“Palm oil lobbyists water down Europe’s anti-deforestation law”
The European Union made waves when it passed the landmark EUDR “zero deforestation” law in 2023. Unfortunately, multinationals are already trying to undo it.
The new law is an attempt to keep deforestation-linked products out of Europe, but palm oil lobbyists are fighting back, saying its monitoring and tracing requirements could financially harm small farmers.
In part due to these concerns, the EU is giving all importers until 2026 to get up to speed on compliance. But now, lobbyists are pushing the EU to grant smallholders exemptions from the EUDR—a potential death knell for some of Indonesia’s last standing rainforests.
The term “smallholder” is very ambiguous in Indonesia. Some smallholders run impoverished family farms. Others are local elites who abuse their influence to create mini corporate plantations in protected areas, a growing problem for the orangutan capital of the world.
Those elites are a major source of deforestation in Indonesia, but lobbyists want to have the EU pre-label entire geographic regions as being at “minimal risk” for smallholder deforestation, essentially giving them a pass on EUDR requirements.
…the EU … shouldn’t create major loopholes for small, rogue operators. Instead, it should help smallholders reach full compliance…
Original Source:www.ran.org Via Business & Human Rights Resource Centre
