EU anti-deforestation law will help curb Bolsonaro administration’s environmental crimes, say environmentalists

Gabriel Abreu – Cenarium Magazine

MANAUS – After the European Parliament approved in the early hours of Tuesday, 6, a resolution that prohibits the entry into the European market of commodities, low value-added products, produced in deforested areas after December 31, 2020, environmentalists heard by CENARIUM celebrated the approved measure and say it is an important decision to curb deforestation Bolsonaro management.

The new regulation is a milestone for forests: for the first time, commodity buyers will be able to audit sellers and reject meat, soy, timber, rubber, cocoa, coffee and palm oil coming from any property with deforestation or degradation, legal or illegal.

Responsible for the largest seizure of illegal timber in the Amazon, Federal Police delegate Alexandre Saraiva, former superintendent of the Federal Police in Amazonas, celebrated the approval of the measure by the European Union which, for the first time, put timber on the discussion circuit, because before, according to him, it was very focused on soya and cattle.

The seizure took place in an area on the border between the states of Pará and Amazonas. In all, 131,000 cubic metres of logs were seized, the equivalent of filling 6,243 trucks. The cargo is valued at least R$ 55 million. The seizure is part of the operation Handroanthus GLO, an allusion to the scientific name of the ipê, one of the most coveted trees in the Amazon

“In my opinion, today the main vector for the division of the Amazon is timber, then come soybeans, cattle, land grabbing. I was in Sao Paulo three months ago and I think this initiative is very good, because before it was very focused on cattle and soya and left wood out. Which I have always criticized, because if we want to preserve the Amazon, it is natural to preserve the trees”, stated Saraiva.

Rodrigo Castro, member of the Brazil Climate, Forests and Agriculture Coalition and country director of the Solidaridad Foundation, said that this measure opens up a huge suitability for Brazil as the largest producer of commodities

“The country has a challenge and an opportunity, you can look at it from the challenge side and from the opportunity side. The fact is that this trade barrier, this market barrier, which will come into force and has this restriction for products originating from areas that had deforestation after December 31, 2020. So, they are saying that the regulation cuts December 31st 20, so let’s say, if an area had deforestation up to two years ago, it will not be affected at first by this resolution”, he explained.

The executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, Marcio Astrini, explained that the European legislation is far from perfect, but it gives a very important signal to the whole world: deforestation should no longer be tolerated.

“From now on the markets will close to those who destroy or degrade forests. Those who bet on the passing of the buck during the Bolsonaro government and thought they could devastate with impunity broke their backs. Fortunately this part of agribusiness, although noisy, is in the minority”, he stressed.

Arguments

The Climate Observatory and other civil society organizations argued, in a public position to the EU, that this allegation is fragile, since the soybean sector in Brazil has been practicing traceability to the polygon for over 15 years – and remote sensing technology allows doing that anywhere in the world.

There was, however, exemption for small producers (up to 4 hectares) and the approval of a rule that divides countries into high, medium and low deforestation risk categories. The latter will be rewarded with simplified auditing and less inspections by buyers.

“We know that deforestation is one of the major drivers of climate change, increasing emissions, extinguishing species, collapsing biomes and compromising key ecosystem services such as rainfall maintenance. These services are essential even to ensure the strength of agricultural, livestock and forestry production in the long term. Deforestation is often also associated with the violation of rights and of peoples and local communities”, says Frederico Machado, Public Policy specialist and leader of WWF-Brazil’s Zero Conversion Strategy.

Resolution

By restricting production with deforestation in the Amazon, the Atlantic Forest and the Chaco, the most typically forested biomes in South America, the new regulation may cause “leakage” of deforestation to the Cerrado, amplifying its destruction. The text promises to review the law one year after its entry into force to assess the inclusion of other wooded land; in two years, other biomes. The accountability of banks and other institutions that finance deforestation was also left for revision. Only between 2016 and 2020, European banks profited €401 million in business with companies that deforest tropical forests.

Another point that suffered in the final agreement was human rights. Absent from the European Commission’s original proposal, presented in November 2021, the inclusion of a mention of human rights generated intense pressure from the indigenous movement. The Parliament advanced on this point, but in the “trialogue” it was weakened.

Despite the inclusion of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) in the definition of the legislation of the country of production, the text limits the scope of human rights to national laws and makes no reference to relevant international conventions, such as Convention 169 of the ILO (International Labour Organization).

The cut-off date of the legislation, December 2020, means that audits made by buyers (called due diligence in market jargon) on sellers will have to refuse products cultivated or raised in deforested areas after this date. This will reward, for example, producers who deforested halfway through the Bolsonaro government’s libera-general mandate. In Brazil, the soybean moratorium already audits properties since 2006 and there was a technical condition to move back the cut-off date to before 2020. The European Commission’s original proposal prevailed instead of the European Council’s, which wanted 2023.

Despite the loopholes, the new legislation innovates by dealing with one of the essential points to combat deforestation: traceability. As of the date the legislation comes into force, operators will be obliged to provide the geolocation of their goods up to the polygon (parcel of land) of the farm where they were produced. The agribusiness lobby, inside and outside Europe, has tried every which way to exclude geolocation from the law, claiming increased costs for producers.