Rolling back social and environmental safeguards in the time of COVID-19

Client

Forest Peoples Programme

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the 5 countries with the world’s largest areas of tropical forest—Brazil, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia and Peru—have been rolling back social and environmental legal protections in the name of economic recovery.

To what extent this is happening and how it affects the rights of Indigenous Peoples, the forests they depend on, and the global climate—now and in the longer term—is the subject of the report, Rolling back social and environmental safeguards in the time of COVID-19: The dangers for indigenous peoples and for tropical forests.

The authors of the report were a partnership of several civil society organisations, Forest Peoples Programme, the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic of Yale Law School, Middlesex University London School of Law, and in-country researchers.

What I did

I worked closely with the lawyers and several client staff to conduct a substantive edit of the draft report, applying and/or suggesting changes. Part of this was making sure that the content was complete, and the structure and expression were tailored to the intended readers.

I wrote/rewrote the headings and sub-headings to be informative and to guide the reader.

Once all feedback had been incorporated, I copyedited the 66-page report, including almost 200 references, complying with the client’s editorial style guide.