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to be delayed’, according to a report by the Financial Times and effectively in place’, pointing out that several EU member
(FT). Their latest contention is that the mapping undertaken states had not yet appointed Competent Authorities to police
by the European Observatory to identify deforested and the new rules.
degraded forest land, and which will be one of the pillars of On the issue of mapping, the EC has emphasised that the

EUDR enforcement, cannot be taken as definitive. European Observatory maps were ‘a tool to help companies
“The EU’s map is not a single source of truth but acts to ensure compliance’. They were not mandatory, and other
as one possible source of information for EU operators ‘more granular or detailed’ information could be used as a
and competent authorities to determine if deforestation has guide.
occurred,” a spokesperson for the Australian embassy in An article in The Economist titled ‘How EU do-goodery
Brussels told the FT. risks harming Africa’s small farmer’ focuses on the challenges
The Australians point out that there are differences between posed by EUDR to the African coffee industry.
their 2023 Forests of Australia map and that of the European It quotes representatives of the Ethiopian and Ugandan
Observatory as they use different definitions of forested areas. sectors saying that they were struggling to provide geolocation

Pedro Miguel da Costa e Silva, Brazil’s EU ambassador, coordinates for the millions of plots of land where coffee was
also picked up this theme. He said the Brazilian private grown for the EU market.
sector had identified multiple cases of cocoa, coffee and Adding to the complexity of the situation, the African supply
tree plantations that have been misidentified as forests in chains in coffee and cocoa (another commodity covered by
the European Observatory mapping. Canada and Columbia the EUDR) are highly complex, pooling and mixing beans
have also questioned the validity of the mapping. from multiple sources.
“European operators and competent authorities should Enveritas, a sustainability assurance specialist, is putting

co-operate with producer governments to use local monitoring forward an alternative approach, using satellite imagery to
systems that have much higher precision rates,” Da Costa identify fields here trees have been cut down, without requiring
e Silva told the FT. He added that Brazil has a free-to-use geo-locating every farm. The Economist report Ethiopia and
‘state of the art’ monitoring system. Uganda backing this model. The question is whether the
He said the EU was imposing European standards and EU will accept it.
norms on other countries without collaboration and that The FT reported that the then Environment Commissioner
producers would have to spend millions of euros on private Virginijus Sinkevičius said there were no plans to delay
sector compliance systems. implementation of the EUDR. He has since resigned to take
Columbia’s Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and

Environmental Studies said its deforestation mapping was
similar to the EUs, but the latter’s definition “would also borgenmagazine.com
include areas not considered as deforestation in Colombia,
for example conversion of areas of secondary vegetation”.
The Australian embassy in Brussels also highlighted
that clarification is needed from the EU on what constitutes
‘predominantly agricultural land use’ under the EUDR.

It said it had requested a delay in introduction of the
Regulation ‘until all required arrangements are understood