The UK’s two-year-old “world-leading” environmental legislation has not affected deforestation rates due to a lack of follow-up action by the government, according to analysis conducted by NGOs and published on Tuesday.

UK imports have been responsible for deforesting a 20,400-hectare area, which is twice the size of Paris, since the Environment Act was passed, according to the report by campaign organisation Global Witness, backed with data from supply chain mapping service Trase.

“For two years, the government has been dithering about which deforestation-causing commodities to include in these regulations. In this time, tropical forests have continued to be destroyed to grow crops and graze cattle,” said Veronica Oakeshott, head of the forest campaign at Global Witness in a statement.

The Environment Act 2021 aims to stop large UK companies from using commodities with a heavy negative impact on deforestation such as beef, soy, and palm oil.

However, the implementation of the rules on deforestation has so far stalled due to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs not yet publishing an official list of the targeted commodities.

Deforestation exposure of UK direct imports between November 2021 and July 2023, for seven high-risk commodities (Source: Global Witness/Trase)

Data from the study shows that oil palm is the most pressing concern, representing 43% of the UK’s total exposure, with Indonesia as the main supplier country for the commodity. Soy and cattle products account for 31% of total exposure, most of which originates from Brazil.

Some countries are only exposed through one market such as Colombia for coffee and Ivory Coast for cocoa, the data shows.

In October, business leaders called for the UK government to match the EU’s deforestation regulation, which came into force in July and is due to apply 18 months later. The EU law requires importers to prove their products have not caused deforestation and initially applies to palm oil, cattle, soy, coffee, cocoa, timber and rubber, alongside derived products such as beef, furniture, and chocolate.

The signatory companies to the UK letter include Nestle, Unilever and major supermarkets who highlighted a direct impact on trade through Northern Ireland, where goods could be affected, but also that a lack of secondary legislation could limit exports to the EU from the UK.

“The government must listen to UK retailers and fully align with the EU’s deforestation regulation, which covers all forest-risk commodities. It is outrageous that Defra is failing to press the green light on simple regulations needed to stop the UK importation of forest destruction,” Oakeshott said.

Much of the UK’s deforestation-causing agricultural and forestry commodities are imported through EU member states, according to the Trase data, where it is often refined or processed. Without alignment between the UK and EU deforestation regulation, commodities may be split between parallel yet distinct regulatory approaches that undermine the overall Europe-wide efforts to halt deforestation.

“We passed the Environment Act with much fanfare… it was a genuinely landmark law to cut illegal deforestation caused by commodity production from our supply chains,” said Zac Goldsmith, a UK environment minister over 2022-23 in a statement. H

“But there has been virtually no progress since the law passed and not a single tropical tree has yet been saved. The government needs to stop with the delays and u-turns and get on with it.”

Other flagship aspects of the Environment Act have also seen delays, such as legal requirements for land developers to achieve a 10% net increase in biodiversity for their sites being pushed back into 2024.

Reducing deforestation in the tropics remains one of the most pervasive challenges that affects biodiversity globally.

Earlier this month, The Forest Declaration Assessment unveiled that global deforestation commitments, made at the UK-hosted 2021 COP26 UN climate talks in Glasgow, are significantly off track to halt deforestation by 2030.

By Tom Woolnough – tom@carbon-pulse.com

** Click here to sign up to our twice-weekly biodiversity newsletter **