The CLEVER Innovation Action Pool works on new ways to make biomass trade more sustainable and less harmful to biodiversity. It looks at how public policies and private sector actions can be improved to strengthen sustainability across key value chains—such as soy, timber, wood pulp, and fishmeal—traded from Brazil and Central Africa to the EU.
CLEVER researcher Andrea Pacheco shares insights from the IPBES Nexus Assessment
How can we design policies that support biodiversity while also addressing climate change, food systems, health, and water? In this video interview, Andrea Pacheco, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bonn and part of the CLEVER project, shares insights from her work as a fellow in the IPBES Nexus Assessment. This global scientific effort brings together experts from around the world to identify solutions that benefit multiple sectors without creating harmful trade-offs.
Growing up in Honduras, where lush cloud forests and vibrant coral reefs shaped her early fascination with nature, Andrea developed a strong sense of the human–nature connection. Today, through her work with CLEVER and IPBES, she explores how current economic and policy systems can better support biodiversity. “Trade liberalization can increase food availability and have positive outcomes for health and nutrition,” she explains, “but it may come at the detriment of biodiversity, as we look at in the CLEVER project.” One CLEVER case study, for example, investigates how EU soy imports from Brazil impact biodiversity in producer regions.
Andrea highlights how the Nexus Assessment offers evidence-based response options that support biodiversity, health, food, climate, and water together, rather than advancing one goal at the cost of another. A key focus of her work is on sustainable finance. She calls for a major shift in both public and private funding, noting that “we need to decrease this spending that’s directly harmful to biodiversity… and massively increase the spending that protects or restores it, ideally in a nexus-oriented way.” For this to happen, transparency and equity in biodiversity finance are essential. Governments and the private sector must disclose how funds are spent to close persistent financing gaps and promote fairness in distribution.
Curious how science can inform more effective and just environmental decisions? Watch the video below, and explore the findings in the IPBES Nexus Assessment.
Tick-tock. With every minute that passes, roughly ten football (soccer) fields of irreplaceable tropical primary forest vanish from our planet. Deforestation and forest degradation in the tropics have serious local and global impacts, like undermining livelihoods of local communities and peoples, harming biodiversity, and aggravating climate change impacts. The relentless forest loss is particularly critical in regions like Africa’s Congo Basin, which is the second-largest continuous tropical rainforest in the world and a biodiversity hotspot. In hopes of addressing these issues, policy makers have taken different initiatives. Cameroon – a country in the Congo Basin – adopted a revised Forestry Law in 2024, replacing its previous Forestry Law that stemmed from 1994 and appeared long outdated. The revised law regulates and aims to achieve the sustainable use and management of Cameroon’s forest resources, responding to today’s challenges like the climate change. The European Union (EU) has also taken initiative with its Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR). The EUDR aims to minimize the EU’s contribution to deforestation and forest degradation worldwide and thereby reduces global forest loss. This rests on the notion that the EU market imports and consumes forest and agricultural products that fuel forest loss elsewhere. The EUDR focuses on seven such commodities, namely: cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber, soy, and wood.
These two initiatives share similar end goals but vary in their approach and scope. Cameroon’s revised Forestry Law is focused on creating clear rules of play in the country’s forest sector, which covers participatory management of forest and wildlife resources, sustainable forest management, forest protection and conservation, and community rights, among other things. The law defines the State’s role of monitoring and enforcement and sets penalties in cases of non-compliance. For Cameroon, the EUDR means EU companies must verify that the seven key commodities imported from Cameroon are legal and haven’t caused deforestation or forest degradation since 2020. To this end, companies in the EU must seek collaboration with their overseas suppliers in ensuring that EUDR provisions are met. For goods to be exported to the EU, companies in Cameroon must document and make available information to their EU buyers about the legality and deforestation-free status of their products. These measures include aspects like providing geolocation information about where commodities were grown and harvested.
Tree trunks loaded onto logging truck in the rain forest of Gabon, Central Africa. Photo by Fabian / Adobe Stock.
