Deforestation regulation no ban on a country or commodity, EU says

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The Jakarta Post

6 February 2023

By: Muh. Ibnu Aqil

The European Union has said that its upcoming regulation on deforestation and forest degradation was not seeking a ban on a particular country or commodity but a call for a sustainable chain supply that was free from deforestation.

Henriette Faergemann, first counselor on environment, climate action and ICT of the EU delegation to Indonesia, said that the EU deforestation regulation had been proposed amid the accumulated global defores-tation provoked by expansion of agricultural land linked to many commodities including those regulated in the EU deforestation regulation.

Commodities affected by the EU deforestation regulation include palm oil, timber, rubber, coffee, cocoa, soy, cattle as well as their derived products.

"We the EU are major consumers of these commodities that are associated and linked with deforestation. Our consumers in the EU are very clear they don't want to contribute to deforestation in third countries any longer," Faergemann said in a media briefing in Jakarta on Tuesday.

She said that while the EU internally had already reached a political agreement on the deforestation regulation in December, the bloc was currently working on the details of the regulations, which were expected to enter into force in May or June and enter into application for operators and traders 18 months after that.

"What is important for us to point out is that this law is not a ban on any country or commodity from entering the EU market," Faergemann said, adding that the EU would welcome products that were legally produced in their country of origin and did not cause deforestation based on definitions backed by the Food and Agriculture Organization.

She said that under the regulation, importers in the EU would have to produce a due diligence statement that looked into their products to find information proving that they were legally produced in the producer country and did not contribute to deforestation after the cut-off date of Dec. 31, 2020, with strict traceability requirements.

"We need to know exactly on which plot of land any commodity was produced. If this was not the case, it would be impossible to demonstrate that it was not contributing to deforestation," Faergemann said

She said that with the regulation, the EU expected that it would be able to guarantee its citizens that products they had bought no longer contributed to destroying forests while also allowing countries like Indonesia together with the EU to create a sustainable supply chain.

"We have until the end of 2024 [before the full implementation of the regulation]. We can use the time between now and then to really make sure that Indonesian producers are well prepared," Faergemann said.

Meanwhile, environmentalists say that Indonesia, as a country whose commodities are likely affected by the EU regulation, should not overreact and instead should use the situation to improve the governance of its export commodities.

"We see this as a chance to improve our own governance. This could also ensure the sustainability of Indonesian products," Forest Watch Indonesia campaigner Agung Ady Setiawan told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

However, he also criticized the cutoff date in the EU deforestation regulation for being considerably late, as commodities produced after Dec. 31, 2020, could still contribute to deforestation. Palm oil harvested in 2021 could be from plantations on land deforested in 2016, he said as an example.

Diah Suradiredja, Indonesian Biodiversity Foundation (KEHA- TI) conservation trust fund senior policy adviser, said that rather than overreacting to the EU deforestation regulation, Indonesia should focus on improving its export commodities and making sure that the terminology on deforestation used by the EU followed the internationally recognized definitions set by the FAO.

"We should not be too worried about the EU's internal regulations and instead should focus on our own improvements such as law enforcement, governance improvements and increasing our productivity," Diah told the Post.