- Last week, the European Commission flip-flopped and announced it wants to delay a new law designed to reduce tropical deforestation (EUDR) for a year, instead of allowing it start in January 2025.
- This decision isn’t just destructive for forests, it’s also bad for business — it flies in the face of hard efforts by thousands of companies who did everything to get into compliance on time — and is also bad for democracy, a new op-ed argues.
- “For the millions of EU citizens who supported the law, here is a message of hope. We lost a battle with the Commission’s effort to delay the EUDR, but the war for our climate still hangs in the balance, and the fight is on. European elected representatives can yet stand firm in support of the global forests and millions of people who depend on them, and reject the Commission’s proposal.”
Forests. We can’t live without them. If they burn, we die.
Many forests are at risk today. The Amazon has been so damaged that it may shift from being a carbon sink to a carbon source and morph into a savanna. Scientists overwhelmingly tell us that if humanity wants a future on a habitable planet, we must protect our last forests that remain. Experts agree that to avert climate chaos, we must immediately halt and reverse global deforestation.
For a while it seemed that the EU was stepping up to save global forests, with a bold, beautiful law called the “EU Deforestation Regulation” or EUDR.
Last week, the EU Commission flip-flopped and announced it wants to delay the law for a year, instead of allowing the law to enter into force in January 2025. And it gets worse: delaying automatically means opening up the law to get watered down.
This decision isn’t just destructive for forests, it’s also bad for business: it flies in the face of hard efforts by thousands of companies who did everything to get into compliance on time. Indeed, roughly 15,000 companies had spoken out for the EUDR and its sister law, the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. Investors representing north of $6 trillion in assets under management supported such regulation.
It’s also bad for democracy: civil society clamored for the EUDR, with millions of people signing petitions, attending protests, writing letters, and making calls, or speaking out in social media. Parliamentarians elected by the people voted for the law. Democracy worked!
But precisely because the EUDR would generate deep, vitally needed change, it caused conflict with powerful interests and generated a vitriolic corporate backlash. Some companies in the darkest corners of big ag mounted a campaign to delay or destroy the EUDR. Lobbying by the dregs of the coffee industry, arsonist soy behemoths, dubious timber companies, and others deluged the EU with complaints (we know what they were doing because some of their letters were leaked). These corporations in turn mobilized their errand boys in a few countries like Austria, Germany, Portugal, Brazil, Canada and the USA, to do their bidding and attack the EUDR.
Unless EU lawmakers fight back, the EUDR will be on ice for another year, whilst wildfires rage in Brazil, Greece, Canada, and beyond. It is ironic that Portugal asked for a delay of the EUDR at the same time that the nation declared a ‘state of calamity’ with wildfires raging out of control, killing firefighters and wrecking lives. It’s like throwing away a fire extinguisher in the middle of a conflagration.
To be clear, it appears some rogue interests in big ag and politicians who carry water for them would rather we torch our life-support systems – forests – so that they can continue a business-as-usual model of agriculture rife with deforestation, slavery, and child labor.
If EU lawmakers agree to the leadership’s disgraceful proposed delay, the EU’s own studies indicate that roughly 2,300 km2 of forest will be destroyed. This means 49 megatons of greenhouse gas emissions. Research reveals that every minute we delay the EUDR, a football field of forest is bulldozed. To translate this into a relatable analogy: the resulting emissions are equal to those of 18 million cars – more than all the cars of the Netherlands and Austria combined.
If anyone had doubts that the worst forces in big ag are lobbying on par with big oil, this moment should be a wake-up call. Their lobbying is killing us.
This is also a wake-up call to be hyper vigilant about EU politicians who are lavishly funded or influenced by retrograde elements in the agricultural industry. Some powers in the EU appear to be governing in response to pressure from a tiny proportion of ultra-rich corporations, billionaires, and the concierge class that works for them. The NGO Earthsight uncovered as-of-yet-unpublished information about how European politicians calling for the EUDR delay received party funding from companies with illegal logging and deforestation in their supply chains.
Several MEPs have even accused the EU Commission of making the delay inevitable by slow-walking the release of technical documents and industry guidance. By sitting on guidance documents for months, it is alleged that key players in the EU Commission created a prolonged and unnecessary uncertainty, which undemocratically undermined what co-legislators decided.
As environmental breakdown accelerates, extreme heat events and droughts kill people in their thousands, superstorms and forest fires multiply, there is a clear message to EU lawmakers and to industry lobbyists. If forests burn, we’ll all burn with them. No habitable planet applies to you, too. And your grandchildren.
However, for the millions of EU citizens who supported the law, here is a message of hope. We lost a battle with the Commission’s effort to delay the EUDR, but the war for our climate still hangs in the balance, and the fight is on. European elected representatives can yet stand firm in support of the global forests and millions of people who depend on them, and reject the Commission’s proposal. The Socialists and Democrats Group in the European Parliament rejects the delay, as do The Greens/EFA in the European Parliament, and Renew Europe environmental leaders. Even large companies like Ferrero, Nestlé, Mondelēz, and Mars clearly opposed a delay.
Civil society can rise up to defend the law to ensure it’s not scrapped even if it is delayed, and save our beautiful forests – humanity’s life-support system on earth. The time to stand and be counted is now. As we inch toward a climate dystopia reminiscent of The Hunger Games, it is time to say: “We know who they are and what they do. This is what they do. And we must fight back.”
Are big ag and its craven sycophants sending us a message? Well, we have one for them. You can try to burn our forests and torch our future, but fire is catching!