Different initiatives like the new Forestry Law and the EUDR can complement and support each other. Cameroon’s revised Forestry Law can help companies with EUDR compliance by seeking to strengthen the monitoring of forestry operations and punishing offenses more severely. The EUDR puts emphasis on legal compliance in countries of origin, like Cameroon, which can strengthen efforts to monitor and ensure compliance with forest and other laws in place. It can also help enhance traceability and transparency of supply chains, because it requires geolocation information of the commodities that are harvested and exported to the EU market – this, in turn, can support the goals of Cameroon’s new Forestry Law.
However, the initiatives also face challenges. For instance, the Forestry Law’s definitions of legal concepts may not align with international standards. Uncertainty also looms over the law’s implementation and enforcement, which has been a pain point with the previous edition of the law due to lacking resources and capacities of the forestry administration, for instance. This casts doubts over its potential effectiveness. The EUDR will also face multiple challenges in its implementation, like ensuring that its provisions are effectively enforced in the EU. The EUDR could also unequally affect producers in Cameroon, because smaller producers may struggle to meet the regulation’s strict requirements. It could also lead producers to divert their exports to other countries, such as China and Vietnam, where sustainability and legality standards are less strict than in the EU. Hence, while the EUDR’s effectiveness remains to be seen, it is already facing serious question marks.
Cameroon is not alone. Other countries in the region, like Gabon, are grappling with the EUDR’s implications while simultaneously devising their own domestic strategies to deal with deforestation. Ultimately, the story is repeated across countries worldwide, because the international trade by the EU means the EUDR has a global reach and each country will have its own interests, preferences, and proposed solutions to forest loss.
That is why it is crucial to seek collaboration among countries, underlining the shared responsibility in tackling deforestation. This is increasingly important in the context of today’s trade policy environment with its tangible tensions, where unilateral measures tend to carry unintended consequences. Hence, collaboration in implementation of regulations is especially essential for the EUDR, because its influence extends across the borders of a single country. Also, regulations like the revised Forestry Law remain the backbone in a domestic context, so their implementation and enforcement should be supported by partner countries. It is for the benefit of forests and communities that different regulations should ideally support each other: by creating a framework that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Simple wooden dugout canoe on Barombi Mbo crater lake of Cameroon, Africa. Photo by Fabian / Adobe Stock.
Authors: Mathias Cramm (European Forest Institute) and Abubakar Ali Shidiki (University of Dschang)
CLEVER’s contributions at the Global Land Programme Conference in Oaxaca, Mexico
CLEVER researchers are advancing solutions to tackle the impacts of global commodity trade on biodiversity producer countries. Representing research institutions in Germany, Spain, Brazil, and Austria, the team recently showcased their innovative work at the 5th Open Science Meeting of the Global Land Programme (GLP) in Oaxaca, Mexico. Held from November 4–8, 2024, under the theme Pathways to Sustainable and Just Land Systems, the conference brought together experts worldwide to explore sustainable land-use strategies and challenges. The CLEVER team shared groundbreaking research on biodiversity metrics, supply chain tools, and governance mechanisms, contributing to interdisciplinary discussions on sustainable agriculture, trade policies, and land-use modeling, while forging collaborations to address global land-system challenges.
Highlights across CLEVER thematic areas
Advancing biodiversity indicators
Andrea Pacheco from the University of Bonn (UBO) led a session on innovative biodiversity metrics, exploring how agriculture-driven land-use changes impact nature conservation. The presentation covered diverse scales, from local soil biodiversity in Michoacán to CLEVER biodiversity indicators in Brazil, highlighting the complexity of biodiversity metrics and their different applications. The session explored the challenge of selecting the right metric for different contexts and emphasized the importance of developing tools that go beyond species counts, integrating broader biodiversity aspects and their connections to human well-being.
