Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence Regulations for Deforestation‐Free Value Chains? Exploring the Implementation of the EU Regulation on Deforestation‐Free Products in the Cocoa and Coffee Sectors of Peru

Abstract

The EU Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR), which aims to minimize the contribution of the EU to global deforestation, is facing challenges in its implementation. One such challenge lies in applying the required due diligence provisions in producer countries such as Peru, where the impacts of the EUDR may be significant. Peru has a prominent tropical forest area and exports most of its cocoa and coffee to the EU, crops which are grown mainly by smallholder farming families and Indigenous communities. This study explores the ongoing implementation of the EUDR in Peru, through a case study in the country's cocoa and coffee sectors. Our results show that the process of implementing the EUDR involves complex challenges related to legality and due diligence, geolocation of plots, implementation costs, and country-risk benchmarking. Implementing the EUDR may also result in systemic changes in production practices and potentially prompt identifying possibilities to complement the EUDR through multistakeholder approaches and by providing opportunities to smallholders through agroforestry systems and carbon certifications. More generally, our study contributes to the timely debate on the EUDR and other due diligence regulations, by showing that the EUDR implementation process needs to ensure its enforcement at the local level in producer countries to enable its objectives and to strengthen international forest governance.