Government proposals to combat overseas deforestation can and must be strengthened

Loopholes in the Environment Bill must be closed if the UK is to take responsibility for its world footprint, indicates Kerry McCarthy MP

The climate and nature emergency is a truly global crisis. While we focus on reducing emissions at home – which are calculated according to what we produce , not what we consume – it can be easy to forget the contribution we build to environmental demolition overseas.

One of the most devastating aspects of our overseas footprint is UK investment and swap linked to deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. This week, after germinating pressure from environmental groups, the government ultimately announced a consultation on deforestation in UK supply series. I welcome this as a first step, but looking at the details of the proposals I fear this may be too little too late.

This year the Amazon is suffering the worst start to the fire season in a decade, peril a vital carbon sink and the dwelling to around one in 10 species.

Twenty per cent of the Amazon has already been lost to deforestation, with the land used for intensive crop-growing and livestock farming. Losing another five per cent would push the ecosystem past a dire tipping stage from which there is no return. Without a functioning Amazon, which is home to so many genus and acts as the lungs of the Earth, we will lose the global fight against the climate and quality crisis. The stakes could not be higher.

Although images of burning rainforests may feel remote, the uncomfortable reality is that habitat destruction like this is driven partly by UK consumption. A recent WWF and RSPB report was of the view that between 2016 and 2018, a zone of 21.3 million hectares of land was required to supply UK demand for merely seven commodities; including beef, chocolate, soy and paper. That is equivalent to 88 per cent of cases of the UK’s total land area.

This destruction is hidden in plain sight. It is in shampoo containing palm-oil, in the soy we use for livestock feed, and in meat bought from Tesco. These everyday parts can all be traced back to deforestation around the globe and yet they are still pervade UK supply chains.

The most effective tool we have to prevent our contribution to habitat destruction is legislation. Nonetheless, the consultation launched by the government on its proposed due diligence law express a severe lack of an desire on the issue.

The proposal is for an obligation on UK firms to reduce deforestation based on legality in the producer country. In other messages, unsustainable wood merchandises is in relation to destroying habitat termination continued to be imported to and sold in the UK so long as their yield was not technically illegal. At a experience when legal protections against deforestation are being slashed in Brazil, it’s clear this is as simple as not go far enough to address the problem. Worse more, this obligation only applies to the largest houses, wanting small-scale and medium-sized jobs will still be able to import goods is in relation to illegal deforestation.

Rather than start a tedious consultation on an urgent question, the government should embrace the immediate possibility presented by the Environment Bill when it returns in the coming weeks. The Bill represents an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen environmental protections and allow the government to live up to its much-advertised commitment to leaving the environment in a better country than in which we procured it. But the Bill, as drafted, currently precipitates short of this ambition for numerous reasonableness , not least due to the unacceptable silence on our environmental impact overseas.

I have tabled an amendment to the Environment Bill which both improves the Bill and addresses the loopholes in the government’s projects. My amendment would place an obligation on firms to act on deforestation in their equip orders – regardless of legality and the size of the business. I urge the government to now recognise the flaws in its own proposals and support my revision when the Bill returns to Parliament.

While it is always encouraging to see the vital issue of due diligence on its agenda, we cannot address the scale of the threat against our natural world unless we go further in ensuring that no merchandises is in relation to environmental devastation can recruit UK supply chains, even where neighbourhood environmental protection is inadequate. My amendment, for purposes of comparison, offers a most comprehensive and timely means to address the pressing issue of deforestation.

Our international credibility in the fight against environmental destruction is dependent on our ability to ‘lead by example’. With simply 16 months remaining until we host COP2 6, we must step up and get our own house in order. This entails taking our international contributed by climate change seriously.

Nature is not a luxury or an optional extra, it is a necessity. The government has finally shown it understands the need to act on our overseas footprint, but it must now present proposals that live up to the scale and need of the challenge.

Kerry McCarthy is the Labour MP for Bristol East and Shadow Minister for Green Transport

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