Land use modelling and tools for supply chain traceability
Britaldo Soares Filho and Felipe Nunes (UFMG) presented innovative geospatial tools to trace deforestation-risk commodities, such as soy and cattle, to the farm of origin in Brazil. These tools also include Selo Verde, a freely accessible traceability platform to support the monitoring and evaluation of sustainable agriculture policies and practices in the State of Minas Gerais. Selo Verde provides a set of estimates on agricultural production and environmental suitability for rural properties registered in the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) and can be used to verify the compliance of rural properties that produce coffee, forestry, soy, cattle and sugarcane. The session also featured the work of the CLEVER researcher Ubirajara Oliveira, who is developing predictive models to estimate the spatial distribution of land uses and associated biodiversity loss at 1 km resolution, to be used for deriving quantitative indicators for deforestation-risk supply chains. All these tools can help producers and supply chain actors to certify their products in accordance with the EUDR.
Neus Escobar from BC3 contributed to the session ‘Achieving Sustainable Food Systems’ with her presentation on a new global multiregional input-output database that traces agri-food supply chains with an unprecedented level of products, based on official FAO statistics. The Agro-SCAN database includes physical flows of 640 primary products and derivatives across 181 countries, from producers to consumers, for the period 2013-2020. This is meant to become a revolutionary tool for supply chain transparency, as it allows actors to identify environmental hotspots, import dependencies, and more sustainable sourcing strategies. At the same time, it can be applied for estimating environmental footprints, including biodiversity loss and other land-driven impacts. Agro-SCAN can also inform the European Union Regulation on Deforestation-free products (EUDR), since it provides information on potential high-deforestation-risk countries exporting commodities to the EU.
David Leclère from IIASA presented their most recent methodological developments of the GLOBIOM model for assessing future pathways on trade and biodiversity. GLOBIOM provides the central framework for the ex-ante simulation of policies in CLEVER, including leakage. Leclère presented an update of the bending the curve pathways exploring their impact on trade flows, and the impact of refined trade narratives – from exacerbated liberalization to trade frictions and coordinated trade greening. The model will be used to assess the market-mediated impacts of alternative international supply chain policy scenarios co-created with stakeholders, considering a wide array of strategies such as the EUDR, the EU-MERCOSUR trade agreement, national policies such as the Forest Code or the Soy Moratorium, and other demand-side initiatives. Results will shed light on how future agricultural trade can be affected by efforts towards ambitious biodiversity goals and to what extent alternative governance of agricultural trade can foster biodiversity conservation. David also chaired a session on equity and justice in model and scenario applications, in link with the pathways developed in RAINFOREST, another HEU project from the same cluster.
From coherence to stickiness: how a new forest and ecosystem-risk commodities governance regime is playing out globally and locally
Laila Berning from the University of Freiburg (UFR) and Andrea Pacheco (UBO) chaired the session on “designing for impact: success and failures of forest-risk commodity policies and governance mechanisms”. In this cross-disciplinary session, we discussed how forest-risk commodity and supply chain policies are designed and then evaluated on the ground and how they are expected to contribute towards long-term sustainable goals such as biodiversity conservation.
Laila Berning presented a book chapter on the emergence of a new governance regime for forest- and ecosystem-risk commodities, co-authored by Rafaella Ferraz Ziegert and Metodi Sotirov from the University of Freiburg (UFR), and Mathias Cramm and Sven Wunder from the European Forest Institute (EFI). In her presentation, Berning showcased the interplay between legally binding and non-binding policy instruments governing forest and ecosystem-risk commodity (FERC) value chains, highlighting the hybrid logics underpinning regulatory and voluntary governance approaches on case studies from the EU, Brazil, Cameroon, and Gabon. Berning demonstrated that anticipated synergies between these instruments often fall short in practice. Her analysis revealed misalignments between international frameworks and regional implementation, challenging the presumed “win-win” scenarios across environmental, social, and economic policy domains. These findings call into question the effectiveness of current governance regimes in harmonizing diverse policy objectives across demand- and supply-side regions.
