Eight reasons proposed UK law won’t stop consumption driving global deforestation

25.09.2020 The UK government recently issued a consultation on proposed legislation to make it illegal to use or trade commodities linked to illegal deforestation, or goods incorporating them, and requiring UK companies to conduct due diligence to ensure they do not. If progressed, the law will apply to products such as beef, soy, leather, palm oil and other forest risk commodities. It is the first concrete statement of intent from any government worldwide to seek to de-link deforestation from supply chains through binding regulation, and on that basis is to be applauded.However, it is clear the proposed new law falls well short of actually de-linking UK supply chains from deforestation in general and, depending on the detail of what is subsequently legislated, may still allow goods linked to even illegal deforestation to persist in the UK market. Products driving legal deforestation will still be allowed in UK supply chains The proposal would seek to exclude only commodities produced through illegal deforestation. While consumption of such products is a big problem and especially egregious, many national laws on forests are completely unsustainable and around 60 per cent of relevant commodities in international trade derive from legal deforestation. The proposed law will therefore leave the majority of the problem untouched, with millions of hectares of forests worldwide, including in deforestation hotspots such as Brazil, Indonesia and elsewhere, remaining up for grabs in the fulfilment of UK consumer desire. Recent experience proves that voluntary initiatives by the private sector won’t fill this gap. To prevent runaway climate change, the world needs to urgently halt all deforestation, whether legal or not.Producer countries may be incentivised to weaken forest protection In only focusing on illegal deforestation, the proposal creates clear incentives for producer countries to weaken forest conservation laws to maintain UK market access. The actions of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency is the clearest sign of this, as Brazilian authorities have stripped away critical environmental safeguards and laws in order to promote agribusiness activities at the expense of climate conservation. Similar moves by governments to roll back environmental laws have been seen recently in Bolivia, a major soy and beef producing nation, and Indonesia, the world’s second biggest palm oil producer.