Soya, meat, palm oil, timber, cocoa, coffee: these products are often the result of deforestation. The European Union no longer wants to be complicit in it.
Deforestation is never an isolated phenomenon. Studies tell us that, in 73 per cent of cases, the green lungs of tropical and subtropical areas are burned, cleared and destroyed to make way for crops. And the produce of those crops is exported and ends up in our homes, in Europe. The institutions of the Union no longer want to be complicit in such environmental devastation and, to that end, are working on legislation that could represent a powerful deterrent.
As early as October 2020, the European Parliament made its position clear, publishing a document addressed to the Commission, the Union's executive arm. The request? To require companies to demonstrate that the products they put on sale in Europe have not contributed, more or less directly, to deforestation and human rights violations. The Commission appears to have responded positively to the call, to the extent that developments are expected before the end of December 2021. The underlying principle is that of due diligence: companies will in future be required to account not only for what they do directly, but also for everything that happens along their supply chain.
The non-profit organisation Eurogroup for animals, which firmly supports the proposal, reveals a few more details. The scope is limited to the products most closely linked to deforestation, such as palm oil, timber, cocoa, coffee, beef and soya. The plan is to divide countries of origin into three categories: for lower-risk territories, more basic checks will suffice, while more critical ones will require thorough inspections.
If it emerges that a specific product (for example palm oil) was obtained after razing forests to the ground, its imports will be blocked or subject to heavy restrictions. And these could prove to be far from isolated cases. According to some studies, illegal deforestation is linked to 17 per cent of the beef Europe imports from Brazil and 20 per cent of the soya used on our continent, respectively.
The legislative process will take more time but, in the meantime, a signal has been sent. A signal that is sorely needed, given the news coming from the Amazon. The NGO Imazon, which monitors the territory via satellite, reports that in August the deforested area amounted to 1,606 square kilometres, slightly larger than the metropolitan area of London. Such a figure had never been recorded in the month of August in the previous ten years; compared to 2020, the increase stands at 7 per cent. From January to August, the Amazon lost 7,715 square kilometres of forest, a surge of 48 per cent compared to the same period in 2020.
