Why Mia Mottley is lashing out at EU's bid to protect world's forests

Given her previous criticism, it was no surprise to hear Mia Mottley attack world leaders for rigged financial rules and for stalling on her Bridgetown Initiative when she addressed the Munich Security Conference — but she also took aim at a third, less obvious, threat to global south prosperity. A new European Union law to tackle the world’s deforestation crisis has been hailed by environmentalists, but the Barbadian prime minister believes it will prevent “millions of people in Africa” from selling their products in the crucial EU market. “You can't work good for the planet and do bad for the people. If people can't live, and people can’t have peace and the people can't have prosperity, then you have a barren planet,” Mottley told her largely European audience on Feb. 16. The attack made Mottley perhaps the highest-profile critic of the innocuous-sounding EU’s deforestation regulation, or EUDR — and, on the face of it, a surprising one, given her own record championing the protection of the forests that cover nearly 20% of the Caribbean island she leads. So why has the world-first legislation designed to ensure EU consumers no longer contribute to forest degradation elsewhere on the planet angered governments from South America to Southeast Asia, sparking demands for a rethink? There is no doubting the laudable aim behind the EUDR: To end imports of goods whose production causes forest loss, whether that is cattle, wood, cocoa, soy, palm oil, coffee, rubber, or derived products such as leather, chocolate, tires, or furniture. As the European Commission put it when the regulation came into force in June 2023: “The EU is partly responsible for this problem and it wants to lead the way to solving it.” The environmental law charity ClientEarth heaped praise on “a new gold standard for protecting forests,” saying: “We cannot continue to put trade before environmental protection. EU decision-makers have taken a bold and necessary step forward.” The idea is to demand certificates from companies to prove their goods have not come from land that was deforested after the end of 2020. Importers will be required to collect precise geolocation information to back that up. In practice, that is likely to mean the burden of uploading GPS coordinates mapped against satellite photos of forests and farmland will fall on farmers themselves. No problem for a multinational corporation perhaps, but what about a smallholder? Might it prove too expensive for small farmers to produce the evidence to pass the EU’s test, making it easier for them to abandon exports to the bloc altogether? In which case, will the result be a Europe with clean hands on deforestation — yet the crisis of forest loss has not been solved? A backlash is growing. In September, a group of 17 countries — including Argentina, Brazil, Ghana, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Malaysia — attacked the planned methods as "discriminatory and punitive” and potentially in breach of World Trade Organization rules. No allowance was being made for countries genuinely attempting to combat deforestation — as Indonesia argues it is — or effort made to provide expertise, technical assistance, or financial help, they protested. Just last week, the European Coffee Federation called for delay, to avoid “shattering” consequences for “the millions of smallholder producers for whom the EU is a significant marketplace.” About 80% of coffee farmers have not mapped their plots and would not know how to carry out such an exercise, according to a survey carried out by the International Coffee Organization, a forum for producers and governments. There is still time to rethink the operation and enforcement of the EUDR, while pressing ahead with the law itself, because it will not be implemented until December 2024 — 18 months after it was ratified. Talks continue between Brussels and governments in exporter nations. Behind the delight of environmental groups lies the uncertainty and perhaps nervousness about the economic impact of this breakthrough legislation and whether the collateral damage will be more poverty. Rubens Carvalho, deputy director of the U.K. campaign group Earthsight, said its implementation needed to be watched closely, telling Devex: “Measures need to be put in place to guarantee smallholders in Africa and elsewhere receive the necessary support.” But, Carvalho added: “EUDR is a welcome first step to bring accountability to large global corporations that have for years profited from deforestation and failed to make their supply chains more sustainable and transparent.” In Munich, Mottley told the security conference there was no intended “malice” behind the anti-deforestation drive, saying: “I don't think anyone, when those regulations were settled, intended to harm anyone. “But the reality is that, because of the complex nature of bureaucracy that is involved and the links to smartphones, etc., you're effectively ruling out millions of people in Africa from being able to participate legitimately in the sale of their produce.”