Yesterday, the European Commission proposed a one-year delay to the EU Deforestation Regulation. While I imagine the news was greeted with a collective sigh of relief from the thousands of companies struggling to comply by the 30 December deadline, a delay is a bad idea.
In palm oil, a delay will not help. The EUDR’s definition of deforestation-free is exceedingly generous. To be in violation, you have to clear forest after December 2020 and convert it to palm. It takes roughly three years before a palm tree is harvestable, meaning few plots were going to be non-compliant in January.
If the delay passes, all leverage that EU operators had over their suppliers will be lost and hundreds of potentially non-compliant palm plots will be ready for harvest. How do I know? Because we know where they are and monitor them every month.
We are already seeing palm laggards go from seeking our help to postponing plans indefinitely. They now think the EUDR won’t happen, so will continue exporting their commodities without monitoring them. No insights means no preparation.
No benefit to smallholders
The argument that a delay will help smallholders comply is disingenuous. A year delay won’t get millions of smallholders mapped but will kill a major incentive to map them.
The world’s largest chocolate company, Barry Callebaut, is actively mapping its entire cocoa supply chain. It doesn’t want a delay. Another major company, SD Guthrie, just shipped its first batch of EUDR-compliant palm to its Liverpool refinery, sourced, in part, from smallholders.
The EUDR’s traceability requirement also offers opportunities to monitor not only forest, but also check soil and water conditions, provide credit, and speed up transactions. By leading, EUDR-compliant companies can export their know-how to other markets.
At the heart of this stand-off is the notion that some of the wealthiest, most technologically sophisticated companies on earth – ones that can turn palm fruit, cocoa beans and rubber sap into myriad specialised products – can’t map a farm. Deforestation monitoring really is that simple.
Mapping and monitoring costs are plummeting as an industry has emerged to efficiently map and monitor millions of farms. A delay tells EU consumers that their food, transport, and cosmetic industries are not serious about being deforestation-free.
If not the EU, then who?
If the EUDR is delayed, the knives will be out to repeal the whole law. But where would an EUDR-free world leave us?
We would return to our current swiss cheese system of voluntary-based commitments and snake oil solutions. We will return to a market divided between strivers struggling to find a way to be deforestation-free and free riders doing nothing. To be blunt, we will return to a system that has patently failed to stem deforestation.
I have been in forest monitoring for over 20 years, so believe me when I say the EUDR is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. It has influenced the similar FOREST Act working its way through the US Congress and the TREES Act poised for the governor’s signature in my home state of New York.
The EUDR is not perfect, but it finally gives us the chance to all pull in the same direction and tackle one of the most vexing and important issues of our time. Let’s get on with it.
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