Relatedly, Rafaella F. Ziegert (UFR) presented an empirical analysis of policy coherence, focusing on the EUDR as a transnational trade regulation. She examined the interaction between EUDR and national forest laws and hybrid public-private governance mechanisms in Brazil, Cameroon, and Gabon, proposing a taxonomy to categorize such interactions into four dynamics: coordination, cooptation, competition, and chaos. While the EUDR aligns well with certain overarching goals, such as forest protection, and shares implementation tools with select national policies, Ziegert identified critical inconsistencies. Specifically, cooptation and competition emerge where regulatory requirements and enforcement mechanisms diverge, possibly undermining policy effectiveness and delegitimizing national regulations. Her findings underscore the need for greater coherence between EU regulations and producer country policies to mitigate regulatory fragmentation, conflicting standards, and operational uncertainties, which risk delegitimizing existing frameworks.
Gustavo M. Oliveira (UBO) shared research insights on the role of traders and trade-specific factors in shaping the effectiveness of forest protection policies, using the Amazon Soy Moratorium (ASM) as a case study. His research identified “stickier” soy traders as pivotal actors in reducing deforestation. These traders were responsible for approximately 540 km² of avoided primary forest deforestation under the ASM between 2006 and 2018. Oliveira further demonstrated how contextual factors, including demand-side preferences in international markets, varying degrees of supply chain stickiness, and market power, positively moderated the ASM’s impacts. These findings emphasize the essential influence of trade dynamics in bridging policy implementation and conservation impacts.
Building Connections, Bridging Ideas
Beyond their presentations, CLEVER team members relished the opportunity to connect with peers from around the world. The conference’s vibrant setting in Oaxaca provided a welcoming space to engage in meaningful discussions, share ideas, and forge new collaborations. The team met with representatives from other prominent projects in the GLP network, exchanging insights on effective sustainable land use, predictive modeling, and community engagement strategies. The CLEVER researchers’ participation in the 2024 GLP Conference not only elevated their own research but also strengthened the global land-system science community, laying the groundwork for impactful collaborations and innovative solutions in the years to come.
Co-authored by Neus Escobar, Rafaella Ferraz Ziegert, Andrea Pacheco, Laila Berning, David Leclere and Gustavo Magalhaes de Oliveira.
The CLEVER Annual Meeting took place in Bonn on November 19–20, bringing together researchers and partners from 8 different institutes for stimulating discussions on biodiversity indicators, modeling biodiversity loss, and user-friendly platforms for alternative trade-governance mechanisms to avoid deforestation. This final annual meeting of the project was co-hosted by the Center for Development Research (ZEF) at the University of Bonn and the European Forest Institute (EFI).
Guest talk with Prof. Martin Persson.
The first day welcomed Prof. Martin Persson from Chalmers University of Technology and the BEDROCK project. He delivered an insightful talk on the challenges and progress in mapping commodity-driven deforestation globally, featuring the new interactive dashboard on deforestation footprint.Day two featured a keynote by Prof. Lisa Biber-Freudenberger, lead author for the IPBES Nexus Assessment, from the University of Bonn. Her presentation explored strategies to enhance the connection between CLEVER research and science-policy platforms, such as IPBES and Eklipse. The day also included a session dedicated to improving research communication and dissemination.
Keynote by Prof. Lisa Biber-Freudenberger.
Throughout the meeting, team members presented updates on their research, collaborated to identify leverage points for transformative change, and continued planning the next research publications. The cross-disciplinary workshops encouraged participants to explore connections between their expertise and the project’s broader goals, with more innovative thinking.
This annual meeting set the tone for the year ahead, the last of the project, refining priorities and timelines. As CLEVER progresses, the discussions and outcomes of this meeting will lay the groundwork for impactful research findings to be showcased at next year’s final conference, on June 4-5th in Brussels.
Photos by Rosa Castañeda.
Written by Rosa Castañeda (EFI) and Fernanda Martinelli (UBO).
For biodiversity conservation to be effective, nature must be placed at the heart of decision-making. In recent years, concepts like nature-based solutions (NbS) have emerged as promising tools for fostering social empowerment and ecological transformation. Yet, studies reveal a significant limitation: these concepts are often applied within narrow, specific contexts, restricting their potential to drive transformative change. A troubling pattern emerges when we look closer at how “nature” is framed. Complex, top-down power dynamics often exclude marginalised communities and species from meaningful participation. This disconnect underscores the need to rethink how we approach biodiversity conservation.
