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- André Shalders – @andreshalders
- BBC News Brazil in Brasilia
Credit, AFP
The proposal to be evaluated in 2021 establishes that companies that sell to Europe will have to demonstrate that their products were made without contributing to the destruction of biomes such as the Amazon and the Cerrado.
In early 2021, the European Union will begin discussing a rule that could increase pressure against deforestation in Brazil.
Companies that sell to Europe must demonstrate that their products were made without contributing to the destruction of biomes such as the Amazon and the Cerrado.
The proposal is particularly aimed at soybeans and beef, two of the main products sold by Brazil to Europeans. The same requirement would also apply to European companies that come to invest money in Brazil, such as banks and investment funds.
Only in beef, Brazil sold US $ 560 million to European countries in 2019. In the same year, the sale of soybeans to the bloc countries brought to Brazil US $ 6.05 billion, equivalent to R $ 32.5 billion .
The proposal was approved by the European Parliament at the end of October, in the form of a resolution presented by German MEP Delara Burkhardt of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Now, he says, the European Commission will present the draft of a new regulation on the subject, already in the first half of 2021.
Unlike the National Congress of Brazil, the European Parliament does not have a legislative initiative, that is, it cannot initiate the processing of laws. That is why the bill will be formulated by the European Commission, as explained by Delara.
“Then there will be negotiations between the European Parliament and the member states (of the European Union). Finally, the European Council will have to approve the legal instrument that we formulated,” he said in an interview with BBC News Brazil. The conversation took place in early November.
“In fact, this was the first draft resolution approved by the European Parliament of the Environment Committee (equivalent to the Environment Committee in the Brazilian Chamber and Senate). So, it is a historic moment,” says Delara , who is licensed. in political science and he’s only 28 years old.
“The current president of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, said that she will support any initiative of the European Parliament that has a legislative majority. That is why she is basically obliged, in her words, to support legislative proposals like this,” Delara told BBC News Brazil.
“The specific proposal that I presented in the resolution is that agricultural products from Brazil can only enter European markets if it is shown that they have not contributed to the deforestation and destruction of ecosystems such as the Pantanal or the Cerrado, in addition to the Amazon”, she says.
“Furthermore, these products from Brazil and other countries cannot have contributed to the violation of human rights, property rights or the rights of indigenous populations,” he adds.
Credit, Press release / Bernd Marzi
Europe must ensure that its consumption does not result in deforestation, says Delara Burkhardt
“My proposal obliges companies that bring these products to European markets to carry out a prior diligence (from the English” due diligence “: an investigation on a certain product or company), and to be transparent about their entire production chain”, says Delara .
“They need to clarify, for example, if the production of that commodity (raw agricultural or mineral product) has resulted in the transformation of preserved areas into cultivated lands, or if it has led to the degradation or deforestation of any area,” he says.
“The question, basically, is: ‘how can we, as the European Union, stop deforestation caused by our consumption (of agricultural products) and what measures are we going to take'”, says the MEP.
According to the parliamentarian, the consumption of European residents is responsible for around 10% of global deforestation. And up to 20% of the beef and soy that Brazil exports to the countries of the bloc would be associated with deforestation, according to her.
Globally, Delara says, 80% of the destruction of tropical forests caused by agriculture is caused by three products: beef, palm oil and soy. These three are the main target of the resolution, along with coffee, cocoa, natural rubber and leather.
“Some companies have acted voluntarily to try to stop deforestation, but obviously this effort has not been successful so far. Until now, there are no rules that guarantee that if we eat chocolate or drink coffee in Europe, that we are not contributing to deforestation.” He says.
The environment as a source of tension
Delara’s proposal begins to be debated at a time when the environment is the main point of tension between Brazil and the countries of the European bloc.
In mid-November, President Jair Bolsonaro (without a party) strained the relationship with the countries of the bloc by saying that he would present a list of countries that buy irregular wood from Brazil, as a result of deforestation, then he ended up backing down and did not present it. relationship. However, in a concert with supporters, Bolsonaro specifically mentioned France.
The Brazilian president also took advantage of two recent speeches, at the summits of the G20 (group of the twenty largest economies in the world) and the BRICS to make evenings critical of developed countries that criticize Brazilian environmental policy. At the G20 meeting, for example, Bolsonaro said that Brazil suffers “unjustified attacks”, which would be perpetrated by “less competitive and less sustainable nations.”
The deterioration of relations with Europe also occurs at a time when the countries of the bloc are discussing the ratification of the trade agreement closed in the middle of last year with Mercosur, after 20 years of negotiations. To enter into force, the agreement must now be ratified by the national parliaments of the 27 member countries of the European bloc, and by the four Mercosur countries.
Delara Burkhardt guarantees, however, that her draft resolution will not directly affect the chances of ratification of the trade agreement. “But I think that if we have a Mercosur-EU agreement, then a law on supply chains, like this one, will be even more relevant, since we will have even more exchanges of goods between the Mercosur countries and the European Union,” he says.
‘Images of the Amazon burning ignited the warning in Europe’
Credit, Reuters
Brazil is sovereign in the Amazon, but it must manage the forest for the benefit of all, says the MEP
Although the resolution does not apply only to Brazil, Delara says that the increase in forest fires in 2019 and 2020 in the country was one of the motivations for the new rule. The images of the fire in the Amazon and Pantanal served as a wake-up call for many Europeans, he said.
In 2020, the Brazilian Amazon registered 89,600 fires at the end of October, the number is higher than that registered in all of 2019, which in turn had already broken the record of several previous years.
Other countries, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia, share with Brazil the ‘top 3’ of the places with the highest deforestation. But it is fair to say that Brazil has one of the main problems, since a third of the loss of tropical forests in the world in 2019 happened in Brazil. And no other country in the world has so many tropical forests, “Delara Burkhardt tells BBC News Brazil.
“No one doubts the fact that Brazil has total sovereignty over its portion of the Amazon,” says Delara.
“But we also have to see that the Amazon Rainforest is of fundamental importance to all humanity. So if we are going to be commercial partners, we must ask the Brazilian government to manage the rainforest in a way that benefits everyone, and not just one. handful of people. soy and meat producers, “he says.
The Brazilian government projects a bad image
The MEP also says that the image of the Brazilian government headed by Jair Bolsonaro “is not very good” in Europe, mainly because of the environmental issue.
“We have an Environment Minister (Ricardo Salles) who speaks out against environmental protection. And we have a video of Salles telling his ministry colleagues that the coronavirus crisis should be used to make the protection of the jungle more flexible,” he says . in reference to the ministerial meeting of April 22, 2020, the recording of which was released in full by decision of the Federal Supreme Court (STF).
“It is seen as a government that is actively working against the environmental laws that are in force in Brazil, and that puts pressure on activists who defend higher standards of environmental protection (…). Most of the people here are really concerned about the possibility that Brazil is no longer an important partner in the fight against climate change ”, says the MEP.
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