(EUR) EU PARLIAMENT BOLSTERS ANTI DEFORESTATION LAW

Members of European parliament vote during a debate on deforestation at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, 13 September 2022. [EPA-EFE/CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON]

The European Parliament voted last week in favour of a regulation requiring companies to ensure products sold in the EU do not come from deforested or degraded land, a move hailed as a “ray of hope” by green campaigners.

The Parliament’s text broadens the list of products and commodities covered in the European Commission’s original proposal, presented in November last year.

The initial list, which included cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soya and wood was extended to cover pigmeat, sheep and goats, poultry, maize and rubber, as well as charcoal and printed paper products.

The new law would make it obligatory for companies selling those goods in the EU to verify that they were not produced on deforested or degraded land while respecting human rights provisions and indigenous peoples.

“If we are serious about fighting global biodiversity loss as well and climate change, it is very important to be very strict and ambitious on this file as well because 80% of global biodiversity can be found in our forests worldwide,” said Christophe Hansen, a centre-right MEP from Luxembourg who steered the legislation through the European Parliament.

“I would go as far as to say that if we do not tackle deforestation, all other efforts we are making on EU ground to curb climate change are nothing but a drop in the ocean and will definitely not lead to the change we need to tackle global warming,” Hansen added.

‘Ray of hope’

Lawmakers in the Parliament’s Environment Committee had already strengthened the proposed regulation in July, enlarging the scope of the law to include more products, increasing the number of checks on companies and including other natural ecosystems to the list of protected areas – such as grasslands, peatlands and wetlands .

Financial institutions will also be subject to additional requirements to ensure that their activities do not contribute to deforestation.

On Tuesday, a substantial majority of MEPs backed the proposal, with 453 votes in favour, 57 votes against and 123 abstentions.

Many welcomed the regulation for raising Europe’s level of ambition in fighting global deforestation. According to the report, the European Union is responsible for over 10% of global deforestation.

“This is pioneering legislation and the European Union is setting an example,” stated Agnès Evren, leader of the French delegation of the centre-right EPP group.

“I hope that we will be followed elsewhere in the world in order to put a real stop to deforestation and, at the same time, strengthen our fight against climate change and for the preservation of our biodiversity.”

The Parliament’s vote was also hailed by green activists, who praised the wider scope of the regulation, the consideration of the rights of indigenous peoples and the inclusion of requirements for financial institutions.

“Today’s vote is a ray of hope for the world’s forests and the indigenous communities who are struggling to protect them,” commented Giulia Bondi EU forests campaigner at Global Witness.

“Preventing European financial institutions from financing the destruction of forests would be a monumental step forward in the fight to protect threatened ecosystems like the Amazon.” euractiv - link - Valentina Romano - link - more like this (rainforest) - link - more like this (EU) - link

(MON) BANKS FUNDING DEFORESTATION

Heavy machinery on the Kayapó Indigenous territory in Brazil. (Photo courtesy of Ibamagov/Flickr)

The deforestation sweeping across the Brazilian Amazon is driven largely by industrial agriculture, mining and cattle ranching. But those activities wouldn’t be possible without heavy machinery like bulldozers and tractors, and the big banks that often finance their purchase.

Questionable business practices, weak government oversight and a lack of transparency make buying heavy machinery in the Amazon extraordinarily easy, according to a new report from investigative journalism outlet Repórter Brasil. In a recent investigation, it found that the heavy machinery market continues to go mostly overlooked in the fight to save the world’s largest rainforest.

“When you see photos of deforestation, those big areas were opened up by machines,” report co-author Naira Hofmeister told Mongabay. “It’s an under-covered issue, and we felt that we should investigate starting from the machines themselves.”

Last year, nearly 30,000 motor graders, road rollers, backhoe loaders, wheel loaders and other types of construction equipment were sold in Brazil by some of the world’s most leading manufacturers, including Caterpillar, Komatsu, John Deere, Hitachi and Sandvik, among others. In the agricultural sector, there was a 40% increase in sales from the previous year.

In general, the use of machines of all sizes and types has been on the rise in the Brazilian Amazon over the past decade, often in protected areas and Indigenous territories, the report said.

“These are machines that are able to dig very quickly and cover a large area,” Hofmeister said. “And in some cases, they’ve been bought without all the controls and regulations that we need.”

Repórter Brasil’s investigation found that heavy machinery is present at most steps of the process of nearly every activity driving deforestation. For agriculture, bulldozers are needed to clear the land. Tractors help plant seeds, drones spray pesticides, and automated harvesters collect the crops.

In mining, bulldozers clear the forest to create access roads, which makes it easier to bring in tractors, hydraulic excavators and wheel loaders for moving large quantities of soil around the mine site. Rafts and dredges are also used for excavation.

