As U.K. eyes new environmental rules, some firms want to pump the brakes
by Ashoka Mukpo on 9 June 2021
A long-anticipated U.K. environmental bill is currently in the House of Lords and is expected to pass before the global climate summit takes place in Scotland later this year.
Environmental advocates have criticized the bill for failing to include human rights protections and allowing forms of deforestation deemed legal under local laws.
In a consultation held by a U.K. government agency, some representatives of the meat and oilseed industries pushed back against the threat of fines for importing products or commodities linked to illegal deforestation.
Sam Lawson, founder of the campaigning group Earthsight, which obtained the FoI responses, said: “Big agribusinesses operating in the tropics claim to be serious about tackling deforestation, but their associations’ lukewarm response to this law is telling. They want the government to trust them to do the right thing. But they have repeatedly shown they cannot be trusted. This law needs to be given teeth.”
He contrasted the responses questioning the requirements with some companies that have embraced the bill. Unilever, Nestlé and the British Retail Consortium responded to the consultation by urging ministers to strengthen the law to ban all deforestation-linked imports.