Geolocation

Geolocation in the EUDR refers to coordinates consisting of longitudes and latitudes. These are terms you may be familiar with from the navigation system in a car, for example. On a map of the Earth are:
Longitude: Vertical lines
Latitude: Horizontal lines

When these two lines intersect at a certain place, it is called the coordinates of that location. In this way, all locations on Earth can be recorded very accurately via coordinates. To ensure accuracy, the EUDR requires that coordinates consist of at least 6 decimal places. As an example, here are the coordinates of DuraCert's office in Deventer, the Netherlands. 

Longitude     : 6.154748614132643

Latitude    : 52.257312675826114

Source areas

EUDR is about ensuring that the products have not contributed to deforestation and are legal. This applies to products on this HS-code list made from the commodities cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soy or wood and paper are covered by the EUDR. To monitor that the source areas of these commodities have not been or are not being deforested, the EUDR requires to indicate all coordinates of the source areas.

Polygon or single point

There are two ways of indicating the coordinates of source areas:
For source areas larger than 4 hectares of area, a line should be drawn from coordinate to coordinate that accurately defines the perimeter of the source area. A polygon should cover only one source area and not consist of multiple source areas.

Figure 1 Example EUDR polygon > 4 ha

For source areas smaller than 4 hectares, it is allowed to be fixed with one point:

Figure 2 Example EUDR single point < 4 ha

When collecting the geolocations, it is strongly recommended to also collect the following data for each location:
- Name of the producer of the commodity;
- Country of the producer of the commodity;
- Location of production of the commodity.

Reporting in TRACES

The coordinates of source areas can be entered manually into the EU system TRACES. This is certainly feasible for small quantities of coordinates, but many raw materials of products that have to comply with EUDR will come from multiple source areas. Also, the polygons of source areas may consist of a lot of coordinates. All in all, this potentially results in a lot of data, which operators have to enter into the EU system TRACES when declaring products. To simplify this, the EU TRACES system gives the possibility to upload the coordinates. To upload, the coordinates must be captured in the GeoJSON format. More information on this can be found here.
 

Fables

1. The origin of raw materials will now be visible to all?
   The EU system TRACES is a system that companies have to log into with their EORI number. The geolocation of source areas entered are not visible to other companies, only the logged-in company and the competent authorities have access to the geolocations entered in TRACES.
2. Dhe owners of source areas must provide all coordinates in GeoJSON format?
   The EUDR does not prescribe a GeoJSON format. The EU system TRACES uses the GeoJSON format for uploads, but uploads in other formats will also be possible in the future. Companies making the declaration in TRACES can also convert the coordinates into the GeoJSON format themselves. They can then upload the files into TRACES.