Backlash Erupts Over Europe’s Anti-Deforestation Law

The European Union has been a world leader on climate change, passing groundbreaking legislation to reduce noxious greenhouse gasses. Now the world is pushing back.

Government officials and business groups around the globe have jacked up their lobbying in recent months to persuade E.U. officials to suspend a landmark environmental law aimed at protecting the planet’s endangered forests by tracing supply chains.

The rules, scheduled to take effect at the end of the year, would affect billions of dollars in traded goods. They have been denounced as “discriminatory and punitive” by countries in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa.

In the United States, the Biden administration petitioned for a delay as American paper companies warned that the law could result in shortages of diapers and sanitary pads in Europe. In July, China said it would not comply because “security concerns” prevent the country from sharing the necessary data.

Last week, the chorus got larger. Cabinet members in Brazil, the director general of the World Trade Organization and even Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany — leader of the largest economy in the 27-member European Union — asked the European Commission’s president to postpone the impending deforestation regulations.

The uproar underscores the bruising difficulties of making progress on a problem that most everyone agrees is urgent: protecting the world’s population from devastating climate change.