Thomas Sembres, author at EU REDD Facility

About Thomas Sembres

Thomas leads the Facility's work with producer and consumer countries on enhancing the transparency of forest-risk commodity trade. He engages in the Transparency for Sustainable Economies (Trase) initiative to improve monitoring of forest-risk supply chains. He also leads the Facility's work on land-use planning, by managing and developing activities that use the Facility's interactive Land-use Planner tool.

Thomas previously worked on land-use governance issues at the UN Environment Programme (Kenya), the World Bank (United States) and philanthropic foundations. He has a background in environmental policy.

Entries by Thomas Sembres

A new transparency pathway to decoupling commodity trade from deforestation

15 June 2021/by Thomas Sembres

Global supply chains are notoriously complex and opaque, making it very difficult to address sustainability issues in mainstream markets – including deforestation, sustainable livelihoods, child labour and land grabbing. In recent years, however, there’s been a surge of global supply chain transparency instruments, data and analysis to help company and government efforts to stop deforestation associated with commodity trade.

Une approche pragmatique des chaînes d’approvisionnement zéro-déforestation : coup de projecteur sur les exportations de soja brésilien vers la France

15 September 2020/by Thomas Sembres

De vastes étendues de l’Amazonie brésilienne et du Cerrado sont parties en fumée l’année dernière. Et la saison des incendies est repartie de plus belle cette année, car la déforestation continue à progresser pour faire place aux pâturages pour le bétail et aux champs de soja. Le Brésil constitue aujourd’hui la principale source d’importation de soja en Europe ; les Pays-Bas, l’Espagne et la France comptant parmi les plus gros importateurs. En effet, le soja importé, principalement destiné à l’alimentation animale, est responsable de la moitié de l’empreinte de l’Union européenne (UE) sur les forêts tropicales.

A pragmatic approach to deforestation-free supply chains: spotlight on Brazilian soy exports to France

15 September 2020/by Thomas Sembres

Vast swathes of the Brazilian Amazon and the Cerrado went up in smoke last year. And the fire season may be worse this year as deforestation is on the rise again to make way for cattle pasture and soy fields. Brazil is the main source of soy imports to Europe, with the Netherlands, Spain and France among the biggest importers. In fact imported soy, primarily used for animal feed, is responsible for half of the European Union’s (EU) tropical forest footprint.

About the EU REDD Facility

The EU REDD Facility supports countries in improving land-use governance as part of their efforts to slow, halt and reverse deforestation. It also supports the overall EU effort to reduce its contribution to deforestation in developing countries. The Facility focuses on countries that are engaged in REDD+, an international mechanism that incentivises developing countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their forest and land-use sectors. The Facility is hosted by the European Forest Institute and was established in 2010.

Disclaimer

This website has been produced with the assistance of the European Union and the Governments Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands. The contents of this site are the sole responsibility of the European Forest Institute’s EU REDD Facility and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of funding organisations.