EU to push back deforestation regulation by a year

Among the Western countries, the European Union (EU) has been the most vocal and active in pushing for climate change legislation. This seems to have hit a roadblock with countries like Germany and Sweden pushing for the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) to be deferred by a year.

The EUDR was supposed to have come into effect from December 2024. The European Commission, the executive of the EU, has said on October 2 that it is planning to propose a year’s delay in the implementation of the regulation. The regulation entails that there should be restrictions on access to the EU single market if exporters are benefiting from deforestation. An Oxford University study showed that 19 per cent of carbon emissions came from forest fires between 1959 and 2019. The economic stakes for the exporters to EU are indeed very high.

The United States exports 42 per cent of soy to EU, followed by 34 per cent from Brazil. Ivory Coast exports 69 per cent of its cocoa to EU and Ghana 19 per cent. Brazil exports 38 per cent of its cattle meat and Argentina 26 per cent. The EUDR was seen as a progressive legislation for a green future. But the European Commission on Wednesday decided that the regulation has to be deferred. The green Members of European Parliament (MEP) say that the delay should not mean watering down of the regulation. Big economies like the United States and China are strongly opposed to the EUDR and it became an issue of loud protest at the UN General Assembly meeting last month.

Interestingly, the EU could face a shortage of timber furniture as a consequence of EUDR. Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia and Malaysia who are major exporters of timber furniture are looking to move away from the European markets to Asia. According to Esther Cecilia, representative of an Indonesian furniture and wooden handicrafts maker, “We previously exported our furniture to (countries in) Europe such as Germany but not anymore because of more regulation. Now we focus on (the) Asian markets such as Hong Kong and Singapore because, for example, Singapore has less strict regulations than those in Europe.”

Similarly, Indonesia is also looking to an emerging market economy like India. Says Abdul Sobur, chair of HIMKI, Indonesia’s highest representative body in furniture trade, India is a niche market with its exponential growth over the next decade.

European policymakers may have to consider aspects of green regulation which they may not have taken into account so far. The EUDR would affect 50 per cent of their furniture imports in EU, and Europeans will have to think of how to meet their furniture needs. And so it will be with their other imports, especially food items like soy, palm oil and beef. This may require radical shifts in lifestyle, including food habits.

The fact is climate change is not just about decarbonisation in the abstract. It requires changes in the little details of life that people have gotten used to. While curbing carbon emissions should indeed remain at the top of the climate change agenda, there is need to think of the many other changes in lifestyle that need to go hand in hand with green legislation.

The discussions need to take place at many levels, especially in communities in cities and villages across the world. Life cannot go on as before if the world has to cope with climate change and avert catastrophe. There is need to rethink the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the homes we live in and the furniture we use in our homes.