The European Commission is ‘leaving the back door wide open’ to products sourced from recently deforested or degraded land and/or grown illegally in protected areas through its designation of ‘high risk’ and ‘low risk’ countries under the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), Mighty Earth has said.
The advocacy organisation said in a statement that by leaving countries with high levels of deforestation and degradation, such as Brazil, Bolivia and DR Congo, off the ‘high risk’ register, and therefore scheduled to face few border checks, the EUDR is little more than political posturing.
‘Political narrative’
“The EUDR has become more about controlling political narrative than about controlling deforestation,” commented Julian Oram, policy director, Mighty Earth. “Almost since it came into force in June 2023, the European Commission has been doing its utmost to bend the law to the will of those who don’t like it – namely companies and governments that preside over, and benefit from, the destruction of the world’s precious remaining forests.
“Today’s revelation of which countries have been classified under the EUDR risk benchmarking system is the latest, and perhaps most bizarre, example of this capitulation.”
The EUDR prohibits commodities such as beef, soy, palm oil, coffee, cocoa and timber entering the EU from areas that have been recently deforested, or grown illegally in protected areas such as wildlife refuges, national forests and Indigenous territories.
‘Farcical’ classification
Oram added that rather than address this, the risk list published by the Commission is “based on political horse trading and favouritism. For countries such as Canada, Ghana, Papua New Guinea and Romania to be classified as ‘low risk’ is nonsensical, and seemingly wilfully belies recent evidence of deforestation, forest degradation, and illegality linked to commodities originating from those countries being sold on the EU market.
“The responsibility for this farcical classification does not primarily lie at the doors of the European Commission. Instead, it rests on EU member state governments, some of which have turned their backs to the climate and nature emergency facing the planet at the behest of corporate lobbyists from the forestry and agribusiness sectors, especially in countries such as Austria, Germany and Finland.
“This is their legacy, and it will haunt them.” Read more here and here.
