Why Australia’s “deforestation” ranking ignores deforestation

Written by: Leo A, on 9 July 2025

(Source Greenpeace,org)

Environmental activists across the country were left with disappointment and confusion in late May when the European Union released its long-awaited first list of country risk classifications under the EU Deforestation Regulation, marking a step towards the regulation’s implementation.  

This listing classified Australia as “low risk”, subjecting it to the weakest requirements. This completely misrepresents the reality of the situation in Australia in regards to deforestation, and prevents the new EU law from placing any meaningful pressure on Australia’s logging industry. Freedom of Information documents obtained by the Wilderness Society confirmed that the Australian government actively lobbied for this misleading ranking.  

A closer look at which countries were labelled low-, standard- and high-risk reveals a strong pattern. Other major deforestation hotspots, such as Brazil and Indonesia, were only labelled “standard-risk”. In fact, the label of “high-risk” was limited to just four countries: The Russian Federation, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Belarus, and Myanmar. There are two key characteristics that the first three of these countries, and even to a lesser extent the fourth, share. First, these countries are geopolitically aligned against the American imperialist bloc, which the European Union is a part of. The second characteristic, which is largely a result of the first, is that they don’t trade much with the European Union, due to sanctions and other barriers. It is also worth noting that every single American-aligned country in the Global North was given a “low risk” ranking.  

Considering these patterns together we can paint a picture of a decision-making process that was designed to minimize inconvenience as much as possible to logging and related industries while still being believable to an average audience as an objective ranking (hence why Brazil, Indonesia etc weren’t labelled “low-risk”), and of course use the opportunity to throw a casual punch at some of the American bloc’s opposition.  

Environmental organisations in Australia have been quick to point out that Australia’s ranking does not accurately reflect our deforestation crisis. But they have often not been able to put the other pieces of the puzzle together.  This creates a task for our party and anti-imperialists alike to systematically help raise their class consciousness alongside them in environmental struggles, and to point out that deforestation in Australia (and the world) is overwhelmingly the result of US imperialist domination and plunder. 

The construction of an Australian united front, combining environmentalist groups with other working-class struggles, with conscious anti-imperialist leadership, is a critical goal we must aim for. In mid-June the Wilderness Society began to search for “values-aligned organisations and groups” that could become “potential allies”. It’s a small but important step in the right direction.  

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