UK to introduce national version of EU Deforestation Regulation

The UK Government has confirmed it will introduce an equivalent to the EU Deforestation Regulation (EU DR). 

On Tuesday, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced it would strengthen its approach to tackling deforestation in the supply chains of British companies by establishing a mandatory due diligence regime for forest-risk commodities.

“A mandatory due diligence framework for timber has been in place across the UK since 2013,” said secretary of state Emma Reynolds in a statement.

“Building on this existing framework, we now intend to go further to decouple UK consumption from global deforestation.”

The scope of the regime is set to mirror the EUDR in terms of the commodities it covers – cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber, soy, wood – and core products that derive from them, like chocolate and furniture.

“Businesses who use these products would need to ensure they establish a due diligence system, report on their activity, and hold proof of this compliance by collecting geolocation data about the origin of the specific products,” said the government.

The UK regime will be based on compliance with deforestation laws from the country in which the commodity or product is made. 

“In due course we intend to move towards a deforestation-free standard,” the government noted. 

A consultation is slated for later this year, with a view to introducing legislation in 2027. 

Meanwhile, the EU faces fresh pressure over its latest plans for the EUDR. 

On Wednesday, the US ambassador to the EU took to social media to criticise the EUDR for “burden[ing] responsible trading partners with costly compliance requirements that deliver negligible environmental benefit when applied to countries that pose negligible deforestation risks”. 

Andrew Puzder wrote on Twitter that “the fix” was for the EU to “exempt negligible-risk countries from EUDR’s stringent requirements” under the most recent version of the EUDR, and called on co-legislators to reject the European Commission’s current proposal “and demand legislation that actually works”.