The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) has been recently adopted to fight deforestation and forest degradation associated with the trade of forest-risk commodities, including cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya, and wood. Operators must exercise due diligence (i.e., information collection, risk assessment, and risk mitigation) to ensure these commodities and their products are deforestation-free and produced in accordance with relevant legislation. In recent decades, Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) have been adopted in the private sector to promote sustainable and deforestation-free supply chains. The EUDR recognizes certification and other third-party verified schemes as supporting tools for risk assessment during the due diligence procedure. However, questions persist regarding the extent to which these schemes can assist operators in assessing compliance with the EUDR. This study addresses these concerns by developing an assessment framework to evaluate the suitability of VSS schemes in covering the due diligence requirements established in the EUDR. The assessment of five major agricultural and forestry VSS schemes against this framework revealed both potentialities and limitations in covering these requirements. Most of the indicators from the framework were at least partially covered. Nevertheless, the assessed schemes fell short in providing a comprehensive prohibition of deforestation and forest degradation. They also presented variable coverage of the relevant legislation outlined in the EUDR, as well as deficiencies in their systems to assure compliance with the standards. Overall, this study indicates that VSS schemes can be incorporated as elements of due diligence systems but are insufficient to demonstrate compliance with the EUDR.

中文翻译：

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应对欧盟关于无毁林产品的新法规的自愿可持续性标准：差距分析


最近通过了欧盟毁林条例（EUDR），以应对与森林风险商品（包括牛、可可、咖啡、油棕、橡胶、大豆和木材）贸易相关的毁林和森林退化。经营者必须进行尽职调查（即信息收集、风险评估和风险缓解），以确保这些商品及其产品不毁林并按照相关法律生产。近几十年来，私营部门采用了自愿可持续发展标准（VSS），以促进可持续和无毁林的供应链。 EUDR 认可认证和其他第三方验证方案作为尽职调查过程中风险评估的支持工具。然而，关于这些计划在多大程度上可以帮助运营商评估 EUDR 合规性的问题仍然存在。本研究通过开发一个评估框架来评估 VSS 计划在满足 EUDR 中规定的尽职调查要求方面的适用性，从而解决了这些问题。根据该框架对五个主要农业和林业 VSS 计划进行的评估揭示了满足这些要求的潜力和局限性。框架中的大多数指标至少被部分涵盖。然而，评估的计划未能全面禁止毁林和森林退化。他们还介绍了 EUDR 中概述的相关立法的不同覆盖范围，以及其系统中确保符合标准的缺陷。 总体而言，本研究表明，VSS 计划可以作为尽职调查系统的要素纳入其中，但不足以证明符合 EUDR。