Having announced at COP30 in Brazil its recommitment to legislate on deforestation in commodity supply chains following calls from IEEP UK and other NGOs, the UK Government has this week set out its long-awaited approach to implementing these regulations in Great Britain (GB), confirming that it will bring forward secondary legislation to give effect to the Forest Risk Commodities (FRC) regime established under the Environment Act 2021.
The Government confirmed that businesses with an annual turnover above £1 million (subject to public consultation) will be required to undertake due diligence obligations on the sourcing of forest risk commodities, including cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber, soy and wood, to help ensure products placed on the GB market have been produced in compliance with relevant local laws and are free from illegal deforestation. The policy signals closer alignment with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).
As highlighted in a previous IEEP UK insight piece, while GB’s proposed Forest Risk Commodities regime shares the EUDR’s objective of tackling global deforestation through supply chain due diligence, there are important differences between the two frameworks. The GB FRC regime is based on preventing the use of commodities produced in breach of relevant local laws, meaning that it targets illegal – but not legal – deforestation. By contrast, the EUDR prohibits the placing of specified commodities and derived products on the EU market unless they are completely deforestation-free, meaning they have not been produced on land subject to any deforestation – legal or illegal – after 31 December 2020, and are produced in accordance with applicable local legislation.
The UK Government’s announcement is significant because it publicly states that it intends to align aspects of the GB FRC regime with the EUDR to reduce compliance burdens for businesses trading across both markets, and has committed to including legal deforestation in GB FRC ‘in due course’. How long this will take and how this will be achieved are the key questions going forward, and it appears that opportunities for mutual recognition between the two standards may prove difficult in the short term unless the UK moves quickly to expand GB FRC’s scope.
The announcement was also significant for Northern Ireland. The Government confirmed that under the Windsor Framework, businesses operating in Northern Ireland will be subject to the EUDR, meaning they must comply with the EU’s deforestation-free due diligence requirements rather than the GB FRC regime. The UK Government has confirmed that NI will follow the EU’s timetable for implementation, meaning that the EUDR will apply from 30 December 2026 for medium and large operators and traders, with micro and small enterprises required to comply from 30 June 2027. The Government has also said it will publish further guidance on the practical application and enforcement of the EUDR in Northern Ireland ahead of these implementation dates.
Ed Worsdell, Research Officer at IEEP UK commented:
“Five years on from the Environment Act, action to finally put FRC regulations in place is welcome news. However, the Government’s announcement leaves several important questions unanswered. If the UK ultimately seeks closer alignment with the EUDR, how will it reconcile the Environment Act 2021’s legality-based framework with the EU’s broader prohibition on products produced on land that has been deforested after 31 December 2020, regardless of whether that deforestation was lawful under local law? More broadly, could any future alignment extend beyond operational requirements, such as commodity scope, traceability and due diligence processes, to encompass the EUDR’s wider legal framework, including its human rights-related due diligence obligations, which require operators to verify compliance with certain applicable laws relating to land tenure, labour rights and the rights of indigenous peoples?”
“These are key questions that will likely need to be addressed before any meaningful alignment with the EUDR can be achieved. Doing so may be necessary not only to strengthen the environmental credibility of the UK’s regime, but also to prevent the ‘dumping’ of products excluded from the EU market because they originate from land that has been legally deforested since the end of 2020.”