The European Union has dropped plans for another one-year delay to its anti-deforestation law, instead proposing a six-month grace period before enforcement begins. The proposal also introduces simplification measures and exemptions that favor EU nation states, the U.S., Canada, Australia and China.

The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), approved in 2023, sets out to ensure commodities including coffee, soy, beef, cocoa and palm oil imported to the bloc do not come from land deforested after Dec. 31, 2020. The EUDR is set to apply from Dec. 30, 2025.

Citing concerns over too much paperwork and the capacity of the EU’s IT system, the EU environment commissioner, Jessika Roswall, announced a “gradual phase in” to the law.

EU authorities will only begin checks and enforcement of the law on June 30, 2026, giving companies an additional six months to adapt.

In 2024, the EUDR’s implementation was delayed by 12 months, and last month, another postponement was discussed. With the latest proposed amendment, the date of enforcement remains unchanged.

“Having the law apply now with a grace period seems a sensible thing to do,” Nicole Polsterer, policy specialist at the environmental NGO FERN, told Mongabay by email.

For countries currently classified as “low risk” under the EUDR — all EU nations, the U.S., China, Australia and Canada — micro and small producers who sell directly to the EU would be exempt from the EUDR’s regulations under the proposal. They will only be required to submit a one-time declaration to the EU providing the postal address of production sites.

Small traders or intermediaries from these countries will also be given an extra year to comply with the EUDR.

However, all other countries will not be given any extra time for compliance or be included in exemptions, including those with smallholders that have reported struggling with access to appropriate technology and compliance costs. Companies not included in the “low risk” exemption must still submit full geolocation data and due diligence statements to export to the EU regardless of their size.

“The IT issue has never been satisfactorily explained,” Polsterer said. “In this vacuum, or under this disguise, German foresters and U.S. lobbying have successfully carved out an exemption from geolocation for themselves.”

“Germany has been banging on about needing exemptions for its foresters, as did the US for all its operations. Both are low risk according to the benchmarking,” she added.

The European Parliament and Council of the EU need to approve the Commission’s proposal before it is legally valid. Roswall said that she is open to “unlimited changes” to the proposal in the coming days and weeks.

“I am convinced that today’s proposal strikes the right balance, addressing the need to maintain strong means to fight deforestation, while reducing the administrative burden for companies,” Roswall said. “We remain fully committed to the objective of fighting deforestation and forest degradation.”

Banner image: EU Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall. Image courtesy of the European Union.

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.

When Saabira Chaudhuri began covering consumer goods companies for The Wall Street Journal, she expected stories about marketing and product launches. Instead, she uncovered a deeper pattern: industrial ingenuity turned liability. Her new book, Consumed: How Big Brands Got Us Hooked on Plastic, explains how plastic became central to modern capitalism — and why efforts to rein it in have repeatedly faltered.

Her reporting began in 2018, when public concern about single-use plastics was rising, Chaudhuri says in an interview. Bags, bottles, straws and cups — once symbols of convenience — had become icons of waste. Companies scrambled to look responsible, promoting recycled content and biodegradable packaging. Yet as Chaudhuri dug deeper, she saw that most “solutions” were flawed or else messaging recycled from decades earlier, designed to protect disposability.

Plastic’s rise was no accident. It delivered lightness, durability, malleability and, above all, cheapness. It made supply chains global and habits disposable.

The coffee cup tells the story well: paper cups collapsed under heat until a thin plastic lining solved the problem after World War II. Suddenly, coffee was portable, and by the 1950s it was the top-selling beverage in the U.S. The pattern repeated across diapers, shampoo, ultraprocessed food, and fast fashion.

Advertising cemented this shift. Since the 1920s, manufacturers linked throwaway living with modernity, hygiene and freedom. Industry-backed recycling campaigns soothed guilt while doing little to stem waste. “Our throwaway culture rests on the idea that what we already have isn’t good enough,” Chaudhuri notes.

She also traces moments when change seemed possible. In the 1980s, the Mobro 4000 garbage barge, laden with 3,000 tons of trash, sparked outrage. Regulators threatened bans, companies promised compostable packaging, and the industry funded a multimillion-dollar PR push. The promises faded, but the campaign worked. Plastic’s dominance deepened.

For Chaudhuri, the real leverage lies with brands. She recalls McDonald’s counsel Shelby Yastrow, who pushed through unbleached bags despite supplier resistance. Once the company acted, compliance spread quickly. The lesson: brand owners, when pressured, can transform supply chains in ways individuals cannot.

Younger generations may hold the key. With social media reach and sharper awareness of health risks — from microplastics in organs to chemicals linked with cancer — they are better positioned to reject greenwashing and demand structural change. Technology alone won’t suffice. Biodegradable plastics are often false fixes. What’s needed is a reckoning with convenience, profit and the culture of disposability.

Consumed argues that plastics are not inherently villainous, but they have enabled an economy hooked on throwaway living. The crisis is cultural as much as environmental. As Chaudhuri puts it, lasting solutions will require nothing less than “a cultural reset.”

Read the full interview with Saabira Chaudhuri here.

Banner image: Cover of the book Consumed by Saabira Chaudhuri.

