- The EU Deforestation Regulation, which was passed in May 2023 and comes into effect at the end of this year, is intended to prevent European consumption driving deforestation and associated illegalities and abuses
- In the run-up to implementation, a growing chorus of affected governments and culprit industries has been calling for the law to be delayed and weakened
- This commentary is a response to those calls. It shows how the problems the law is intended to solve have not gone away, that the need to address them grows ever more urgent, and that any delay risks opening the door to the law being gutted
- The commentary points out that many of those calling for the EU to reconsider are deeply self-interested and their concerns should not be taken at face value. It also highlights the human cost of delay
A pioneering law under attack
The world’s governments have long acknowledged the need to halt and reverse the loss of the planet’s precious forests, not least because of the contribution that loss is having on the global climate. There is also consensus that by far the largest driver of deforestation – and associated negative impacts on people, as well as nature – is large-scale, export-oriented agriculture and forestry. Growing demand for a handful of so-called ‘forest risk commodities’, including beef, soy, palm oil and leather, is at the root of the problem.
The European Union (EU) is one of the largest markets for these goods. European consumers don’t want to be responsible for crimes against people and the planet, and have asked their politicians to act. After two years of studies, consultations and impact assessments, and a further two years of protracted political negotiations over the text, in May 2023 it finally passed a law intended to wean the continent off these tainted products.
The EU Deforestation Regulation, or EUDR, is a pioneering law, which other major markets are looking to emulate. It will demand that these commodities are produced legally, and that they do not come from land deforested since 2020. No longer will European buyers have to worry about their money paying corrupt companies to bulldoze forests overseas – including even protected ones home to uncontacted tribes – evicting and impoverishing people in the process and murdering those who dare to resist.
The legislation is in the statute books already. After giving authorities and companies 18 months to prepare, it will come into full effect at the end of 2024. The conversation right now should be about how best to enforce the law, not what the law says. But a growing chorus of voices has instead been calling for the law to be delayed or weakened. The recent pushback began with just one or two forest countries and an Austrian agriculture minister. It has since grown to involve a wide array of voices, including the US government, the German chancellor and the WTO. The media have been awash with calls from industry associations for a delay.
European officials have thus far held firm. Here is why they must continue to do so.
The problem isn’t going away – and the need is greater than ever before
Some of EUDR’s critics like to claim the law is no longer necessary, as deforestation is in decline, as is the EU’s role in driving it. But their cherry-picked evidence paints a false picture. In truth, this problem is far from resolved.
In Indonesia, for example, deforestation is increasing again, driven primarily by expanding pulpwood and oil palm plantations. This trend looks set to continue, with an incoming president who is reported to be personally profiting from the destruction. In Bolivia, a new global deforestation hotspot, forest loss driven by industrial commodities such as soy almost doubled between 2020 and 2023. In Brazil, despite recent improvements, commodity-driven deforestation is still happening at double the rate it was 10 years ago. Global demand for forest-risk commodities, meanwhile, is forecast to expand dramatically, increasing pressure on forests.
The EU’s complicity also continues. Investigative work by my organization, Earthsight, soon to be published, has revealed fresh evidence of continued illegalities, land grabbing, deforestation, corruption and human rights abuses linked to exports of soy from Brazil to the EU. Our ongoing work is also set to expose how EU supply chains are tainted with timber coming from some of the worst deforestation cases happening in Indonesia right now, where forests are being bulldozed for wood pulp and oil palm plantations. EIA, meanwhile, recently exposed fresh evidence of deforestation in the supply chains of JBS, Brazil’s largest meatpacker. Earthsight has found connections between this and EU beef and leather imports.
The mountain of evidence showing that voluntary commitments by companies and the sustainability certification schemes on which they rely are failing to address EU complicity in deforestation and rights abuses also continues to grow.
Since EUDR was enacted, scientists have discovered that forests are even more important to the climate than we thought, and that the point at which it may be too late to save them could come sooner than anyone dared to imagine. Both the importance and the urgency of EUDR are undeniable; delaying or weakening it is not acceptable.
Delay would be the thin end of the wedge
There is some understandable frustration that the benchmarking of sources of forest risk commodities as low, standard or high risk has not yet been completed, and that there have been delays to European Commission guidance on interpretation of the law.
