EUDR divides Brazil’s environmental and agribusiness authorities

BRASÍLIA — The European Union’s new antideforestation law banning the import of products linked to recently deforested land has triggered opposing reactions from Brazil’s environmental and agribusiness authorities. The country’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock has criticized the law, known as the EUDR, and was among the groups that successfully pressured the EU to postpone its implementation by a year. Conversely, Brazil’s federal environmental agency, IBAMA, has welcomed the EUDR as an important instrument against deforestation and an opportunity to shift the country’s agribusiness industry toward greater traceability, transparency and sustainability. Once it comes into effect in December 2025, the EUDR will require suppliers to prove that their products entering the EU market aren’t sourced from areas that were deforested after December 2020. The regulation was adopted in response to increasing claims of products imported into the EU being linked to illegal deforestation, including in the Amazon Rainforest. It targets products containing one of seven commodities historically produced on deforested land: soy, cattle, rubber, palm oil, coffee, cocoa and timber. For IBAMA president Rodrigo Agostinho, although the EUDR should have been focused on the main drivers of deforestation in Brazil — soy and cattle — it still represents an opportunity for all the targeted sectors to transform their production model in the Amazon and other biomes. “They’re starting to invest a lot in traceability and environmental regularization, [and] compliance, things they didn’t use to do,” Agostinho told Mongabay at IBAMA’s headquarters in Brasília. Brazil’s federal environmental agency, IBAMA, has welcomed…This article was originally published on Mongabay