Climate activists worldwide are facing increased persecution and criminalization by governments, with some of the most severe measures coming from Europe, according to a United Nations human rights expert.

Governments including those of the U.K., France, Germany, Italy and Spain have introduced measures that criminalize protests and redefine terrorism and organized crime laws to persecute activists, Mary Lawlor, the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, told the U.N. General Assembly on Oct. 16.

Referring to the EU, Lawlor said “you parade yourself like the best in the world with the EU guidelines on human rights defenders. And we see a shocking lack of implementation of the guidelines in all EU member states and abroad.”

Lawlor presented the results of her report showing that attacks on citizens defending human rights related to climate change are surging. According to the report, nonviolent protesters worldwide have been charged with crimes such as unlawful assembly, common nuisance, qualified disobedience, financing terrorism, and promoting enmity.

“It is creating a vicious cycle: leaving the climate crisis unaddressed, human rights at risk, and human rights defenders deterred from speaking out and taking action,” Lawlor said.

In Germany, for example, Letzte Generation (now Neue Generation) activists face heavier charges than typical for “forming or participating in a criminal association,” the report notes. Their crime: nonviolent acts of civil disobedience like planting trees on golf courses and spray-painting private jets. The group’s website was shut down with a notice labeling it a criminal organization, and its members were sentenced to several years in prison.

The U.K. introduced legislation “specifically to criminalize the peaceful tactics used by climate defenders” under the 2023 Public Order Act, Lawlor said. Locking yourself to an object now carries a six-month prison sentence. Protests disrupting “national infrastructure” such as oil and gas facilities or airports can be punished with a year in prison and “unlimited” fines.

Meanwhile, France’s interior minister accused the environmental activist movement Les Soulèvements de la Terre of “ecoterrorism” in 2022, and then attempted to dissolve the group, which was later overturned by a higher court.

Similar measures occurred in Spain, where environmental groups Extinction Rebellion and Futuro Vegetal were designated as terrorist organizations. Spanish police have also carried out undercover operations targeting at least 12 environmental organizations.

After Lawlor’s presentation, member states questioned her about how to increase protections of these groups.

“You [member states] know what to do and you just don’t do it. I hear a lot of crocodile tears in this room, and I see a lot of serious hand-wringing,” she answered.

“Ensure implementation of protection of human rights defenders and make sure that those who are attacking them face accountability,” she added. “It’s as simple as that. It just needs political will and a determination. I can’t see that determination.”

Banner image: U.N. special rapporteurs Mary Lawlor, left, and Clément Voule in 2023. Image courtesy of U.N. Photo/Evan Schneider.

Brazil’s environment agency, IBAMA, has approved an environmental license for state-owned oil company Petrobras to drill for oil near the mouth of the Amazon River.

The license, issued Oct. 20, allows the company start drilling the offshore Morpho well in oil block FZA-M-059, about 500 kilometers (311 miles) from the river’s mouth, and 2.8 km (1.7 mi) below the seafloor. Environmental groups have vehemently condemned the decision, saying they will pursue legal action.

“[President] Lula has just buried his claim of being a climate leader at the bottom of the ocean at the mouth of the Amazon River,” Suely Araújo, public policy coordinator at the Climate Observatory, a Brazilian watchdog organization, said in a statement. “The government will be duly sued for this in the coming days.” (Araújo previously served as IBAMA head during President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s first term in office.)

According to Petrobras, the drilling will be exploratory to evaluate whether the oil reserves there are economically viable. “We expect to obtain excellent results from this exploration and to confirm the existence of oil in the Brazilian portion of this new global energy frontier,” Petrobras president Magda Chambriard said in a statement, adding that the license’s approval reflects the nation’s commitment to development.

The oil company said the drilling will start immediately and is expected to last for five months, meaning it will overlap with the COP30 climate summit, the first to be hosted by Brazil, in the Amazon Rainforest.

“Drilling for oil while hosting a climate summit hosts a bitter irony,” Bruna Campos, senior offshore oil and gas campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law, said in a statement shared with Mongabay. “Oil exploration at the mouth of the Amazon threatens the Atlantic Ocean, which sustains marine biodiversity and millions of livelihoods.”

A recent satellite study found that offshore oil platforms are among the top ocean polluters, but often fly under the radar as spills and other impacts can be hard to detect.

An oil spill is a concern at the FZA-M-059 block, given that ocean currents there are extremely complex and a potential leak could impact eight countries, Philip Fearnside, a senior researcher at the National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA), previously wrote in a commentary.

An earlier evaluation by IBAMA warned that oil exploration in the region could damage the Amazon Reef, a 9,500-square-kilometer (3,700-square-mile) system of corals, sponges and algae discovered less than a decade ago, and other high-biodiversity areas.

“The Amazon is very close to the point of no return, which will be irreversibly reached if global warming hits 2°C [3.6°F] and deforestation surpasses 20%,” Carlos Nobre, co-chair of the Scientific Panel for the Amazon and a researcher on the Amazon tipping point, said in a statement. “There is no justification for any new oil exploration.”

Banner image: The NS-42 drilling rig, already at the Morpho well, is set to begin drilling immediately. Image courtesy of Petrobras.

