Affiliates of the Building and Wood Workers' International (BWI), representatives of the CGTP, CATP and CUT Peru, forestry workers, indigenous groups and specialists from ILO-ACTRAV and FSC Peru came together on 20-21 August 2026 to respond to job insecurity, deforestation and the climate crisis. The central message was unequivocal: there can be no forest conservation or just transition without decent work, union organising, and community participation.

The National Trade Union Seminar "Strengthening labour rights and sustainability in the forestry and timber value chain in Peru” was organised with support from GS Facket Sweden, bringing together in Lima unions of public and private workers in the forest products chain. The meeting examined a structural contradiction. Despite having 67.39 million hectares of Amazon rainforest, the tenth country with the highest forest cover on the planet (2019, INEI-ENAHO, CIEN-ADEX and SERFOR-MIDAGRI), workers in the forest products chain are subject to verbal agreements, temporary contracts, subcontracting, payment for volume produced, long hours and long unpaid trips. Added to this are chainsaw accidents, falling trees, sawmill amputations, exposure to dust and chemicals, tropical diseases, fires, extreme heat and difficulties in evacuating injured workers from remote areas.

"Decent work is having healthy food, health and, logically, a job," said Elías Sinti Panduro, a Kichwa environmental defender from San Martín, recalling that the protection of the territory must also translate into decent conditions for those who live and work in it.

Mary Ríos, from SITPROFOR Ucayali, highlighted the community dimension of this struggle: "Nature is part of us; there is no divorce between human beings and nature." Climate change was addressed as a present labor reality. Heat, smoke, fires, and rainfall disturbances directly affect the health, productivity, and income of those who work in forests. For this reason, the organizations demanded that climate adaptation be incorporated into occupational safety and health systems, collective bargaining and public policies.
It was also warned that indigenous peoples and environmental defenders face threats for protecting their territories. The trade union agenda must include prior consultation, territorial titling and the effective application of ILO Convention 169.

The potential of forest certification to strengthen respect for fundamental rights, freedom of association, collective bargaining, equality, safety and health, and the protection of subcontracted workers was identified. ILO-ACTRAV and FSC Peru participated in the exchange with the trade unions.

However, it was stressed that certification does not replace labour legislation, labour inspection or union organisation. To be effective, the quality of audits must be improved, non-compliances documented, and corrective actions must be followed. It was also proposed to evaluate union affiliation to FSC Peru and strengthen the representation of workers in its social chamber, as well as to promote the implementation of Motions 50 and 51 on union access and participation in safety and health.

A trade union roadmap for the timber and forestry sector in Peru

The groups agreed to prioritise the following actions:

• Establish a trade union protocol for alerting, legal accompaniment and national and international referral for threatened unionists, leaders and defenders.
• Map and reactivate forestry unions in Loreto, Ucayali, San Martín, Madre de Dios and other Amazonian territories.
• Implement a model of training trainers on safety and health, forest certification, climate justice and indigenous rights.
• Promote decent jobs in restoration, reforestation, nurseries, agroforestry systems, fire prevention and local transformation.
• Demand that climate funds reach communities, indigenous organizations and trade unions directly, with transparency, participation and accountability.
• Demand the publication of updated data on employment, wages, informality, unionization, and occupational accidents in the Peruvian forestry sector.
• Strengthen the budget and teams of the National Forest and Wildlife Service (SERFOR), the Agency for the Supervision of Forest and Wildlife Resources (OSINFOR), regional forestry authorities and the labor inspectorate.
• Articulate Peruvian trade unions with the BWI Amazon Trade Union Network
• Train BWI-linked unions on forest certification mechanisms.
• Promote training for trade unionists and workers in the Amazon on the ILO Code of Practice on Safety and Health in Forestry Work.

The seminar concluded that trade unions are not secondary actors in forest policy. They are indispensable for monitoring working conditions, preventing accidents, protecting communities and ensuring that the climate transition does not reproduce existing inequalities.

As expressed by Segundo Gilberto Rodríguez Silupu, of the Federation of Workers for the Preservation and Conservation of the Environment and the Amazon Forests - FA. SACO - UK: "There is no climate justice without labour justice and respect for indigenous peoples."

Protecting the Amazon starts with the people who inhabit, defend, and work in it. No forest policy will be sustainable if it keeps its workers informal, excludes unions from decision-making, or concentrates climate resources away from communities.
There will be no living forests without decent work. And there will be no just transition without union power.