Because each of these machines can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, buyers often have to open up lines of credits either with commercial banks or banks run by the manufacturer, such as John Deere Bank. 

Each bank’s due diligence requirements mean that before the credit line can be approved, the buyer has to demonstrate that the machine won’t be used for activities that contribute to illegal deforestation.

However, most banks have little or no way to confirm whether that rule is actually being upheld. “There is no evidence that the banks involved adopt effective measures to curb relatively simple schemes to circumvent environmental rules,” the report says.

For example, the report describes a farmer named Paulo Vieira Gonçalves who took out a $570,000 loan for agricultural machinery with the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) and Spain-based lender Santander in 2017. Since then, authorities have issued several interdictions and fines against his property in response to alleged deforestation that could have been investigated before the loan was granted.

Santander, DLL and John Deere Bank told Repórter Brasil they comply with all Central Bank sustainability regulations.

Many of the machinery manufacturers tied to deforestation say it’s the buyer’s responsibility to use their product legally and responsibly — something often mentioned in the clauses of their purchasing agreements. They also told Repórter Brasil that monitoring machine use for the entire life span of the product is nearly impossible, in part because the buyer has certain rights to privacy.

The report suggests employing technology that shares the location of machinery in real time, which can then be cross-referenced with the coordinates of protected areas. Some companies can already track the location of their machines, but only if the buyer decides to keep the tracking technology activated, they told Repórter Brasil.

“Those technologies do exist, but we need better coordination of political power to use them in a more widespread fashion and then generate the mechanisms for law enforcement to actually track, monitor and investigate,” Adriana Abdenur of Plataforma CIPÓ, a climate, governance and peace-building think tank in Brazil, told Mongabay.

In addition to implementing these technologies, the report says banks should improve due diligence measures for potential borrowers, including reviewing satellite images to check for deforestation, interviewing or visiting residents surrounding the property in question, and checking public lists for a history of fines and interdictions.

People should also be held accountable for providing false information during the due diligence measures that do exist. Right now, the report says, there is little or no penalty for that. Mongabay - link - Maxwell Radwin - link - more like this - link - vehicle tracking - link - more like this (Amazon deforestation) - link - more like this (environment) - link

(SKY) BRAZIL INCREASES DEFORESTATION BY 22%

Brazil's foreign minister has said he is "surprised" that deforestation in the Amazon has increased, following last week's news it had jumped 22%.

The destruction of the rainforest has soared under President Jair Bolsonaro, who has encouraged agriculture and mining and emboldened loggers.

Brazil's foreign minister, Carlos Franca, said in a briefing yesterday that the latest data, which covers August 2020 to July 2021, was not what they'd expected.

"Given the recent - and for us - surprising announcement of an increase in deforestation in the Amazon, I make it a priority to right from the start make clear our total dedication to fulfilling the announced commitments [achieved at COP26]," he said. Sky News - link - Victoria Seabrook - link - more like this - link

JBS TO STOP DEFORESTATION IN 14 YEARS TIME

JBS, a giant company implicated in multiple cases of large-scale forest clearing in Brazil, recently made a commitment to achieve zero deforestation across its global supply chain by 2035. Environmentalists argue this pledge is grossly insufficient.

In a new Soy and Cattle Deforestation Tracker, JBS scores just a single point out of 100. Its nearest competitors, Minerva and Marfrig, have scores of 46/100 and 40/100 respectively.

Tagging and tracking systems to ensure transparency along the entire beef supply have long been proposed, but JBS has resisted disclosing its full list of suppliers.

Under present conditions, Brazil is losing forest cover at the fastest rate in more than a decade, and this deforestation is driven largely by the meatpacking industry - link - more like this - link

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: -

More than 20 percent of the world oxygen is produced in the Amazon Rainforest.

More than half of the world's estimated 10 million species of plants, animals and insects live in the tropical rainforests.

One-fifth of the world's fresh water is in the Amazon Basin - link

FRESH CALLS FOR TESCO TO DITCH JBS

Tesco is facing fresh calls to cut ties with its meat suppliers over their alleged links to Amazon deforestation.

In an open letter, Greenpeace urged the UK’s largest supermarket to distance itself from the Brazilian meat giant JBS over its approach to tackling Amazon deforestation.

The supermarket does not buy directly from JBS, but does purchase meat from two of its UK subsidiary companies, Moy Park and Pilgrim’s Pride.

Greenpeace accused JBS of “actively supporting producers that are deforesting and using fire to clear the Amazon” in the letter to Tesco chief executive Ken Murphy.

The call comes after The Independent reported that JBS and other large meat companies have been accused of using “tobacco company tactics” to downplay their role in driving the climate crisis - link - picture link