More science-informed policy-making is needed to reduce the environmental impacts of agricultural and forest products
Thanks to international trade, people and businesses in Europe have access to a wide range of agricultural and forestry products sourced from every corner of the globe. However, many of these products are not intended for direct human consumption. Instead, they serve as biofuels for vehicles, food for animals, or natural materials for everyday items like furniture and textiles. Two-thirds of the land used to produce these non-food products lies outside EU borders. Their production is often tied to the destruction of rainforests and other critical ecosystems in Southeast Asia, South America, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Forest loss causes not only the emissions of gases that contribute to climate change and global warming. The affected regions also lose biodiversity, such as valuable plant and animal species, due to habitat changes and pollution, resulting from the excessive and harmful use of agrochemicals. Research has shown that these environmental impacts have economic and social consequences for people in the affected regions and beyond. In short, deforestation can not just increase the likelihood of extreme weather events. The changing landscape can also worsen the living conditions of vulnerable communities and local agricultural productivity in the most affected areas of the world.
Many of these environmental and related socio-economic impacts could be reduced if the existing agricultural land in these regions were used more sustainably. To make this happen, we must overcome three obstacles.
First, gaps in our knowledge about biodiversity and the multiple causes that lead to its loss often prevent governments from developing and implementing effective policies that promote sustainable land use.
Second, many countries lack the infrastructure and financial means to maintain functioning authorities that effectively implement and enforce environmental regulations.
And third, some of these countries must address widespread poverty and food insecurity, including in rural areas. These issues often rank higher than environmental concerns on national policy agendas compared to many EU countries.
To overcome these obstacles, we need the support of science and research to inform policy-making at different levels in the EU and beyond. Research on biodiversity in combination with insights from economics is particularly important. Recent advances in biodiversity research have improved our understanding of where and why trade threatens biodiversity. This enables decision-makers to design policies that achieve higher conservation impacts at lower costs. Evidence from economics shows that both exporting and importing countries benefit from trade in agricultural and forest commodities. Just because the environmental damage linked to trade occurs mostly in exporting countries, we cannot expect these countries to address them alone. Instead, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goal 16 – Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions and Goal 17 – Partnerships for the Goals, imply principles of equitable and non-discriminatory benefit and burden sharing. This calls for societies and policymakers in industrialized economies to become more aware of their shared responsibility in making international trade beneficial for both people and the environment. Policymakers in importing regions, like the EU, can apply a range of measures to do so. One solution is international cooperation through knowledge and technology transfer, supporting environmental monitoring and effective law enforcement. Economic research also increasingly supports incentive-based mechanisms. This includes, for example, international payments for ecosystem services and related finance mechanisms, such as import taxes that vary depending on how the goods are produced, whether they are made in ways that protect forests, avoid harmful chemicals, or reduce the destruction of rich biodiversity in tropical forests.
Author: Jan Börner[1]
Reviewers (alphabetical): Scilla Alecci[2], Laila Berning[3], Mathias Cramm[4], Alok Jha[5], Madeleine Ngeunga[6], Vinicius Sassine[7], and Rina Tsubaki[8]
References:
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2023.106481
- https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab07f5/meta
- https://dx.doi.org/10.22617/BRF240585-2
- https://www.cif.org/sites/cif_enc/files/knowledge-documents/designing_fiscal_instruments.pdf
[1] University of Bonn
[2] International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)
[3] University of Freiburg
[4] European Forest Institute
[5] The Economist
[6] Pulitzer Center
[7] Folha de S.Paulo
[8] European Forest Institute