Compliance With EU Anti-Deforestation Regs Could Hurt Small Farmers, Panelists Say

African and Brazilian participants at the U.N. Climate Change Conference complained that the EU's due diligence requirement to certify that commodities were not grown on deforested land in the tropics (see 2112030047 and 2307270041) is burdensome to small farmers in their countries.

Raoni Rajao, an environmental studies associate professor who was appointed to Brazil's Deforestation and Burning Control Directorate, said that while in some areas 20% of farming is done through deforestation, overall in Brazil only 2% of farms are on deforested land.

"The main challenge for us is the burden of proof," he said at the conference's Trade House Pavilion panel this week. "The way the policy is being implemented concerns us. There's a lot of stick, not much carrot. If they’re caught, as we know, the fines are very heavy." Rajao said he would like to see the EU offer exporters more technical assistance. He also complained the directive is reinventing the wheel.

Pamela Coke-Hamilton, the U.N.'s International Trade Center executive director, said it will be a "truly Herculean task" to comply with the regulation. She said the ITC is hoping to help exporting countries, such as Sierra Leone, which sends nearly all its cocoa to the EU, develop a national certification that aligns with the regulations.

Hung Tran, from the Climate Excellence Centre, Fairtrade Association in Vietnam, said his association will collect data from producers of cocoa and coffee, and the association will check the data, and then certify the products. It also will conduct audits of producers.

The panel's moderator asked: "Will this even be accepted by the European Union?"

Green-Up Gambia founder Kemo Fatty said these sorts of actions will do nothing to end deforestation when corruption and exploitation of small-scale farmers continue in his country.

Fatty said middle men buy 90% of cashews grown in Gambia, paying prices that cannot sustain families until the next harvest. So farmers cut down trees and insert the wood into charcoal, which government officials pick up at the side of the road, as it's cheaper than buying it in the city, he said. Fatty cried: "These are the truths we should tell each other!"

"You’ll not ask a farmer to not cut down a tree to make charcoal when there is no food in the pot," he said.

Fatty also complained that the officials drive old-polluting trucks exported from Europe, rhetorically telling German representatives: "You say we should not be driving these trucks in your cities and yet you send it down here. We are the people who suffer the most!"

Fatty said it is hypocritical for his government to be represented at COP, because he said his government is cutting timber in Senegal, and he alleged that government employees have collected $500 million on the sales of that timber to China.