The challenges we face in creating a sustainable society are not just environmental — they’re deeply human. We often struggle to align on shared goals to protect the planet. Different languages, perspectives, and priorities can create barriers to collaboration. To develop solutions that effectively address biodiversity loss, we must first overcome the human problems that stand in the way. This calls for a shift toward designing communications and public engagement strategies with a human-centred approach.
Introducing the Leverage Points Toolkit
Recognising the importance of this shift, CLEVER has developed the Leverage Points Toolkit. Following the collaborative workshop on narratives with our cluster partners from BioValue, BioNext, and PLANET4B, this resource was created to support the Transformative Change cluster project partners in applying human-centred design principles when crafting communication materials and engagement activities.
This 7-page document provides:
Practical tips for the design of human-centred communications and engagement outputs and activities
Links to short videos guiding the development of empathy and understanding target audiences
Tools like the empathy map and persona-building frameworks to explore existing worldviews and mindsets
Stakeholder mapping ideas using free collaborative tools like Canva
Cluster partners can use these tools to create strategies that resonate more deeply with their audiences, fostering empathy and driving more effective public engagement.
Access the Toolkit Ready to take a human-centred approach to communicating about biodiversity conservation? Access the Leverage Points Toolkit and start being part of the change: Download the Toolkit
Written by Rina Tsubaki from the European Forest Institute.
AI-generated image by AbdulRahmanUzair via Adobe Stock.
Deforestation is driving a massive loss of biodiversity, much of it is tied to our consumption of imported products. Many of these products are not directly visible in our daily lives, but they play a huge role in global trade. Think of soybeans used for animal feed, or timber for furniture. The production of these non-food biomass products can directly and indirectly contribute to the destruction of forests and related biodiversity loss. More than ever before, we need media coverage on these issues to bring them to the public’s attention.
The CLEVER and DETECT projects at the CLIMATE ARENA. Photo by Rosa Castañeda.
At the Climate Arena journalism conference in Bologna on 18 October 2024, the CLEVER and DETECT projects joined forces to organise sessions to discuss the effects of global trade on biodiversity with investigative, science, and environmental journalists from all across Europe. The panel‘Climate, Land Use, and Biodiversity from a Systems Thinking Perspective,’ explored the intricate connections between these issues, using Brazil’s soy imports as a key example. Moderated by Rina Tsubaki (EFI), the session featured Prof. Jan Börner (University of Bonn) and Dr. Felipe Nunes (University of Minas Gerais) as the expert speakers on the matter.
Soy is a key ingredient in livestock feed, supporting meat production that ultimately reaches European markets. Prof. Jan Börner said, soy farming in South America has boomed due to scientific advances and infrastructure development. However, this has come at a cost: illegal deforestation, especially in the Amazon. According to Dr. Felipe Nunes, just 2% of private properties account for 60% of illegal deforestation in the Amazon and Cerrado. Although much of exports go to China, a significant portion of the soy and meat produced in these areas finds its way to Europe, embedding environmental destruction into our supply chains.
One tool to fight this issue is the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which aims to ensure that only deforestation-free products are sold in Europe. However, opinions are divided on its potential impact. Prof. Börner is skeptical, pointing out that while Europe may purchase deforestation-free soy, it will likely come from other regions in South America, resulting in longer transport routes. Also, global demand will continue driving prices up, making Europe indirectly responsible for deforestation elsewhere. Additionally, countries like China will continue purchasing cheap soy from deforested areas, and many deforestation-linked products, such as timber and meat, are consumed domestically, making them unaffected by the EUDR. Moreover, the EUDR is not always aligned with national policies. In contrast Dr. Nunes sees the EUDR as a potential “game changer” for fighting deforestation and illegality in supply chains. Despite challenges like “leakage” that allows products to bypass regulations, the EUDR may encourage major players like the USA and China to implement similar standards. By enhancing verification of environmental and social criteria, the EUDR aims to ensure compliance and foster sustainability in global supply chains.
