EU regulation on deforestation-free products
The EU zero deforestation legislation is crucial. However, if Europe ‘cleans’ its imports, deforestation-risk commodities could be diverted to other parts of the world.
IDH and Proforest have come up with two big steps that could be taken. The first is to classify those jurisdictions that have time-bound, speedy and credible plans to get zero-deforestation as ‘transitional risk’ and for European governments and consumer goods companies to offer support to achieve their goals.
Secondly, we suggest that the information collection requirements should be varied depending on the level of risk of the country or jurisdiction: lighten the information collection burden for low-risk jurisdictions, and require more granular data for high-risk hotspots.