The European Union signed an unprecedented agreement on Tuesday to ban the import of products that contribute in some way to deforestation, days before the 15th Conference of the Parties on Biodiversity (COP15) in Canada.
This agreement aims to import cocoa, coffee, soy, palm oil, wood, beef and rubber, in addition to several other materials such as leather, furniture, printed paper and charcoal, according to the text that resulted from long negotiations between the European Parliament and the member states of the European Union.
“It is a first of its kind in the world! (The agreement targets) the coffee we drink during our breakfast, the chocolate we eat, the charcoal we use for barbecue and the papers in our books,” said Pascal Canvan, head of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee.
Anke Schulmeister-Oldenhoff of the World Wildlife Fund welcomed the European decision, saying that it “not only changes the rules of the European consumption game, but also creates a huge incentive for other countries to change their practices.”
Global Witness considered the decision a “historic moment”.
The European Union is the second-largest destroyer of tropical forests after China, with its imports (mostly soy and palm oil, as per 2017 figures) contributing to 16% of global deforestation, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
Under the new agreement, the import of products coming from deforested lands after December 2020 will be prohibited.
Importing companies, who are responsible for their own supply chain, will have to prove the traceability of products via crop geolocation data that can be linked to satellite imagery.
European Parliament negotiator Christoph Hansen noted that the final text of the agreement includes “guarantees for the protection of the rights of indigenous peoples”, whereby importers will have to “check compliance with the legislation of the country of production in relation to human rights”.
But “the text is incomplete,” said Schulmeister-Oldenhoff of the World Wildlife Fund, which considered that the immediate inclusion of savannas in the agreement “would have made a huge difference to ecosystems at constant risk.”
The latter also deplores a definition of deforestation that is limited to “conversion” of cropland and does not include all damage within forest areas.
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