We have some truly excellent news to share about the ongoing campaign to protect the Amazon rainforest. The moratorium on deforestation for new soya plantations and the use of forced labour - which was the result of our McDonald's campaign two years ago - has been extended for another year. The original announcement by the major soya traders in Brazil only ran until this July, but now they've signed up to a further 12 months.
It hasn't been plain sailing, though. The Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries (Abiove), which represents soya traders, was under huge pressure from producers to change the moratorium so that soya could be grown in areas not currently allowed under the existing agreement. This would, in the eyes of producers, make it more flexible, allowing them to take advantage of the increasing price of soya, but for us the moratorium would have been significantly weakened and this was not something our campaigners in Brazil would have been willing to accept.
But Abiove has confirmed that it and the soya traders it represents will back the moratorium for another year. That in itself may still not be enough time to put all the monitoring processes in place to prevent future deforestation to grow soya, but it does show the industry is still committed to the process we started two years ago and allows more time to get sufficient monitoring and policing procedures in place to protect the Amazon on a full-time basis. And with recent figures indicating that destruction in the Amazon is still on the increase, this development is particularly timely.
It's also received support from Brazil's new environment minister, Carlos Minc, who is committed to speeding up the process of registration of rural properties in the Amazon which, with land ownership such a grey area, is so important to the success of the moratorium. And companies like McDonald's, Marks & Spencer, Asda and Carrefour have also reiterated their active involvement in the process by releasing a joint statement to that effect.
Minc also went a step further in the press conference and added that the success of this initiative made him keen to replicate similar initiatives for the timber and beef industries. This would be a very significant development . A ‘firewall' of moratoria on soya, beef and timber could be key to achieving the protection needed to save the Amazon rainforest and buy the time necessary to put in place permanent protection. We will holding Minc to his words and stand ready to help in anyway possible to make this happen.
So all in all, a very good day, securing another year in which the Amazon is protected from the expansion of the soya industry, but the moratorium needs to remain in place for as long as it takes to make sure the forest is permanently protected from this particular threat.
