Article: Legislative Pioneer on Global Forest Protection? A Commentary on the European Union’s Proposed Deforestation-Free Product Regulation

The aim of this article is to consider recent developments in the European Union’s legal policy on combating global forestation. Specifically, it focuses on the significance of the European Commission’s recent legislative proposal of November 2021 to minimize the EU’s contribution to deforestation and forest degradation (DFD) worldwide by banning the placement on the internal market or export from the Union of certain commodities that have been produced on land that has been subject to deforestation or from wood harvested from forests inducing forest degradation (referred to in this article as the draft deforestation-free product regulation (DFPR)). Whilst for a number of years the EU’s approach towards addressing global forest depletion has been focused on combating the trade in illegally harvested timber products and more lately on biofuel sourcing for renewable energy policy purposes, the recent launch of the DFPR proposal reflects a growing awareness by the EU that its contribution to the environmental problem of DFD is more profound and far-reaching than previously recognized. EU consumption of a range of commodities constitutes an important DFD driver, through which large areas of natural forest have been depleted at an unsustainable rate for the purposes of agricultural conversion and production, with severe consequent environmental and social costs. The article explores the content and implications of this new legislative initiative, for the Union and more broadly for the international community. Given the continued absence of a global environmental agreement addressing DFD, the stakes for the Union are high economically, politically and to some extent legally for it deciding unilaterally to introduce regulatory controls on a range of commodities to address its complicity in consumption involving embedded deforestation. One thing is clear, though, namely that the EU is not afraid to act as a legislative pioneer on the international scene, in which the Union’s environmental values may be seen as trumping short-term economic considerations of international competitiveness.
European Union, deforestation, forest degradation, draft deforestation-free product regulation