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The grandfather of the Brazilian Indian Hiparidi Top’tiro used to tell him a thousand stories about a fearsome jaguar that roamed his village, but this majestic feline is approaching the realm of legend. “If this continues, my grandchildren will have to see it in a little book or go to the zoo,” laments this environmentalist from the villages of the indigenous country of Sangradouro, a piece of land under siege by the vast soybean plantations of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso . Hiparidi is an indigenous Xavante, one of dozens of ethnic groups inhabiting El Cerrado, the vast (and unknown) Brazilian savannah whose future is at stake these days in the gray offices of Brussels thousands of miles away. The European Union (EU) is in the process of passing legislation to try to halt deforestation caused by the products it imports, which could leave behind biomes that do not fall under the strict classification of an unprotected forest. For El Cerrado, that would be a death sentence.
When you think of deforestation in Brazil, you almost immediately think of the Amazon, but most of the deforestation in this country indirectly caused by Europe takes place in El Cerrado. Most of the soybeans that will later feed millions of European pigs, cows or chickens are grown here. The context of the increased international demand for grain means that the pressure of deforestation may increase even further. The loss of the native cerrado increased from 6,319 square kilometers in 2019 to 8,531 in 2021, more than 14 times that of the city of Madrid. China and the EU, as the main destinations for Brazilian commodity exports, are the main culprits for this destruction.
At first glance, the Cerrado is not as “sexy” as its big sister Amazon; here there are no lush, bright green forests or rivers like seas, but scattered trees and shrubs, but the eye is deceiving: this savanna hosts 5% of the world’s biodiversity, 12,000 plant species, many of them endemic. In addition, eight of Brazil’s 12 most important rivers have their source here, so preserving their sources is key to the water supply of the entire country.
“Being local to El Cerrado is difficult. The Amazon is becoming more and more famous, and of course it is important because it is the lungs of the world, but peoples are threatened here who are losing their languages and their culture,” laments Hiparidi, who works as an activist in the Rede Cerrado. Conflicts over land use, the main vector of rural violence, are particularly bloody in El Cerrado, where the agricultural sector wields enormous power and large estates are sometimes larger than some European countries.
The growing awareness of consumers around the world about the deforestation caused by buying by which things and by which countries in the supermarket prompted the European Commission to draw up a law that would place restrictions on the six products most commonly associated with tainted by illegal deforestation: timber, cattle, soybeans, palm oil, coffee and cocoa. Producers of these goods must prove that there were no forests on their farms before 2020. Otherwise they cannot export to Europe.
The legislation was conceived in the heat of the deforestation frenzy of the Jair-Bolsonaro years, but it will apply globally, including within the EU’s borders, which has prompted some internal reluctance, particularly in countries like France and Spain. The first proposal from the European Commission adopted the definition of forest from the FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The huge savannahs of El Cerrado were left out, where forest areas are not the majority.
Last September, the European Parliament corrected the Commission’s draft and included in the text the other forest areas (other tree areas) that would protect El Cerrado and other South American biomes beyond the jungle. It was passed by a large majority, but for environmentalists it was only a temporary victory. Now the ‘trialogue’ phase begins, in which the Commission, the Council (representing the countries) and the European Parliament debate in order to arrive at a consensus text. Since El Cerrado runs the risk of being excluded again.
EU Ambassador to Brazil Ignacio Ybáñez explains that the Commission defends only forests getting in, because opening the shield too far could be counterproductive given the risk of exporting countries like Brazil accusing the EU of protectionism. “The Commission’s proposal is already ambitious enough, a limit had to be set, we had to start with something. This legislation will certainly be challenged by many countries in the WTO, so the more legal basis you have the better, and the FAO definition will be internationally accepted,” he stresses.
What happens is that El Cerrado is a mosaic where the forests are scattered and mixed with savanna areas and natural fields. It is almost always difficult to clarify where one begins and the other ends. Because of this, ecologists fear that if the law only speaks of forests and does not specifically protect other tree areas (a concept also based on the FAO’s statements), many Brazilian land producers will fight in courts to try to prove it Farms are outside of the law object, in a savannah zone and not in a forest zone. In practice, this could make implementation of the law impossible, precisely in those areas where it is most needed.
In the arduous struggle to protect El Cerrado under EU protection, alongside the expected counter-lobby from the soybean giants, there is a problem of ignorance that even has a cultural root, as explained by WWF policy manager for deforestation-free supply chains, Jean-François Timmers: “We Europeans associate nature with trees, but most of the impacts that Europe causes are not due to the Amazon, but to the Cerrado,” he notes. Paradoxically, it can also play against the relief that President-elect Lula da Silva’s zero-tolerance speech on deforestation has evoked in Europe. Application of the law could be watered down because Brazil would be given another vote of confidence. How Brazil does its homework will “influence” the application of future laws, the EU spokesman said. “For example, if Lula approves a soybean moratorium in El Cerrado, there would be no need for European legislation,” he says.
A very likely option is that Europe approves the protection of forest areas for the time being, giving two years to review the text and include other ecosystems. In that case, ecologists estimate that most of El Cerrado would not be “protected” until 2027 at the earliest, and by then it may be too late. “If they say they’re protecting the jungle for the moment and then ‘we’ll see’ with the rest, there’s speculation that this will increase the destruction of El Cerrado,” Timmers regrets. According to WWF calculations, at the current rate and without a cooperation paper signed in Brussels, the threatened Brazilian savanna could lose eight million hectares in five years, an area the size of the Czech Republic.