Realtime Deforestation Monitoring Report (RDM 14) – July 2023

RDM 14 highlights eight cases in the Cerrado and Amazon biomes, which are mainly linked with soy supply chains. These cases compound a total of 20,565 hectares of deforestation, 173 fire alerts, and around 2.8 million tons of CO₂ emissions. At least four of the cases included constitute potentially non-compliant cases with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which entered into force in late June 2023.

The report gathers cases of visually confirmed deforestation events occurring between July 2022 and June 2023 for which deforestation alerts were detected in June 2023. The eight cases reported are located in the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso, Bahia, and Piauí, and they have been connected, with different levels of certainty, to large soy traders, namely Amaggi, Bunge, Cargill, and ALZ, and to large meatpackers, such as JBS.

The EUDR prohibits commodities and products that have been produced in plots of land subjected to deforestation or forest degradation after 31 December 2020 from being placed in the EU market. Operators and traders that fail to comply with this requirement may face penalties once the core provisions of the law become applicable.

The CO₂ emissions reported refer to above-ground carbon emissions and they vary according to the type of vegetation cleared, the ratio of molecular weight of carbon dioxide to carbon, and the amount of vegetation hectares cleared (check the “methods & sources” section of the report for more detailed information).

RDM reports are developed to support a wide range of actors – commodity producers and traders, financial sector stakeholders, and civil society – in taking evidence-based action towards real-time deforestation events. AidEnvironment publishes RDM reports on a monthly with support from EU LIFE Program and the European Climate Foundation.