Brussels Balks on Protecting Forests, Daily Brief October 3, 2024

Progress in human rights is rarely quick and hardly ever follows a straight line. Sometimes, just when you think things have finally moved a step forward after years of effort, someone in power decides to kick them backward again.

The European Commission yesterday said it would propose delaying implementation of the European Union’s new deforestation regulation by a year. This move, which follows relentless industry lobbying, is a body blow to what has been one of the most important pieces of environmental legislation globally in recent years.

We’ve looked at the EU’s Deforestation-Free Products Regulation (EUDR) before in the Daily Brief, but here’s a quick refresher…

Deforestation is the second largest source of the greenhouse gas emissions causing the climate crisis, after the burning of fossil fuels. Once cut down, trees not only stop absorbing carbon dioxide, they also release their stored carbon, a double whammy for the climate.

Critical forests are being cut down at an alarming rate – ten football fields a minute – mostly to clear land for industrial-scale agriculture, aiming for the global trade in wood, palm oil, soy, coffee, cocoa, rubber, and cattle, and their related products. The EU is a huge market for them.

In 2023, the EU finally approved a new draft law, the EUDR, which specifically targets global trade in these seven commodities. It requires EU companies to ensure what they import and export isn’t produced on land deforested after December 31, 2020.

Companies also have to make sure these commodities are produced in conditions that comply with laws on land use rights, labor rights, and other human rights.

Everything was done and dusted in the complex EU lawmaking process. Businesses were expected to have to start complying with the new regulation from January next year.

Yesterday, however, the European Commission balked, calling for a delay.

Some details of the new move suggest it may not have been a sudden decision. For months, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, failed to publish key documents to provide guidance on implementation of the regulation. Governments and many companies were asking for them, but she let them grow dust on her desk.

As my expert colleague Luciana Téllez Chávez commented to media yesterday: “It would seem the Commission President sabotaged the most significant environmental legislation passed during her previous term.”

What happens next is that the Commission’s proposal needs to be voted on by the European Parliament and the European Council to be approved or repealed.

They should reject the delay and remind von der Leyen her role is to implement what has already been painstakingly agreed.

A fight that climate and rights activists thought was won, now continues into another round.