide open for more drastic changes. While Merz’s own center-right European People’s Party family and the Renew group are keen to simplify the bill, so far it has been only the far right that has vowed to kill it altogether. The far-right Patriots for Europe said they had long called for the CSDDD to be dropped (along with the entire Green Deal). “How hypocritical it is to see Renew and EPP leaders fighting against texts they created,” said a spokesperson for the group. Dutch Socialists and Democrats MEP Lara Wolters, speaking on behalf of the EU’s second-biggest political group, said, “President Macron is categorically wrong.” “Repealing EU rules on responsible business would signal companies have the right to pocket profits made through exploitation and environmental damage. He is advocating for private gains and public losses,” she said, while accusing Macron of following U.S. President Donald Trump’s “cannibalist-style capitalism.” The Greens also oppose the proposal. Without Renew Europe and the center-left groups, any attempt to repeal the law would require a coalition of center- and far-right groups — and a breach of the cordon sanitaire.

BRUSSELS — Tropical forest loss rocketed to a 20-year high in 2024 as climate change-fueled wildfires tore through some of the planet’s most important natural carbon sinks. Close to 7 million hectares of primary tropical forests were destroyed last year, with nearly half of that due to fire, said a report from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the University of Maryland published Wednesday. Wildfires also swept through boreal forests — in particular in Russia and Canada — leading to 30 million hectares of trees being lost globally in 2024, and resulting in an estimated 4.1 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions. It came as the European Union decided to delay anti-deforestation rules and wind back other environmental protections in a bid to boost economic competitiveness. “This is a dangerous feedback loop we cannot afford to trigger further,” warned Peter Potapov, research professor at the University of Maryland. “If this trend [of fire-driven forest loss] continues, it could permanently transform critical natural areas and unleash large amounts of carbon — intensifying climate change and fueling even more extreme fires.” Climate change and El Niño (a cyclical weather phenomenon that exacerbates global warming’s impact) created hotter and drier conditions last year, helping make 2024 the hottest year on record. That elevated the risks of larger and more widespread fires, the researchers noted. Latin America “was particularly hard hit, reversing the progress we saw in Brazil and Colombia in 2023.” The Congo basin saw notably high primary forest loss, while deforestation decreased in Indonesia and Malaysia last year. Even with the sharp rise in wildfire damage, agriculture was still the main driver of global deforestation over the last 24 years, according to the report. The overall picture is hurting forests’ capacity to absorb and store carbon, which helps mitigate climate change. It also means that the world is off track to reach its objective of halting and reversing global deforestation by 2030 — a goal more than 140 countries pledged at the Glasgow COP26 climate summit in 2021. “This should be a wake-up call,” said Elizabeth Goldman, co-director of the WRI’s Global Forest Watch, noting that to reach this 2030 goal, global deforestation would need to decrease by 20 percent every year until the end of the decade. EU REGULATION LOOMING The data comes as companies are getting ready to implement new EU rules requiring them to police their supply chains and ensure they’re deforestation-free. Under the EU Deforestation Regulation, companies selling coffee, cocoa, palm oil, soy, rubber, beef and timber on the EU market will have to prove they sourced the commodities from areas that haven’t been cleared to make space for agriculture. The new rules kick in on Dec. 30. But a group of centrist and right-wing European Parliament members is pushing to delay the rules further and tweak them to reduce red tape for European farmers and land managers. The legislation risks “placing disproportionate burdens” on small companies “without delivering the intended results” and “imposes technically unrealistic demands for tracing and verifying the origin of commodities,” complained Veronika Vrecionová, a Czech MEP of the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists and the chair of Parliament’s agriculture committee, in a letter obtained by POLITICO. The missive, sent May 14 to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall, also calls for delaying the new rules once again. EU policymakers agreed late last year to postpone the legislation’s implementation by a year, from Dec. 2024 to Dec. 2025. “We fully support the aim of combating deforestation, but we believe that a framework with such systemic shortcomings may ultimately fail to identify actual illegal activity,” Vrecionová wrote, warning that “it could hinder legitimate EU-based producers and compromise the competitiveness of our agri-food and forestry sectors.” The letter also shows that right-wing forces are not giving up on their attempt to modify the regulation. Late last year, the center-right European People’s Party — the largest group in Parliament and von der Leyen’s political family — failed in its push to amend the legislation and label the EU a “no risk” area, shielding small European farmers and foresters from the rules. Vrecionová’s letter reiterated that demand.