In Sri Lankan waters, there’s a growing problem of ghost nets that are entangling sea turtles, fish, dolphins and seabirds, reports contributor Malaka Rodrigo for Mongabay.

“Ghost nets” are fishing gear that have either been abandoned, lost or discarded into the sea. As these drift with the ocean currents, they continue to trap marine animals — or “ghost fish.”

“These lost fishing gear kill scores of marine species and remains a specific problem for marine turtles,” said Thushan Kapurusinghe, project lead of the Turtle Conservation Project of Sri Lanka.

Charith Dilshan, project manager of the Galbokka Sea Turtle Conservation & Research Center in Kosgoda, southern Sri Lanka, told Rodrigo they find at least 30 turtles entangled in ghost nets along their stretch of beach each year.

Turtles aside, ghost nets have also been observed entangling fish, dolphins and seabirds in Sri Lankan waters. In fact, ghost fishing can trigger chain reactions, Rodrigo writes. Small fish caught in the drifting gear can attract larger predators such as turtles and dolphins, which then become entangled themselves. “That’s why we call them ‘floating cemeteries,’” Kapurusinghe said.

Dilshan said some ghost nets found in Sri Lankan waters were likely lost or discarded elsewhere. Research suggests the problem of ghost nets can indeed be a transboundary one, with fishing gear abandoned or lost in one country’s waters drifting into those of another’s.

A 2019 study, which focused on the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, for example, documented 752 ghost nets that had entangled 131 turtles over a 51-month period. The researchers estimated that the same ghost nets could have ensnared between 3,400 and 12,200 turtles across the Indian Ocean before they were detected in the Maldives.

However, Sri Lanka also contributes significantly to the problem, Rodrigo writes.

A pilot study published in 2023, for instance, surveyed 325 vessels and estimated they’d lost nearly 22,600 kilograms (about 50,000 pounds) of plastic fishing gear to the sea. The actual figure is likely to be much higher since there are more than 50,000 registered fishing vessels across the country, said Gayathri Lokuge of the Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA), who co-authored the study.

Lokuge and her colleagues identified gill nets as the most frequently lost gear, followed by lines and hooks. Interviews with fishers revealed that poor weather and ocean conditions are the leading causes for losing or discarding fishing gear. Poor port waste management and limited recycling infrastructure add to the problem, Lokuge said.

Rodrigo writes that ghost nets washed ashore are now a common sight across Sri Lanka’s beaches. A survey of 22 beaches found that fishing gear made up 20% of marine debris.

Read the full story by Malaka Rodrigo here.

Banner image: Two olive ridley turtles caught in discarded fishing nets. Image courtesy of Galbokka Sea Turtle Conservation & Research Center.

The last known photo of the slender-billed curlew, a grayish-brown migratory waterbird, was taken in February 1995 at Merja Zerga, on Morocco’s Atlantic coast.

There will likely never be another one.

The species, Numenius tenuirostris, has officially been declared extinct by the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority.

“The extinction of the Slender-billed Curlew is a tragic and sobering moment for migratory bird conservation,” Amy Fraenkel, executive secretary of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), said in a statement. “It underscores the urgency of implementing effective conservation measures to ensure the survival of migratory species.”

Details of the exact breeding and wintering sites of the slender-billed curlew have been hazy at best, although it’s known to have bred in Siberia and the Kazakh Steppe, and migrated to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

In June 1995, the slender-billed curlew was included among 255 priority species of waterbirds listed in the then-new Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA), according to the CMS press release.

The latest IUCN assessment of the species notes that historically the slender-billed curlew was likely locally common, but there were signs of decline as early 1912. By the 1940s, researchers were warning the bird might already be close to extinct.

In a study published November 2024, researchers concluded the bird most likely went extinct sometime in the mid-1990s, after that last verified sighting in Morocco. At the time, Graeme Buchanan, the study’s lead author and conservation scientist with U.K-based NGO Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), told Mongabay the study was born out of the need for a formal, quantitative assessment of the species’ status, so conservation support wasn’t withdrawn too soon or too late.

The latest IUCN assessment now confirms the species’ extinction. “This is the first-ever recorded global bird extinction from mainland Europe, North Africa, and West Asia,” Esther Kettel, an ecologist at Nottingham Trent University, U.K., writes in The Conversation.

Geoff Hilton, conservation scientist at U.K.-based charity Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, previously told Mongabay that news of the bird’s extinction was “a source of deep sadness.”

“We arguably spent too much time watching the bird’s decline and not enough actually trying to fix things,” he said. “Although that’s easy to say: it’s not clear what really we could have done that would have made a difference.”

Migratory shorebirds like the slender-billed curlew have been declining worldwide, Birdlife International warned last year. “The Eurasian curlew (Numenius arquata), a relative of the slender-bill, is of particular conservation concern and is thought to be the UK’s most rapidly declining species,” Kettel writes.

“[T]he Slender-billed Curlew’s extinction serves as a poignant reminder that conservation frameworks must be implemented swiftly, backed by adequate science, resources and sustained political will,” Jacques Trouvilliez, the AEWA executive secretary, said in the press release.