European regulation: what does the ban on deforestation-linked imports imply?

According to the UN's 2022 report, the share of forests on the world's land surface fell to 31.2% in 2020, from 31.5% in 2010 and 31.9% in 2000. Facing the urgency, the European Parliament adopted a new measure on 6 December 2022 banning the sale of deforestation-linked products on the European market. What does it actually imply? Explanations.

A new regulation for the EU

The night of 6 December 2022 marked an important shift in European regulation on deforestation. From now on, companies must prove their products did not contribute to deforestation if they want to keep selling them in the EU. The injunction is all the stronger because the adaptation window is short: the import ban applies to all products from land deforested after 31 December 2020. The regulation concerns companies selling soy, beef, wood, palm oil, rubber, cocoa and coffee, as well as certain derived products.

The revision of the measure, planned for late 2024, could extend protection to more ecosystems such as peatlands and wetlands, include European institutions, and cover other products.

A necessary but imperfect step forward

While it lays the first foundations of more responsible imports, the measure lacks exhaustiveness. Not all wooded land is covered by the new regulation, notably the 140,000 hectares of Brazil's Cerrado, heavily exploited by European agro-industry to grow and export soy. As Klervi Le Guenic of the association Canopee put it, about 60% of Europe's deforestation-risk imports concern soy, which grows not in forests but in wooded savannas like the Cerrado, making the text far from fully effective in her view.

A transparency injunction for companies placing goods on the EU market

To comply, companies will need to be able to go back up their supply chain and provide proof that no forest was cleared since 1 January 2021 on their production plot, on pain of being legally unable to sell on the European market. They will need solutions that prove the traceability of their products and of the raw materials composing them, down to the plots, through various types of documents (photos, videos, certificates and more).

Crystalchain: reliable traceability for your products

A traceability specialist, Crystalchain has developed a range of effective, reliable solutions that certify the origin of product ingredients or components, using blockchain technology.

The Crystalchain platform continuously gathers information from every link of the value chain, with the blockchain's multi-party authentication guaranteeing reliability. The platform then links all product information together into traceability chains: each product, or even each lot, gets a verified and verifiable journey, making it possible to justify product origin and prove other characteristics.

With Crystalchain, companies can adapt to the new regulation: they can prove the origin of their products, identify risk steps, and demonstrate their imports are deforestation-free. The solution can go even further, for instance showing that the soy used in imported products does not come from clearing other wooded land such as Brazil's Cerrado. A genuinely transparent approach, ready for future regulatory revisions.