Un'indagine sul ruolo svolto dal quadro politico dell'UE per contrastare la deforestazione e il degrado delle foreste incorporati nelle catene di approvvigionamento di prodotti e materie prime

Within historical global anthropogenic land-use change, the expansion of agricultural systems at the expense of forests represents the most relevant land-use transition. Current deforestation activities linked to food, material and energy production are acknowledged as key drivers of exceeding planetary boundaries. Since 2000, on average, about 5 million hectares of forests has been lost annually while recent estimates report that, from 2021 to 2022, further 7.85 million hectares of tropical primary forests were cleared. A common aspect to both direct and indirect drivers of tropical deforestation is their growing association with industrial activities and corporations producing agricultural and forestry commodities for global export towards international markets. Throughout the present century, up to 75% of the annual global deforestation has been associated with a bunch of forest risk commodities produced within a shortlist of producing tropical and subtropical countries. During this period, the European Union has been among the main contributors in terms of “embodied deforestation” in forest risk commodities supply chains. Among these, the European Union's consumption of palm oil — the forest risk commodity with the highest footprint in terms of CO2 emissions — has sharply increased over time. As a consequence, the European Union vegetable oil sector (made of four main products: palm, soy, rapeseed, and sunflower), linked to the consumption of food, bioenergy, oleochemicals, and animal feed, have been acting as a crucial driver of global environmental impacts associated with land-use change. In the context of the European Union policy framework aimed at addressing global deforestation, a new Regulation entered into force in June 2023 to minimise the European Union contribution to embodied deforestation and forest degradation. Building on an in-depth assessment of background information, theoretical frameworks, and quantitative methods associated with the concept of embodied deforestation, the PhD project and this thesis were structured into two main research blocks. The first research block has assessed embodied environmental impacts in the palm oil imports of four leading European economies (Germany, France, Italy, and Spain) from major global palm oil-producing regions between 2000 and 2020. The second research block, extending the focus to the potential impact of the Regulation on the European Union consumption of major oil crops, investigated consumption trade-offs among different oils and associated environmental impacts (i.e., land footprint, biodiversity loss, carbon stocks reduction, and water depletion). Overall, our results: i) demonstrated that, since 2000, the environmental pressure from the European Union on palm oil producing countries has sharply increased, ii) found that primary producing countries with higher efficiency in terms of land footprint per litre of oil (e.g., palm oil) consumed in the European Union are generally those where oil crop production occurs in terrestrial areas performing better in terms of ecological conservation, iii) identified four vegetable oil consumption baskets for the European Union based on four environmental conservation targets, and iv) emphasized the need to broaden the analysis on multi-dimensional environmental factors to enhance sustainability in the EU market for vegetable oils. Despite some limitations, this work, by achieving all research objectives, represents a relevant baseline for future research aimed at informing public policies on the socioeconomic and environmental tradeoffs associated with forest and ecosystem risk commodities global value chai