EUDR postponement: Our recommendations to move from compliance to inclusive forest protection
With the EU Deforestation Regulation once again postponed, it feels like an important moment to take stock of what is working and what still needs attention. To stop the hypothetical debate and inform based on facts, based on real examples.
After two years of programs across multiple commodities and geographies, we’ve brought together our latest learning in a new paper, Accelerating EUDR Readiness. It reflects both the persistent challenges and the progress being made, including continued investment in inclusive traceability. The paper includes what we’ve learned from IDH work on cocoa, coffee, palm oil and beef across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The confirmation of yet another postponement of EUDR is concerning. Not because ambition should be lowered, but because uncertainty has a cost. Governments, companies, and smallholder organisations have already invested heavily to prepare for 2024 and 2025 deadlines. Repeated delays risk undermining those frontrunners, weakening incentives for action, and eroding trust between the EU and producing countries.
What stands out from our work is the central role of smallholder farmers. Low awareness of the regulation, high compliance costs, and concerns around data ownership all create a genuine risk of exclusion. If EUDR implementation leaves smallholders behind, it will fail in its purpose. If it includes smallholders, it will be a catalyst for transforming lives.
In India, IDH is working on coffee farmer registration and traceability in collaboration with state authorities and leading exporters, mapping 50,000 smallholder plots and integrating geolocation data into company and cooperative systems. The initiative aligns national databases with EUDR requirements while testing interoperability between private sourcing platforms and public traceability tools. We continue to bridge company-led pilots and national policy frameworks to ensure smallholder farmers are connected to EU markets.
We’ve also seen that practical solutions are emerging. When governments lead nationally owned traceability systems, when farmers are supported through strong cooperatives and accessible data, and when public and private actors collaborate rather than duplicate efforts, progress accelerates. Shared tools and pre-competitive collaboration can significantly reduce costs while building confidence on all sides. In Vietnam, for example, we have seen the cost plummet by a factor of 14.
EUDR has the ambition and potential to be far more than a compliance exercise. Done well, it can become a catalyst for development, resilient value chains, and forest protection. But this requires regulatory certainty. Based on certainty, smallholders, companies, and governments can and will invest. Our paper demonstrates how this is already being done, ready for scale-up.