EUDR Study: Poor EU Deforestation Maps Put €133 Bn Worth of Exports at Risk

A new study conducted by LiveEO shows that supply chain disturbances amounting to €133 Billion are threatening to occur due to the low quality of open-source data sets. Plans to save cost by relying on freely available data sources in their effort to comply with the newly enacted European Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) will likely backfire economically and put the livelihoods of farmers in the global south at risk.

The EUDR aims to prevent the trade of commodities linked to deforestation, requiring businesses to ensure that products such as coffee, cocoa, and timber are not sourced from deforested land. The regulation mandates that evidence be provided to prove that no deforestation has occurred after the cutoff date, December 31, 2020, for every plot of land on which the respective commodities are grown.

Despite the European Commission's disclaimer that its freely available map has "no legal value per se" and only "may help assess the deforestation risk," many companies plan to rely on this data for their due diligence. The data is known to have limited accuracy due to a methodology that deviates from the deforestation definitions set out in the regulation. This inaccuracy can lead buyers to wrongly exclude suppliers, causing significant restructuring costs and increasing the risk of non-compliance.

LiveEO conducted a scientific study benchmarking open-source data against its proprietary satellite analytics against ground truth data collected in Borneo, a key region for agricultural production of EUDR-affected commodities. The study assessed the LiveEO model's pure model outputs without any human intervention.

The study's findings are alarming: in 24% of cases in the sample area, the widely used open-source data incorrectly predicted deforestation status. This translates into one-quarter of traded goods, valued at €133 billion, being exposed to trade disruptions, severely impacting company profitability and threatening the livelihoods of local producers in origin countries. It is expected that some of the cost will be handed down to consumers in the EU, further exacerbating the high inflation rates the bloc has seen in recent years.

In contrast, LiveEO's proprietary Precision Analytics model, which uses artificial intelligence and multispectral satellite data tailored to match EUDR definitions, successfully reduced the error rate by 42%. This significant improvement safeguards €55.9 billion from being disrupted when LiveEO's technology is employed.

These findings underscore the importance of using precise, reliable data for EUDR compliance to avoid costly errors, and safeguard the integrity of supply chains while reducing legal risks and establishing an efficient due diligence system.

LiveEO's precision analytics is available via API and for users of LiveEO's EUDR compliance solution, TradeAware.

Download the full case study for detailed results: live-eo.com/eudr-benchmark

Learn more about LiveEO's EUDR Solution: live-eo.com/EUDR

LiveEO GmbH
Cuvrystr 3-4
10997 Berlin

LiveEO uses artificial intelligence to generate actionable insights from satellite data to make business processes more sustainable, safer, and more efficient. LiveEO's products are in use with operators of critical infrastructure on all continents. Companies use LiveEO's solutions to make their operations more resilient against the effects of climate change, eliminate deforestation in their supply chains, and minimize the need carbon-intensive monitoring approaches. LiveEO international team of 120+ employees is distributed across Berlin, New York, the UK, and Latvia.

This release was published on openPR.