News of the week
New EU regulation could curb deforestation
Trade is what drives deforestation. The rainforests of Indonesia and Borneo are being felled for lumber and to make way for plantations to produce palm oil. The Amazon rainforest burns to make way for cattle ranches. If there were no demand for beef, soy, coffee, and other such commodities that can be raised in former forested lands, deforestation would not be advancing throughout the world. Because the world wants certain commodities, the loss of forest worldwide was 4.7 million hectares each year since 2010.
On Wednesday, the EU put forth draft legislation that would require all companies selling timber, beef, leather, soy, palm oil, coffee, and cacao to the EU market to conduct due diligence and provide proof that the commodities are legal and had not caused forest degradation or deforestation.
Within the proposed legislation is a rating system for different exporting countries based on deforestation rates as monitored by satellites, the countries’ legal frameworks, their commitments to ending or reducing deforestation of their lands, and existing treaties and trade agreements.
Third-party certification would not be allowed. The extreme unreliability of using such schemes was pointed out this week in The New Yorker, as Ian Parker recounts the ease with which an individual was able to pass off inorganic produce as organic and swindle trusting buyers out of millions of dollars.
Importantly, the proposed legislation would allow for sanctions against companies that are found to be selling illegal products or those that cause deforestation. The draft law also includes provisions to address human rights abuses.
Brexit
It’s not possible to draw conclusions of what was fully involved with the motivations behind Brexit, yet when I read headlines about the UK and Brazil recently boosting economic relations, with no mention of either country working to reduce beef consumption or the deforestation that it causes, I’m guessing that the United Kingdom is uninterested in helping Brazil, or the rest of the planet for that matter, to keep its rainforests intact.
The U.S.
Beef
The U.S. imports a lot of beef. This year, so far, we’ve imported 2.48 billion pounds of beef. That’s a lot, but it is down 6.2 percent from last year. I’ll leave it up to you to do the arithmetic and figure out how many quarter pounders that comes to.
Most of that beef comes from Canada, but we’re importing more and more from Brazil, over 240 million pounds this year (up from 148 million pounds last year, a 62 percent increase). Converting forest to cattle ranches is one of the biggest reasons the Amazon rainforest is disappearing.
And while deforestation is not a problem in many of the countries that export beef to the U.S., such as Australia and France, we import beef from Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica, all of which have deforestation problems.
Palm oil
You can cook with palm oil; it’s also used in some processed foods, cosmetics, detergents, even biofuel. In the U.S. more than half of all packaged products contain palm oil: lipstick, soap, detergents, etc. When you eat ice cream, you’re probably eating palm oil. It is the crack cocaine of vegetable oils, giving a greater yield at lower production costs of other oils.
Lots of places in the world are cutting down forests and replacing them with palm orchards for palm oil. In September, the top three countries where the United States purchased its palm oil were Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. As with beef, we’re buying more and more of it. We bought almost twice as much palm oil in September as we did in August, and this year’s September figure was three times as much as what it was in September of 2020.
The proposed deforestation law for the EU is a good move, but the U.S. and the rest of the world need to follow in line if real progress is to be made to save the forests of the world. I have read about deforestation of the Amazon for over 20 years. This year, deforestation in the Amazon increased to a level not seen in 15 years.
For more news on the environment follow me on Twitter @EcoScripsit.
