Responsible sourcing
Deforestation in practice.
Indonesian deforestation risk concentrates in a few commodities and the European regulation covers some of them. For anything outside it the question is still real, and answering it means knowing where the material was actually grown.
Where the risk actually is.
Palm oil, which has the most attention and the most developed traceability infrastructure.
Timber and wood products, where legality systems exist and the question is whether the material genuinely moved through them.
Cocoa and coffee, where smallholder plots at forest edges are the hard case rather than plantations.
Rubber, which receives far less attention than palm and raises similar questions.
Charcoal and biomass, where the feedstock is a by-product in some supply chains and not in others.
What geolocation actually requires.
For commodities in scope of the European regulation, the operator placing goods on the market needs coordinates for the plots where the material was produced, and a due diligence statement.
For a plantation that is a boundary. For thousands of smallholders it is thousands of points, which is why the requirement is difficult rather than merely administrative.
The data has to come from the supply chain, which means the collector, the cooperative or the mill has to have gathered it. Buyers who ask late discover it does not exist.
A certificate is not a substitute for the data, and it can support the due diligence exercise.
Commodities outside the rules.
Nothing about the risk changes because a commodity is out of scope. Rattan, agarwood, resins and several other forest products raise the same questions with none of the infrastructure.
For these the honest answer is a supply chain you understand: named collection areas, named groups and a chain of custody you can describe.
Where the material genuinely comes from planted agroforests rather than natural forest, that is a strong position and it has to be evidenced rather than asserted.
What to do as a buyer.
Establish scope first: whether your commodity is covered by rules in your market, and what that requires of you specifically.
Ask for the traceability data early, at the quotation stage, because building it takes a season rather than a week.
Prefer supply chains with fewer steps. Every intermediary between the plot and the exporter is a place the origin information disappears.
Be careful what you print. A deforestation-free claim has to be defensible with the evidence you actually hold.
Questions buyers ask.
Does the EU regulation cover everything I buy?
No, it covers named commodities. Establish whether yours is in scope before assuming either way, and remember that being out of scope does not mean the risk is absent.
Can a certificate satisfy the geolocation requirement?
Certification can support your due diligence and it does not replace the data requirement. The obligation sits on the operator placing the goods on the market.
What about smallholder supply chains?
They are the hard case, because the data has to be collected plot by plot. Cooperatives and organised groups are far better placed to provide it than an open-market purchase, which is one reason to buy that way.
Read next.
EUDR and Indonesian goods
What the EU Deforestation Regulation covers, the 30 December 2026 deadline, Indonesia's standard-risk classification, and why an SVLK certificate does not answer it.
Which sustainability claims you can defend
Regulators now test environmental claims. What each common one needs behind it, and which to avoid entirely.
Why Indonesian chains have so many hands
Farms, collectors, mills, exporters. What that structure does to quality, price and traceability, and how to work with it.
Buying through a co-operative
The only practical way to shorten an agricultural chain, and the trade-offs. What a co-operative can and cannot do.
Sourcing from Indonesia?
Tell us the product, the quantity and the destination. We come back with what it involves before anyone talks about money.