The Spanish Administration must equip itself with a specialized body with personnel in charge of the control of raw materials and products associated with imported deforestation. This is the demand made by environmental and consumer entities, in order to make effective the community regulation that will veto raw materials suspected of causing deforestation (soy, beef, coffee, wood, cocoa, palm, rubber and wood).
The European regulation on imported deforestation could be definitively approved in May or June (after having obtained the green light from the European institutions in the trialogues); and then, within six months, the national authorities must designate the competent authority in charge of carrying out the controls.
Isabel Fernández, spokesperson for the Zero Deforestation Alliance, considers it especially urgent to create this body of officials, with specialized knowledge to be able to properly control these raw materials at the border. Employees must be attached to the Ministry for Ecological Transition. “This regulation would be of no use, if we do not have a body of officials trained for it; we need personnel and economic resources ”, she declared to this newspaper. Now, the personnel dedicated to the control of imported wood is very scarce.
The need to have these new resources is also urgent because the possible ratification of the trade agreement between the EU and Mercasur makes it foreseeable that the production and import of raw materials that could be suspected of causing deforestation will increase.
The main environmental and consumer NGOs have launched an alliance to ensure the effective application of this regulation and to prevent the EU and Mercosur treaty from jeopardizing and contradicting the new regulation.
The alliance is made up of Friends of the Earth, Ecologists in Action, the Federation of Consumers and Users (CECU), Greenpeace, Mightly Earth, SEO/BirdLife, WWF, the State Fair Trade Coordinator and Carro de Combate, who have presented the Zero Alliance Deforestation.
The biggest concern at this time for the NGOs is to ensure rapid compliance with the regulation, and that it does not take time “as has happened with other regulations,” lamented Miguel Ángel Soto, from Greepenace.
Mercosur countries are Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, with Bolivia in the process of accession.
These entities have expressed their fear that the EU-Mercosur Agreement will lead to an increase in deforestation and conflicts related to human rights violations due to hyperproductivism, the expansion of the agribusiness frontier (transgenic soybeans, for example) and increased use of pesticides.
With the European regulation, the European Union will veto the import of products associated with deforestation: soy, wood, beef, coffee, cocoa, palm, charcoal and wood as well as some derivatives (leather…). However, corn, biodiesel, processed meat and other meats (pork, poultry) will not be on the list of banned materials. However, there will be a review of that list in two years
The norm affects the forest areas of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Indonesia especially. The “strict” definition of forest of the FAO is taken as a basis, for which the protection of “other forested areas” with a lower density of crown cover is not included, which leaves the Pantanal regions (Brazil) unprotected. , Bolivia and Paraguay) and El Cerrado (Brazilian savannah), among other areas (savannahs, peat bogs…) despite the fact that it is estimated that 65% of EU soybean and beef imports come from the Cerrado.
“Other wooded areas do not enter,” laments Isabel Fernández, although the regulation provides for evaluating environmental impacts in order to expand this radius.
The formula designed to carry out the controls consists of the implementation of a self-declaration system (due diligence process) through which the companies that sell or market these raw materials in the EU will be forced to trace their origin and demonstrate that they are not linked to the destruction or degradation of forests.
To do this, before the arrival of the product, they must inform the Administration of relevant information such as the indication of the geolocation of the plot where the raw material has been produced (to be used where appropriate).
Given the suspicions generated by some products coming from deforested territories, the operator will have to identify, prevent and mitigate these risks.
The entire regulation is applied taking December 31, 2020 as a reference. The forecast is that a control of 9% of the operators and of the raw materials and products will be carried out, in the case of countries that are classified as higher risk of deforestation.
The EU-Mercosur treaty “will be more negative than positive,” according to Sergio Rojas, spokesman for the Qom indigenous people of the Argentine Chaco. Rojas linked deforestation to agribusiness, and denounced the eviction of indigenous communities that it is causing.
Rojas warned of the strong deforestation plans of the agribusiness, with projects promoted by China with the provincial authorities, and expressed his fear that the massive felling of forests and the expulsion of indigenous communities will continue.
This alliance asks Spain, in its presidency of the Council of the EU -in the second half of 2023- to support, as it did in the trialogues, the inclusion of “other forested areas” in the application regime of the regulation.
On the other hand, the Alliance will work and hope that the sanctioning regime (which corresponds to the states) is “duly developed” to guarantee that operators throughout the supply chain obey European standards.
Environmental groups believe that the European regulation can be positive and “drag other regions to do similar things”, as assessed by SEO/BirdLife Juan Carlos Atienza, reports Efe.
From the CECU, its spokesperson Ana Echenique has also stressed the need to transform the mentality in the field of consumption, where it will be necessary to tell “with stories that reach people” of the impact on biodiversity and on the people who carry certain products marketed in the EU for consumers to exercise their “economic power” and support this type of legislation.