There are many ways to ruin Christmas. A heated political debate with the in-laws. An ill-timed bout of the festive flu. A forgotten ingredient for the yuletide feast. But if everything has gone miraculously well for you this festive season, POLITICO’s sustainability and data teams are here to lower your mood with a list of ways this fiesta of consumerism is wrecking the planet. And where better a place to start than with that fragrant emblem of Christmas itself, the Christmas tree? 1. GASSY CHRISTMAS TREES Christmas can be a gassy affair, and the tree that stands proudly in your living room is no exception. On average, a natural Christmas tree emits 16 kilograms of CO2 equivalent if it gets landfilled after use. That’s more than if you woodchip it or even burn it. But if you’re thinking of ditching the real tree and going for a plastic one, you might want to think again. Artificial trees have much bigger carbon footprints, emitting on average 40 kilograms of CO2eq. That’s not surprising because, newsflash, plastic is made out of fossil fuels. Then there’s the issue of pesticides. Natural Christmas trees are grown fast and often in monoculture plantations, which aren’t known to be havens for biodiversity. To protect these trees from pests and diseases, pesticides — including the controversial weedkiller glyphosate — are often spread on them. Last year, German green NGO Bund got a few trees tested across the country and found traces of pesticides on the majority of them. 2. TOXIC SLIME AND OTHER TOY-BASED NIGHTMARES As for what lies under the tree, the children’s toys don’t fare much better. According to a report from Toy Industries of Europe (TIE) out earlier this year, some 80 percent of the more-than-100 toys tested from third-party traders across 10 online marketplaces failed to meet EU safety standards, such as those set by the EU Toy Safety Directive. Slime products — kids’ favorite and an adult’s nightmare — contained over 13 times the legal limit of boron, a chemical linked to reproductive health issues. TIE puts that down to loopholes in the EU’s toy safety regime. While the bloc has the “strictest” rules on toy safety in the world, the lobby says, they don’t cover sellers from outside the EU when the sale is facilitated through an online marketplace. “It’s getting worse because these platforms are becoming more and more popular,” Catherine Van Reeth, director general at TIE, told POLITICO. This wasn’t inherently a bad thing, she added, saying TIE’s members — which include LEGO, The Walt Disney Company, and Barbie-maker Mattel — also sell through online platforms. “But the difference is that then you buy from a brand that you know and a brand that prioritizes safety, whereas we found that lots of toys that are being sold on online marketplaces are sold by third party sellers, often not from the EU, who don’t really care about safety.” The data backs this up. In 2023, the EU was a net importer of toys from the rest of the world, according to Eurostat, with 80 percent coming from China. Nearly all toy chemical alerts issued in the EU in 2024 involved those coming from … you guessed it. China. 3. EAT, DRINK, TRAVEL AND WASTE Presents, travel and extravagant, meat-heavy meals: all common features of the festive season, and all an environmentalist’s nightmare. Let’s start with packaging waste. We’re talking thousands and thousands of meters of wrapping paper. According to the environmental non-profit Repak, Ireland generated about 97,000 tons of packaging waste at Christmas in 2022. Then there’s wasted food. According to a study conducted by the French ecological transition agency ADEME in 2022, 83 percent of meals are prepared in excess quantities over the holidays. Meat consumption, in particular, soars over Christmas. And that has serious environmental impacts. Agriculture contributes 40% of global methane emissions, according to the International Energy Agency, thanks largely to the methane that cows and sheep belch out (methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases). Overall, livestock accounts for just under 15% of total global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations — about the same as steel and cement production combined. Feeding livestock also requires vast tracts of land to be cleared to grow the soy, corn and other grains that fatten up your Christmas turkey or your celebratory loin of beef. Meanwhile, grazing of grass-fed cattle and sheep also often means cutting down forests or draining wetlands. All that has a double environmental impact: it destroys biodiversity and eliminates vital carbon sinks, contributing to climate change and nature destruction. But when it comes to climate impact, nothing is worse than flying home for Christmas. According to the International Civil Aviation Organization, a round trip from London to New York emits well over half a metric ton of carbon dioxide per passenger. The average person in Europe emits just over seven metric tons of CO2 per year. In other words, in two flights you’ve emitted nearly a tenth of the emissions the average European does over an entire year. For a roundtrip flight between, say, Brussels and Berlin, the figure is just under 180 kilograms (0.18 of a metric ton) of C02, according to the the ICAO. Want to be greener? Take the train. Eurostar boasts that a train trip between Brussels and London emits 2.9 kilograms of CO2 per passenger, while a plane emits 23 times that, at 68.1 kilograms. All very well for those expats with a short trip home for Christmas. But how can climate-conscious Americans in Europe get home for Christmas in a greener fashion? Currently they can’t — unless they’re prepared to sail across the Atlantic Ocean Greta Thunberg-style. And with that, pour another glass of mulled wine and forget all about it. Joyeux Noël !