Thread by @astroehlein

The EU’s landmark anti-deforestation draft law will be working its way through the EU Parliament & member states in the coming months, but the proposal contains a crucial flaw: it doesn’t compel businesses to uphold international standards in regard to land rights.

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The EU's draft regulation on deforestation-free products proposes to restrict imports of key agricultural commodities – cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, soy, and wood – grown on land that was deforested after 2020.

Sounds good, but...

The EU draft does not place restrictions on commodities linked to rights violations as defined by international standards.

Globally, industrial agriculture is the chief driver of forest loss, and environmental destruction is often entangled with rights abuses against forest-dependent communities.

Many of the most influential companies driving deforestation have yet to adopt policies to root it out from their supply chains, and those that have, have not enforced them.

"The world knows that the lack of protection for our rights has been a disaster for the Amazon and exposed Indigenous leaders to violence from cattle ranchers, loggers, and other invaders." - @puyrtemb

Numerous studies show that Indigenous Peoples and local communities are nature’s best protectors.

Indigenous Peoples manage half of the world’s great forests, which store more carbon and have lower rates of deforestation and degradation compared to other areas.

Yet around the world, Indigenous Peoples and local communities with customary tenure rights are dispossessed or denied rights to their land and attacked, threatened, and killed for defending their territories, often from business activities.

“The EU has finally accepted that only binding legislation can transform supply chains to root out deforestation, but it’s undercutting the effectiveness of its proposed law by failing to acknowledge the best protectors of forests.” - @lucianatellez

📢 To protect the forests, you have to protect the people who live in and around them.

This morning, 191 Indigenous, environmental & human rights organizations from 62 countries published an open letter to EU policymakers, calling for the law to require companies to respect traditional communities’ rights over their territories.

hrw.org/news/2022/01/2…