Curbing the European Union's Global Deforestation Footprint through Trade

Notwithstanding their vital role in sustaining human life and well-being on Earth, there is mounting evidence that the world’s forests are under serious threat, mainly due to illegal logging and agricultural expansion. The European Union (EU), as a major importer of forest-risk commodities, bears significant responsibility for this trend of global deforestation and forest degradation. However, the EU has recently taken a first step towards addressing its consumption-driven contribution to global forest destruction by adopting the Forest Due Diligence Regulation in May 2023. This contribution provides an assessment of the new regulation, which attempts to achieve environmental conservation objectives through trade tools, as a novel case study of the EU’s management of the environment-trade nexus. More specifically, it enquires into the extent to which the EU has been effective in promoting environmental protection through trade under the Forest Due Diligence Regulation, considering both its institutional effectiveness and its (potential) impact effectiveness. The key finding of this analysis is that while the regulation seeks to strike a balance between environmental and trade objectives, it does not quite yet strike an appropriate balance between them.