The EU Deforestation Regulation and its limits for socio-biodiversity governance in global soy chains between Brazil and the Netherlands

In 2022, the EU approved a new legislation to prevent firms from placing commodities linked with deforestation and forest degradation to the EU market or exporting them from the EU. With the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), operators and large traders are now compelled to promote effective and continuous due diligence to prove that their products are not linked to deforestation in sourcing regions, mainly in the global South. This law will likely impact local communities (farmers, peasants, etc.) and reshape sustainability efforts linked to global commodity trade, such as soy trade between Brazil-Netherlands. The EUDR brings light into novel processes of public-private governance that, although emerging in EU countries (demand-side), will likely have consequences in far distant regions such as Brazil’s Amazon and Cerrado (supply-side). According to Trase, the Netherlands is the second destination for Brazilian soy after China. Considering telecoupled relations, soy trade is linked to the nitrogen-biodiversity crisis in the Netherlands, and to illegal deforestation and biodiversity loss in Brazil. Yet, so far, no study has analyzed how the EUDR might impact local livelihoods, biodiversity conservation and curb illegal deforestation linked to soy trade between Brazil-Netherlands. This paper identifies challenges for the EUDR protect socio-biodiversity systems impacted by soy trade between Brazil and the Netherlands. How the EUDR interacts with existing private governance arrangements, public legislations, and civil society instruments to prevent deforestation, protect local communities’ livelihoods, and preserve biodiversity-rich Amazon and Cerrado? Beyond that, how this new legislation might impact processes of environmental justice linked to the Brazil-Netherlands soy value chains? Our research includes a detailed stakeholder mapping of government actors, private firms, local communities, global-local NGOs, and other actor networks. Equipped with this, we identify multilevel conflicts, policy processes, environmental justice dynamics, and socio-economic operations across Brazil-NL (internationally, nationally, and locally) with impacts on socio-biodiversity conservation. We apply telecoupling theory to interpret our case study, since it brings light to socioeconomic and environmental interactions between distant coupled human and natural systems. Telecoupling theory allows us to analyze trade-offs between local and global sustainability issues associated with soy production and trade, thus, a multi-level governance analysis of environmental problems and policy solutions. It helps us interpret the mechanisms involved in socio-environmental problems that occur regionally and locally (in the sourcing region), but that arise because of global linkages. The methodology involved a literature review and interviews with soy chain stakeholders, producers, traders, food processors and retailers. In addition, we reviewed multistakeholder documents, firms’ sustainability reports, and data on deforestation and trade from Trase.earth and Comtrade. We also used “Mapa dos conflitos”, a civil-society website which documents conflicts among peasants, farmers, and large agribusiness groups living/operating in Brazil’s Legal Amazon.