Eliminating Deforestation
Deforestation has reached alarming levels. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations estimates that 420 million hectares of forest – about 10% of the world’s remaining forests, equalling an area larger than the European Union – have been lost worldwide between 1990 and 2020. And, every year the world continues to lose 10 million hectares of forest.
According to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2019, deforestation causes 11% of all greenhouse gas emissions. The main driver of deforestation is the expansion of agricultural land. As a major economy and consumer of key commodities linked to deforestation, the European Union has taken measures to minimise EU driven deforestation and forest degradation including introducing the EU Deforestation Regulation.
The European Union Deforestation Regulation
The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is a law restricting operators from placing products on, or exported from, the European Union market linked with deforestation or forest degradation. The European Parliament will prohibit importing specific raw materials linked to deforestation by the end of 2024.
The EUDR aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss associated with expanding agricultural land for high-impact commodities. Beyond its objectives within the EU market, the regulation is also expected to drive demand for globally deforestation-free products.
Implementing the EUDR
Under the EUDR, not all locations will have the same due diligence requirements. For farms with an area of less than four hectares, a minimum of a single coordinate is needed. For farms greater than four hectares, polygons describing the perimeter of each plot of land will be necessary. Operators must be able to perform risk assessments and mitigation measures for identified risks. Operators may have simplified due diligence for low-risk countries, but they are still required to collect the exact supply chain details. The key requirement will be for an operator to establish a due diligence process that addresses the following key steps:
Supply Chain Mapping: Collecting and assembling data from producers and traders that enables first-mile verification of the sourcing footprints for applicable commodities.
Risk Assessment: Using the supply chain mapping data with Satellite Imagery and additional data sources to identify the occurrence of deforestation.
Risk Mitigation: Where a risk assessment identifies more than negligible risk of non-compliance, an operator is required to carry out mitigation measures.
The Critical Role of Supply Chain Mapping
NGIS has been working to address deforestation elimination from agricultural supply chains since 2019. We recognise that supply chain mapping is critical to transition from leveraging simple certification-based reporting to more accurate verification-based due diligence processes, and to meet the demands of rapidly evolving regulations like EUDR.
In partnership with Google, NGIS developed TraceMark; a comprehensive sustainable sourcing platform. It offers companies global-scale first-mile monitoring and is entirely powered by Google technology. Designed to address the key challenges for regulatory compliance, TraceMark provides comprehensive insights into raw material sourcing and environmental impacts. It offers open data architecture, high performing geospatial monitoring and analysis, supplier data exchange, managed risk mitigation workflows, automated EUDR processes and transaction-level traceability through supply chains.
This multi-commodity data model and geospatial-driven supply chain mapping helps businesses maintain accurate records of their raw material sourcing, to ensure their EUDR deforestation-free products can enter the European Union market. This solution contributes significantly to enacting positive change on a global scale.