Finding Loopholes in the Forest

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Researchers should note the underexplored phenomenon of norm shopping in mining regulations and its impact on transition integrity.

🏢実務担当者:Practitioners should adopt stricter, consistent deforestation definitions in supply chain due diligence to avoid controversy and ensure credibility.

🏛政策担当者:Policymakers must harmonize deforestation definitions across regulations and standards to prevent loopholes and ensure a just transition.

As the global landscape shifts towards decarbonization, the net-zero emissions target by 2050, as set out in the European Climate Law within the European Union Green Deal (EGD) scope, demands a proactive approach to the clean energy transition. The EGD charts multiple pathways to this goal, one of which is the electrification of key sectors, particularly transportation, through the adoption of electric vehicles. According to the European Energy Agency, electric vehicles emit 17%–30% less carbon than fossil-fueled vehicles. However promising, the electric vehicle supply chain comes from the extractive industry, which requires further scrutiny of its environmental and social impacts – namely, related to deforestation, biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, waste, water management, human rights, land rights, and Indigenous people. Although there are national laws, their derivative regulations, and international standards for responsible mining that mining companies can align with or comply with to show their commitment to transparency and accountability, the problem arises when these regulations and standards have different definitions, for instance, on forest and deforestation. This not only generates conceptual ambiguity but also makes the company’s commitment to compliance ambiguous: companies may selectively comply with regulations or standards on deforestation, opting for those definitions that align most closely with their interests. The ambiguity and variation in deforestation-related definitions offer mining companies considerable latitude to claim compliance with regulations or standards pertaining to best practices in responsible mining. At the same time, this selective “norm shopping” behaviour by companies generates ongoing controversy and conflict with civil society organizations, local communities, and the general public, who often rely on more stringent definitions of forest and deforestation. This problem can be counterproductive in achieving a clean energy transition.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003783176-10first seen 2026-07-27 04:56:16