Agroforestry and the Sustainable Finance Initiative

EURAF Policy Briefing #28 v3 responds to the Commission's latest report on the Sustainable Finance Initiative (aka the Taxonomy Regulation) and forms EURAF´s submission to a consultation which closes on 5th February 2025. Agriculture was included in the original recommendations (2022) of the "Platform for Sustainable Finance", but was not included in the Delegated Act because of pressure from environmental NGOs over the questionable sustainability of industrial livestock production. Agroforestry was also mentioned favourably in the original report from the Platform, but was removed at the same time as agriculture. EURAF members have shown through dozens of studies that agroforestry is a very sustainable type of land use, and we are alarmed that two years have been lost without revisiting the criteria for sustainable agriculture. EURAF also regrets that no response was received from the Platform to the detailed technical screening criteria for agroforestry which we submitted December 2023. Agroforestry is now mentioned as one of the first forms of carbon farming to be implemented in the Carbon Removals Certification Framework Regulation, and we ask for it to be urgently included in the SFI Taxonomy alongside forestry and peatland-rewetting (the other types of carbon farming) (download the file below for a PDF version with working links)