Regulation is important, but tools like Trase and SeloVerde are also essential for tracing commodity origins and identifying illegal practices. These tools can enhance supply chain transparency and help researchers, policymakers, and journalists hold businesses accountable. During the‘Tracing Supply Chains’workshop, Dr. Nunes was joined by Mark Titley from Global Canopy to demonstrate how these tools can be used to investigate global supply chains, using the example of Brazilian soy entering EU markets.
‘Tracing Supply Chains’ workshop. Photo by Rosa Castañeda.
Trase has been popularly used by a number of investigative journalists in stories on the UK chicken import by the Guardian and Palm Oil trade by the New York Times. But it is still an underexplored tool for many. At the same time, not much has been explored regarding what exactly happens at the farm level. This is where SeloVerde can come in to support journalists interested in tracking deforestation-risk supply chains at the farm-level. It can help look into a specific farm to identify the cases of illegal logging and land conversion for agricultural crops.
Ultimately, tackling deforestation requires not just pinpointing what happens on a specific commodity or location. It needs a holistic approach that addresses not just individual commodities like soy but the broader systems of trade and land use. More access to data and tools can help expose problematic practices and potentially reduce the harmful impacts of our consumption on the planet’s biodiversity.
Explore additional resources on global commodity trade through this drive.
We posed key questions to the speakers from the Climate Arena panel and workshop. Watch the interviews summary here:
You can also watch full interviews with Jan Börner, Felipe Nunes, and Mark Titley to learn more about the CLEVER project, as well as the SeloVerde and Trase tools, and how governments and civil society can collaborate to mitigate the environmental impacts of global trade.
Written by Rosa Castañeda and Rina Tsubaki from the European Forest Institute.
Thanks to global trade, Western societies are not only wealthy but have also access to diverse products. From diapers for our babies or diesel for our cars to the dressing for our salad – the movement of goods in a globalized world allows us to have products for consumption that would otherwise not be available. These can often be everyday products and items taken for granted, so that we don’t necessarily even think of their origins. For example, a typical home would have wooden furniture like tables or shelves. They, or parts of them, could come from wood harvested in Central Africa. Or a common meal could consist of pork meat, where the pork was fed with soymeal processed from soybeans grown in Brazil. Unfortunately, the farming or harvesting of many goods – especially those of biomass like wood or soy – can have negative impacts on the biodiversity of ecosystems, including our forests. As such, the wooden furniture we buy or the pork we eat could be associated with biodiversity loss. In other words, trade becomes the mechanism that links our consumption habits to environmental damage abroad. But, how could we benefit from trade and conserve biodiversity at the same time?
This and related questions were the focus of attention at a two-day symposium linked to the CLEVER project, which investigates the question of how international trade in agricultural and forest non-food products affects biodiversity. The symposium, supported by “Stiftung Wissen Sparkasse KölnBonn”, a foundation, was organized by the University of Bonn and held in Cologne, Germany during 3-4 November 2022. With an international group of around 20 participants from countries like Brazil, Germany, and the UK we engaged in scientific presentations and discussions centered around CLEVER’s three main research areas: measuring, modelling, and governing non-food biomass trade and its impacts on biodiversity. Participants identified some key questions as essential to be addressed over the course of the project. For instance, we need to better understand leakage effects, which means that negative biodiversity impacts are reduced in one place only for them to shift elsewhere. To better study leakage phenomena, we need to improve simulation models, for example, by explicitly representing the key actors, such as traders and retailers, in international value chains. Biodiversity loss can also result from bioeconomy policies that promote non-food uses of biomass from agriculture and forestry, such as wood as construction material. Such policies then may have to come with safeguards to mitigate biodiversity related risks. Further discussion points were related to the design of “smart” policy mixes, i.e. the combination of regulations with economic incentives to enhance policy effectiveness.
CLEVER was part of the Symposium on Biodiversity and Trade in Cologne.
The CLEVER project will run until late 2025, during which time we will aim to answer these and further questions. Looking forward, the project also offers the opportunity to integrate across scientific disciplines, such as political scientists and biodiversity modelers, which have rarely worked together in the past.
