Will these ambitions be possible? The answer is that it is almost impossible for two reasons.

First, the EU’s global trade partners reject the proposals. The carbon border tax for example, has been criticized by the United States, which is the EU’s biggest trading partner.

Second, within its member states, especially France and Germany, finding 30 percent of land to protect will not be possible as the powerful agricultural sectors in these countries are not likely to give up their farms for the sake of biodiversity. As it stands, 41.1 percent of the total area in the EU is occupied by agriculture with a further 32.6 percent occupied by forestry.

The French report in early March that revealed that 187 species of flora and fauna had completely disappeared from mainland and overseas France in the last 13 years was particularly disturbing to say the least. Excessive use of pesticides has been touted as one of the main suspects. Many other countries in Europe have no better record.

In reclaiming the narratives of sustainability, Indonesia has consistently called for measuring land degradation, as well as water and air pollution due to application of pesticides and fertilizer in the vegetable oils sector. It is not a secret that rapeseed and sunflower are notoriously dependent on pesticides and fertilizer compared with palm oil.

Equally outrageous is how Australian canola still qualifies under the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED) ll definitions when Australia ranks among the worst countries in the world for deforestation. Similarly, Canadian rapeseed, or canola as its genetically modified version is widely known, qualifies as a feedstock for renewable energy despite the recent report confirming that the Great Lakes are becoming a dead zone as they are “surrounded by 28 million acres of soybean, corn and hay fields.”

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