John,

The EU will have a powerful Deforestation Regulation soon, banning products made with deforestation and related human rights violations.

There’s still a trialogue negotiation on the final text coming up next (between the European Parliament, national governments and the European Commission) – but it’s worth celebrating what the #Together4Forests campaign AND YOU have helped achieve so far.

If you use Twitter, click here to retweet and celebrate this milestone! Or you could forward this email to spread the good news.

The European Parliament voted on Tuesday to strengthen the EU’s proposed law – so it will also cover what European banks invest in, and more commodities and farm animals, and stronger human rights protections too.

This doesn’t mean we can stop pushing corporations and financial institutions directly to change – but once this law kicks-in, we’ll have a powerful new tool for defending people and planet against corporate greed.

Since 2020, hundreds of thousands of SumOfUs members from around the world have petitioned, emailed, tweeted, and even phoned EU decision-makers for this law. The #Together4Forests campaign was founded by a group of leading environmental NGOs, and coordinated by WWF from Brussels, but it was your actions – and people like you spreading the word to friends and family – that turned this into a powerful movement.

This campaign is another reminder that together we can make our voices heard in Brussels, and even mobilize a winning majority of Members of the European Parliament (MEP) when it counts.

To be clear though, we didn’t get everything we wanted from the European Parliament. And the trialogue negotiations starting now could still lead to some rotten compromises.

In July, thousands of SumOfUs members contacted MEPs on the Parliament’s Environment Committee to recommend extending the law to protect threatened ecosystems like wetlands and savannahs. The Parliament stuck with a forests-only scope, but at least approved a review clause, so the EU can widen protection to other ecosystems next year. They better.

So let’s celebrate this milestone, and build on it together, John… Not just because we believe that corporations and their lobbyists won’t just roll over because of this week’s news. Not just because we believe that we’ve got to push for better nature and human rights laws, even before the ink dries on the last. And not just because climate impacts are hitting faster and harder around the globe than experts believed only a few years ago… Let’s keep building this movement together because we believe that another world is possible.

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