Coffee and chocolate lovers should want EU deforestation rules in force without delay

On 23 September, the European Commission proposed postponing implementation of the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) by a further 12 months. The reason given: the Commission’s own ill-prepared IT systems. The EUDR will ban products from land deforested after 31 December 2020 from the EU market. Operators in seven sectors – cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya and wood – must submit due diligence, including the geocoordinates of the land used to cultivate the imported product, making the EUDR data-intensive.

The EUDR was finalised in 2023 but has already been postponed once, in 2024, to give the Commission more time to improve the guidance and compliance system, and to prepare a list of countries at risk of deforestation. This moved was backed by EU governments, who rejected the European Parliament’s attempt to re-open the legislation for amendments. The compliance systems certainly need to be ready to receive more data and should account for the legal and technical limitations on geo-location in supplier countries; moreover, farmers need more support to prepare. But that would not require re-opening the content of the law.

Now, however, politics has shifted and some EU governments may agree with European Parliament lawmakers who want to change the regulation. There are calls to create a ‘zero risk’ category of countries and/or products deemed to be free of deforestation. This could exempt EU countries (which are within the law’s scope) but also others – and several governments would like to be in that category, even though their forests are shrinking. These range from Mercosur members to Indonesia, the world’s largest exporter of palm oil, with production linked to deforestation, which on 23 September concluded a trade deal with the EU.

A second postponement of the EUDR would be regrettable, with an immediate negative effect on forests. Already the 12 months of extra time for deforestation related to EU imports has likely caused the destruction of some 190,000 more hectares of forest, about three-quarters the size of Luxembourg.

The EUDR should not be weakened. EU demand drives 15% of global deforestation linked to trade, an outsized impact relative to its 5.5% of the world’s population. That means EU consumption contributes significantly to destruction of biodiversity, disruption of freshwater production and release of greenhouse gases.

For business, weakening the legislation would penalise leaders and reward laggards. Large companies publicly criticised the first delay in 2024, having already invested in ensuring that their supply chains are not causing deforestation. A large majority of EU consumers want to avoid buying products that result from deforestation and find it difficult to find information on whether products are deforestation-free.

Forests need protection, not least because the economic impacts of deforestation are many. Tropical deforestation has an immediate effect on mortality and labour productivity by causing local warming that raises heat stress and reduces safe outdoor working hours. During 2001–2020, tropical deforestation exposed 345 million people to local warming and was associated with more than one-third of all heat-related deaths.

Forests are also a vital carbon sink to mitigate climate change. More than a third of tree cover losses worldwide – and two-thirds in tropical zones - from 2001-2024 are likely to result in permanent land use change, meaning the forest will not grow back naturally and recapture the carbon released by its destruction.

Agriculture accounts for 95% of permanent forest loss, yet ironically most crops depend on forests either directly or indirectly. Trees cool the climate through shade, moisture release and carbon storage; they provide habitats for pollinators such as insects and birds. Deforestation will multiply the effects of climate change on agriculture by reducing the resilience of soil to desertification and water erosion, disrupting hydrological cycles that cause rainfall, and many other negative effects. 

That is why companies that depend on crops that depend on forests are so keen to stop deforestation. Some of the most vocal are businesses that import coffee and cocoa beans – from shade-trees that become very climate-vulnerable when grown on deforested land – and their largest market is Europe. If deforestation-linked goods continue flowing into Europe unchecked, consumers may find that chocolate and coffee prices rise dramatically in future years as cocoa and coffee yields decline because of climate change exacerbated by forest destruction. That should give politicians in charge of the EUDR pause for thought.