A sustainable basket of vegetable oils for the European Union: Conservation trade-offs among consumption alternatives in the context of the EU deforestation regulation

The European Union (EU) vegetable oils market embodies global environmental impacts. The EU Regulation on deforestation-free products, which aims to halt deforestation embodied in commodity supply chains, underscores the need to assess the relative ecological consequences of different oil crop alternatives. Using a mixed-methods approach, this study evaluates conservation trade-offs associated with soybeans, oil palm fruit, rapeseed, and sunflower seed production across biodiversity, carbon, and water in 42 supplier countries to the EU-27 market. Between 2000 and 2020, the EU-27, representing about 6% of the global population, accounted for an average of 15% of the global agricultural land use dedicated to the selected crops. Although impacts varied substantially across countries and crops, oil palm plantations, despite their comparatively low land footprint per unit of oil, are largely located in areas of high conservation priority relative to alternative crops. Our analysis further suggests that Thailand, Great Britain, the United States of America, and Hungary might represent the most environmentally friendly sourcing options for oil palm fruit, rapeseed, soybeans, and sunflower seed respectively. These findings highlight the importance of identifying a diversified and ecologically informed sourcing basket (i.e., portfolio) of products to support EU policy development on sustainable sourcing and minimize unintended environmental trade-offs beyond deforestation and impacts on forest ecosystems.