European food consumption driving tropical deforestation

A new report by FernProtecting Forests, Respecting Rights – synthesises eleven previous reports assessing the impact of EU policies on forests and people and calls for further-reaching EU action on deforestation and forest degradation.

Over the past two decades, the European Union has been the world’s largest driver of tropical deforestation – primarily because of the food we eat but also because of biofuels and biomass we use for heat and power. Many of the foods sold in our supermarkets contain soy, beef, palm oil, sugar, cocoa and other produce illegally produced on previously forested lands in countries such as Brazil and Indonesia.  As such, in 20 years, European market demand has caused the deforestation of an area of the tropics the size of Portugal.

In 2008 the EU pledged, as part of its climate change policy, to halve tropical deforestation by 2020 and eliminate it by 2030. How will the EU’s zero deforestation goal be achieved?

The traditional method is conservation: The EU has been offering communities in developing countries rewards for protecting their forests, most recently through the mechanism known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), which gives forest protectors cash compensation equivalent to the amount of carbon they keep out of the atmosphere.

But even with high carbon prices, forestland will still usually be more valuable when converted to farmland for growing crops like palm oil and soy than when protected for its carbon, and local communities often end up not being sufficiently supported through the EU’s conservation schemes. More holistic and far-reaching strategies are needed, Fern argues.

Many governments in the tropics have been taking steps to curb illegality and deforestation, but this would be an easier task if illegally grown commodities were not freely sold on international markets.

Fern recommends three strategies for Europe to eliminate its role in deforestation: to reduce consumption, including reducing food waste; to address how we produce what we consume through e.g. reforming trade tariffs and public procurement policies, regulating European corporations and investors and banning illegally produced commodities; and to strengthen positive developments on land rights and food sovereignty through its aid policies and trade relations.

You can read the full report here.