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Depoliticization of deforestation-free label to avoid trade war
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All in a day's work: A worker loads palm oil fruits on a boat for transportation along the Kampar River on Aug. 13, 2022, to the processing plants in Kampar, Riau. (AFP/Wahyudi)
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alm oil producing countries, notably Indonesia and Malaysia, which together account for almost 90 percent of the global output, should step up their cooperation to block the European Union legislation against deforestation, scheduled to be adopted by the Council and the European Parliament within the next few months.
The visit here by a delegation of the EU Parliament on Feb. 21-23 could be the last opportunity for both countries and the Council of Palm Oil Producing Countries (CPOPC) to lobby with strong arguments at least for a comprehensive amendment of the controversial deforestation legislation.
Upon evaluating the EU deforestation law and its Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directives, we cannot help but conclude that the legislation is the politicization of the global concern with climate change into a discriminative trade policy against palm oil, the most competitive and versatile vegetable oil in the world.
Ecological researchers have concluded that even though palm oil has supplied over 45 percent of the world’s vegetable oil demands and its market share is increasing, this commodity occupies only about 6 percent of the land used for the global production of vegetable oils. Production of these other oils is much less land-efficient, needing between six and 10 times more land to yield the same amount of oil.
Despite the EU claim that the deforestation regulation will be imposed on most farm commodities such as palm oil, soy, coffee, cocoa, cattle, timber and rubber and their derivatives, we sense a hidden agenda against palm oil, which has increasingly expanded its share of the global vegetable oil market now to over 45 percent.
The EU Commission will run a unilaterally-set benchmarking system that will assess countries against their risk of deforestation and forest degradation. The range, high, standard or low-risk, will determine the magnitude of due diligence on the countries of origin of commodities imported to the EU market.
Certainly, after more than two decades of aggressive negative campaigns by green non-governmental organizations with support from EU vegetable oil producers, Indonesia and Malaysia, will automatically be perceived to be high-risk countries thereby subject to tight, complex due diligence with its time-consuming and costly bureaucratic process.
