The landmark EU Deforestation Regulation was designed to prevent imports and exports of a comprehensive list of products linked to deforestation and forest degradation. On 14 November 2024, the EU backed a 12-month delay in implementing the law and major new loopholes were proposed, undermining the law’s ability to protect forests. Eliane Brum argues the decision to delay the anti-deforestation law transforms Europeans into accomplices in the violence against the defenders of nature.
The shameful decision of the European Commission to delay the anti-deforestation law by at least a year means the following: on your plate there will be beef grazed on deforested land; the pork and chicken that you eat was fed on soy from deforested land; the coffee that you drink, the palm oil that you use, and the cocoa in your chocolate are the fruits of the destruction of nature, which often involves human blood.
There is more. Furniture and other wooden pieces and structures were trees in the forest or in another biome, living beings that once created rains and now, dead, have been reduced, among other things, to a designer chair for someone to rest their backside. The decision converts all Europeans into accomplices in the deaths of the defenders of nature in countries like Brazil. That is already the case, but now it will be like that for at least another year. And a year, in the midst of climate collapse, is time we do not have.
The decision, which still needs to be approved by the Member States and the European Parliament, but is already given as certain, is one of the most eloquent proofs that at the toughest time in the human trajectory, the world is severely lacking in leaders. The European Commission led by Ursula von der Leyen yielded to the pressures of the large corporations and the governments and parliaments that serve them. They also yielded to the pressures from leaders such as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil, who makes speeches in defence of confronting global warming and conserving the Amazon, but whose governments do not practice what they preach.
If it weren’t for the resistance of Marina Silva, Minister for the Environment and Climate Change, an increasingly solitary voice in Lula’s ministry and under constant attack in the predatory Brazilian Congress, the situation of the Amazon would be much worse. The claim that smallholders will be prejudiced is just another lie. The delay serves the corporations, many of which fly the flags of European countries, the big landowners, and the elite local extractivists.
The idea that it is possible to delay an urgent measure, which should have been taken decades ago to avoid something that never should have happened, the destruction of nature, is proof that we are lost in the hands of these global leaders. It is also an illusion that the negotiation time of the humans will be approved by an obedient nature. It is, basically, both ignorance and monumental arrogance on the part of those that do not have the right to be ignorant and are far too accustomed to being arrogant.
Deforestation is one of the main causes of global warming, which, in turn, causes systemic changes in a chain of events we have yet to fully comprehend, but the effects of which are being increasingly felt in daily life. We are in great danger, and our Leaders act as if delaying the anti-deforestation law by a year were a possible choice – and not a choice that may irreversibly compromise the lives of new generations.
Only we can stop the Leaders that put us at risk of extinction. It is imperative that the population rise up and prevent its representatives from approving the delay to the anti-deforestation law. This is also not a choice. We are fighting for life.
This piece was originally published in the Spanish newspaper El País, on 16/10/2024, and republished by our partner Amazônia Latitude, here.
Main image: Cattle are seen in a pasture area covered by smoke from forest fires along the BR-230 (Trans-Amazonian Highway), near the city of Lábrea, Amazonas. Photo: Edmar Barros / Amazônia Latitude