The regulations also require companies to trace products back to source in order to demonstrate due diligence. Similar regulations are being developed in the EU and under consideration in the USA. While the environmental objectives of these laws are clearly to protect forest ecosystems, its social implications could be complex, and negative consequences for smallholders may necessitate mitigation.
Coffee is unlikely to be regulated in the first wave of commodities but it represented 4 per cent of the EU’s ‘embodied’ deforestation footprint between 1990 and 2008 and is a critical driver in a number of countries with vulnerable forest ecosystems of great biodiversity value.
