EU Deforestation Due Diligence: Operational Guidance for Cocoa Producers and Importers

This operational guidance is intended to support cocoa supply chain companies with the upcoming EU Deforestation Due Diligence (DDD) regulation. The document provides detailed guidance under six steps, that have been developed by Proforest, for companies to follow in their approach to the DDD regulation process. The six steps that Proforest have identified in this DDD process are: information collection, assessment, mitigation, monitoring, remediation and finally reporting.

The guidance document breaks down the six steps, and under each outlines the main requirements from the EU, existing tools and approaches to support compliance as well as flagging any potential implementation challenges and opportunities that might arise under each step. This guidance also highlights throughout how landscape and jurisdictional initiatives can present opportunities to adhere to the DDD regulation. For example, initiatives at this scale can make monitoring in forest landscapes more efficient. Operating at this scale also means actors can share with each other traceability data in a region, rather than duplicating efforts multiple times in the same jurisdiction.

In addition to this operational guidance, Proforest has developed a complementary reference document that provides additional details and supporting information. This can be found here.