Deforestation: the EU signs an unprecedented agreement to green its imports
Habitat destruction through deforestation in the Colombian Amazon.
© Raúl Arboleda/AFP
Text by: RFI Follow
3 mins
The European Parliament and the Member States of the EU reached an unprecedented agreement on the night of Monday to Tuesday December 6 to ban the import into the European Union of several products, such as cocoa, coffee or soy, when contribute to deforestation.
Advertising
Read more
Drink your coffee with the assurance of not contributing to the disappearance of forests on the other side of the world: the EU on Tuesday sealed an unprecedented agreement to date to ban the import of products if they contribute to the deforestation.
Cocoa, coffee, soy, but also palm oil, wood, beef and rubber are concerned, as well as several associated materials (leather, furniture, printed paper, charcoal, etc.), according to this agreement concluded after long negotiations between the European Parliament and the Member States of the EU.
❗🌳 Historic agreement against deforestation!
The Member States & the European Parliament reached an agreement last night on our proposals against imported deforestation 🤝
Objective: to ban the import into Europe 🇪🇺 of several products resulting from deforestation ↓ pic.twitter.com/g9EspzhKVg
— European Commission 🇪🇺 (@UEFrance) December 6, 2022
“
This is a first in the world!
It's the coffee for breakfast, the chocolate we eat, the charcoal in our barbecues, the paper in our books.
It's radical
, ”welcomed Pascal Canfin (Renew, liberals), chairman of the Environment Committee in the European Parliament.
World's second largest destroyer of rainforests
At the origin of 16% of global deforestation through its imports (mainly soy and palm oil, 2017 figure), the EU is the second destroyer of tropical forests behind China, according to the NGO WWF (
World Wild Fund
).
Importation into the EU will be prohibited if these products come from deforested land after December 2020. Importing companies, responsible for their supply chain, will have to prove traceability via crop geolocation data, which can be linked to satellite photos.
►
To read also:
What solutions to fight against imported deforestation?
The text was proposed in November 2021
by the European Commission and broadly taken up by the States.
But MEPs had voted in September to strengthen it significantly, by widening the range of products concerned, in particular to rubber, absent from the initial proposal.
The European Parliament had also called for the scope of the text to be extended to other threatened wooded ecosystems, such as the Cerrado savannah (Brazil/Paraguay/Bolivia), from which a large part of European soybean imports come.
►
To read also
: [Survey] Soy, when deforestation invites itself to our plates
The agreement reached between MEPs and States finally stipulates that this extension “
to other wooded lands
” must be considered no later than one year after the entry into force of the text.
Possible extension to other products
Similarly, after two years, the Commission is required to study a possible extension to other products (such as maize, which MEPs wanted to target immediately), to other ecosystems rich in carbon storage and biodiversity ( peatlands...), but also to the financial sector, another strong demand from Parliament.
The EU could thus consider obliging financial institutions to refuse financial services or credits if these risk being associated with deforestation activities.
On the other hand, "
we have obtained a much more robust definition of forest degradation to cover all forests, and not just primary forests
", observed Christophe Hansen (EPP, right), negotiator for Parliament.
Similarly, unlike the initial proposal, the text includes “
guarantees to protect the rights of indigenous peoples, our best allies against deforestation
”, he argued.
Importers will have to "
verify compliance with the country of production's human rights legislation, and ensure that the rights of indigenous peoples have been respected"
.
►
To read also:
Environment: the European Parliament will study the ambitious laws of the "climate package"
(
With AFP
)
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
Economy
Environment
European Union
Africa
Trade and Exchanges