Just Transitions for Forests

The need to prevent forest loss and degradation while also halting biodiversity decline is recognized as critical to meeting the objectives of all three Rio Conventions. Analyzing the national implementation plans under each Convention to assess their treatment of forests and forest degradation, this report shows that plans simultaneously implicate and embrace sectors that drive deforestation. Instead of proposing measures to meaningfully transition away from these sectors, plans rely on reformist approaches that sidestep the underlying drivers of forest loss. This “implicate-embrace” tension is often explained through trade-off narratives; this paper suggests it is more meaningfully understood as emblematic of a contradictory global political-economic system that erodes the ecological basis of life and impedes attempts to advance alternative development trajectories. The conclusion outlines pathways for change, emphasizing a need to address common underlying structural constraints, with an eye to supporting Rio implementation and a just transition for forests and rights. Pathways include transforming domestic industrial policies to fundamentally support nature and rights, alongside necessary international financial architecture reforms.