structural:expansion
International, national and subnational policies

Policies for forest protection include information and education programs, economic measures to increase revenue returns from authorized activities and measures to increase effectiveness of "forest technicians and forest managers". Poverty and agricultural rent were found to be principal factors leading to deforestation. Contemporary domestic and foreign political decision-makers could possibly create and implement policies whose outcomes ensure that economic activities in critical forests are consistent with their scientifically ascribed value for ecosystem services, climate change mitigation and other purposes.

Such policies may use and organize the development of complementary technical and economic means – including for lower levels of beef production, sales and consumption (which would also have major benefits for climate change mitigation), higher levels of specified other economic activities in such areas (such as reforestation, forest protection, sustainable agriculture for specific classes of food products and quaternary work in general), product information requirements, practice- and product-certifications and eco-tariffs, along with the required monitoring and traceability. Inducing the creation and enforcement of such policies could, for instance, achieve a global phase-out of deforestation-associated beef. With complex polycentric governance measures, goals like sufficient climate change mitigation as decided with e.g. the Paris Agreement and a stoppage of deforestation by 2030 as decided at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference could be achieved. A study has suggested higher income nations need to reduce imports of tropical forest-related products and help with theoretically forest-related socioeconomic development. Proactive government policies and international forest policies "revisit and redesign global forest trade" are needed as well.

In 2022 the European parliament approved a bill aiming to stop the import linked with deforestation. This EU Regulation on Deforestation-free products (EUDR), may cause to Brazil, for example, to stop deforestation for agricultural production and begun to "increase productivity on existing agricultural land". The legislation was adopted with some changes by the European Council in May 2023 and is expected to enter into force several weeks after. The bill requires companies who want to import certain types of products to the European Union to prove the production of those commodities is not linked to areas deforested after 31 of December 2020. It prohibits also import of products linked with Human rights abuse. The list of products includes: palm oil, cattle, wood, coffee, cocoa, rubber and soy. Some derivatives of those products are also included: chocolate, furniture, printed paper and several palm oil based derivates.

But unfortunately, as the report Bankrolling ecosystem destruction shows, this regulation of product imports is not enough. The European financial sector is investing billions of euros in the destruction of nature. Banks do not respond positively to requests to stop this, which is why the report calls for European regulation in this area to be tightened and for banks to be banned from continuing to finance deforestation.