The EU can help Australia face its deforestation issues
12 dezembro 2023
Free trade talks between Australia and the EU show why deforestation can no longer be swept under the carpet in trade negotiations.
Free trade talks between Australia and the EU have stopped after Australia walked away from negotiations in Osaka, October 2023. It will now be at least two years before long-winded negotiations resume. The EU’s market access conditions are instrumental in showing Australia that its domestic deforestation problem is no longer flying under the global radar.
The two parties could not come to an agreement on agricultural access to the EU market for Australian products; Australia claimed that the agreement did not offer meaningful EU access to its producers. The EU has long been an appealing potential market for Australia’s agriculture industry, and particularly its red meat sector.
Different stances on deforestation
The two parties also differed in their positions on how to embed sustainability within trade policy.
The EU’s green agenda is front and centre in its trade relations: through its flagship Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), the EU has signalled that it will no longer accept products grown on deforested land.
This contrasts sharply with Australia’s stance. Australia is the only ‘developed’ economy among the world’s deforestation hotspots – ranking alongside the Amazon, the Congo and Borneo. As of 2012, 50 per cent of the continent’s forest and bushland had been destroyed, in just 200 years of colonisation. Since 2021, deforestation has continued and, in some places, escalated.
In the 17 years (2000-2017) after the introduction of Australia’s current, weak national biodiversity protection laws (the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999), Australia deforested an area larger than Ireland; 93 per cent of this deforestation was never referred for Government approval, despite occurring on the habitats of threatened species.
Indeed, most logging activities are currently exempted from Australia’s nature laws which Australia’s Federal Government plans to reform in 2024, but it remains unclear whether this will result in improved biodiversity, forest and bushland protection.
Australia’s deforestation crisis
Deforestation for agriculture, forestry and mining continues to have severe impacts on biodiversity, climate and First Nations cultural heritage. In July, new government figures were published showing that almost 350,000 hectares of land was bulldozed in the northern Australian state of Queensland in 2020-2021 alone, the majority for beef production destined for export. In August, national outcry emerged after the local government logging agency cut down a giant tree, estimated to be up to 400 years old, in the southern Australian island state Lutruwita/Tasmania’s forests.
Beef production, in particular, is a major driver of Australia’s deforestation. More than one million hectares of land was deforested for beef between 2016-2021 in Queensland alone. Australia is a major exporter of deforestation: around 70 per cent of the beef Australia produces is exported. Australia is also the world’s largest exporter, by volume, of wood chips, and the world’s largest bauxite producer, of which 80 per cent is exported.
The European Commission’s EU-Australia Trade Sustainability impact assessment confirmed that increasing beef imports from Australia could result in greater levels of deforestation and worsen Australia’s biodiversity crisis. For the EU to allow imports of products likely linked to deforestation in Australia would be at odds with its stated ambition to help protect biodiversity and forests worldwide.
EUDR and free trade deals must not gloss over deforestation
Australia’s poor deforestation record is largely unknown internationally, in sharp contrast with the attention other major hotspots such as Indonesia or Brazil have received. This is partly due to a global focus on tropical deforestation: international definitions and datasets on deforestation often fail to capture Australia’s less-dense forests, grasslands and bushlands. It is therefore necessary to revise the EUDR to protect not only forests, but also other wooded land and other ecosystems from deforestation.
The EUDR and the EU-Australia free trade deal are bringing such issues into focus. Australia’s deforestation crisis must become a key priority in the EU-Australia relationship. For this, it is essential that EU policymakers:
- Ensure that the EUDR is reviewed to apply to other wooded land and other ecosystems such as grasslands and savannahs, as well as to finance;
- Consider the extension of the EUDR to other commodities such as cotton and bauxite;
- Monitor Australia as a high-risk country of origin for deforestation;
- Clarify definitions of ‘forests’ and ‘deforestation’ to close loopholes.
Categorias: News, Forest Watch, Partner Voices