However, some of those citing these problems as a reason to delay implementation of the law have a broader agenda to weaken it or even see it overturned. Already, some who initially called only for a delay have begun demanding that low-risk goods be exempt from requirements for traceability.
Weakening the traceability requirement would be a disaster. As the European Commission has argued, including at a key conference in Madrid earlier this year, even if only applied to ‘low-risk’ commodities, this would provide a loophole big enough to drive a semi-truck through.
Also, opening up the law to amendment in order to delay or weaken traceability for only low-risk goods will be seized on by those self-interested companies and politicians deeply opposed to the law as an opportunity to weaken it even more substantially, or even kill it altogether.
Too little time or too much cost? Give us a break
Complaints being made by large companies about the costs of compliance or short timescales for implementation need to be taken with a massive helping of salt.
The need for action in these supply chains had been well and truly demonstrated as long as 15-20 years ago, and most big companies have been promising to clean up their supply chains voluntarily, and working towards that end for over a decade. In 2015, the biggest EU countries committed to eliminating deforestation related to agricultural imports by 2025. The fact that EUDR was coming, and the nature of its fundamental requirements, were also evident long before the law was actually passed.
The big companies which process and trade the vast majority of the EU imports of these commodities post billions of dollars/euros in profits annually, a tiny proportion of which could fund their own compliance and that of smaller suppliers.
The truth is that EUDR has already had huge positive effects, driving the decoupling of these commodities from their worst impacts. Many large companies and key supplier countries have already set up the necessary systems. Those companies which have failed to prepare have only themselves to blame. The millions of forest-dependent people across the world currently suffering the consequences of unregulated EU consumption should not be made to endure a day longer because of these companies’ complacency.
Self-interested opposition
Many of those calling most loudly for delays or weakening of the law are themselves complicit in the harms it is meant to prevent, and have profited from the destruction wrought by production of these commodities over the last 20 years. Their demands are self-interested ones. That they are falling for or propagating myths about EUDR in their efforts to counter it is perhaps therefore not so surprising.
Within the EU, the charge was started by the Austrian agriculture minister, Norbert Totschnig, on behalf of its domestic farm and forestry lobby, who highlight concerns over unnecessary burdens on their ‘low risk’ production of beef and wood.
Yet Austria’s domestic livestock industry is itself complicit in tropical deforestation through its consumption of Brazilian soy for animal feed. Earthsight’s past research, meanwhile, has shown how Austria’s world-leading timber processing multinationals have been guilty of importing illegally sourced wood. We have also begun researching the political party funding of some of the European politicians calling most vocally for delay or weakening of the EUDR. Our findings, soon to be published, show donations received from companies previously shown to have illegal logging and deforestation in their supply chains.
Delay or weakening would allow harms to continue
So much focus on the economic impacts of EUDR overlooks the very reason the law is needed. A mountain of evidence has shown that unregulated EU demand for these commodities is harming communities in the Global South, by driving deforestation, illegality and human rights abuses. This law is intended to halt these damaging impacts.
It is important to remember that though the law also precludes goods from legal deforestation, past research has shown that the vast majority of the production of these goods in high-risk countries is illegal in some way. Many key producer countries have also committed to halting forest loss, whether legal or illegal.
Decades of research have documented how production of these commodities for the EU market harms local communities and indigenous peoples in these countries. Delays in addressing this demand will mean increasing those harms.
Perhaps most importantly, we know that the worst impacts of climate breakdown are felt by people in these same Global South countries. This redoubles the moral imperative for action in the EU to address all the emissions it drives, including those related to deforestation.
The EU must act – but to further support the law, not weaken it
Action by the EU is needed. But not the action that EUDR’s detractors want. Research shows that the destruction being wrought by these commodities in forest countries is almost entirely the responsibility of large companies, not smallholder producers. The EU is already investing in helping to ensure that those smallholders are able to benefit from their relative lack of complicity, by supporting their efforts to prove their compliance. But that EU support must be ramped up. The EU should also press the large companies through whom smallholder-produced commodities reach Europe to invest their vast profits in that effort.
In the long term, the EU must look to expand the law, not weaken it, by including commodities produced through destruction of precious non-forest biomes and expanding its scope to cover other commodities we know are driving illegal deforestation, such as cotton.
Sam Lawson, Director, Earthsight
