The European Union has stood firm on its new deforestation law, rejecting calls from global agricultural exporters to push back its implementation. Despite opposition from Brazil, China, India and the U.S., the EU announced during a World Trade Organization meeting on Sept. 25 that its deforestation regulation, EUDR, will come into force on Dec. 30.

India, among others, questioned whether the EU would reconsider, given concerns over the strict certification requirements that would force companies to prove forest-related products like beef, soy and palm oil aren’t linked to deforestation.

But the EU rejected rumors of a postponement, underscoring its commitment to legal certainty.

“Any postponement would require a legislative change. This would not achieve our goal to provide legal predictability for operators as soon as possible,” European Union officials wrote. “We are therefore focusing on ensuring that all the elements necessary for the implementation of the Regulation are ready on time.”

The EUDR compels companies to provide geolocation data proving commodities are sourced from land that wasn’t deforested after Dec. 31, 2020. The EU argues the regulation is essential to curbing deforestation tied to its imports and to safeguarding carbon sinks, a crucial element in combating the climate crisis.

Major producer countries have criticized the new law, especially industry heads and top political leaders. In a joint letter, representatives from 17 nations, including the Argentine and Colombian ambassadors to the EU, condemned the EUDR as a “unilateral,” “punitive” and “discriminatory” measure that unfairly targets their economies.

Indonesia accused the EU of “regulatory imperialism.” Ethiopia said its farmers don’t have access to the technology and resources required to geolocate their plantations. China and the U.S. expressed concern over sharing potentially sensitive geolocation data.

WTO director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the policy could punish Nigeria’s 10-year rotational planting system designed to regenerate land for crops, as the cropland would enter the database as forest, rather than recovering cropland. (Okonjo-Iweala is Nigerian, previously serving as the country’s finance minister and foreign minister.)

Still, the regulation has drawn support from environmental NGOs around the world.

“Brazil and the EU want the same thing: the end of deforestation,” Claudio Angelo, the international policy coordinator at Brazil’s Climate Observatory, an independent environmental watchdog, said in a statement. “At a moment when the entire country of Brazil is ablaze due to the climate crisis, discarding this tool under pressure from the backward wing of agribusiness would be like dancing a waltz with the apocalypse.”

Banner image: Preserved area of the Amazon Rainforest near one of the newest frontiers of deforestation in Humaitá, Brazil. Image © Nilmar Lage/Greenpeace.