No more sugar-coating – Brazil’s sugar high and climate, trade, and global inequality

As COP30 wraps up today in Belém, a new climate storyline is taking shape – one that sits squarely at the crossroads of climate action and global trade.

More than ever, governments are using trade tools to deliver their climate targets, from border carbon taxes to deforestation-free import rules.

But why talk about trade when we talk about climate mitigation? 

Because climate policy doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens in a global economy where countries buy, sell, and ship goods every second. Trade is the channel through which one country’s decisions have a knock-on effect across borders, shaping what gets produced, where, and with what environmental and social consequences. 

A quiet shift: the UK’s sugar supply goes Brazilian  

Brazil is famous for its vast natural resources and for exporting commodities such as soybeans, coffee, and beef to the UK. But in recent years, it has taken the top spot in exporting another everyday commodity to the UK: sugar. 

When the UK rewrote its tariff regime post-Brexit, it created a special quota allowing tariff-free imports of raw cane sugar.

The result? A flood of cheap Brazilian sugar heading across the Atlantic and entering the UK market. Today, Brazil – the world’s largest producer and exporter of sugar worldwide – dominates UK sugar imports. 

Yet the narrow lens of free market economics helps to conceal a whole swathe of environmental and human rights abuses driven by sugar production in Brazil. 

Sugar’s hidden environmental footprint 

Sugarcane now covers nearly 10 million hectares in Brazil and plays a major role in driving indirect deforestation. As cane expands over old pasture, cattle are pushed deeper into the Amazon and the Cerrado – two vitally important ecosystems already under immense pressure. 

The risks have only grown since Brazil scrapped federal zoning rules that once stopped sugarcane creeping into the Amazon and Pantanal – the world’s largest tropical wetland. Together, these dynamics make sugar a meaningful contributor to ongoing land-use change, even if its direct footprint on rainforest remains smaller than commodities such as soy and beef. 

Sugar is also profoundly water-hungry, requiring 1,200–1,500 litres of water per kilo. Processing plants still draw heavily on rivers and groundwater, whilst fertiliser runoff and waste products like vinasse pollutes waterways, fuelling algae blooms and degrading ecosystems. 

The human cost 

Behind the sugar industry is a dark labour record. Brazilian authorities have rescued thousands of workers from forced-labour conditions in sugarcane fields. Investigations continue to uncover cases of debt bondage, child labour, and dangerous working conditions – sometimes even in operations claiming sustainability credentials. Land conflicts with Indigenous and traditional communities remain a constant pressure point. 

Taken together, these issues show that Brazil’s sugar supply chain carries significant environmental and social risks. 

It doesn’t stop there… 

When you import sugar from Brazil – putting it on a long sea route across the Atlantic, then onwards to the UK – you’re adding kilometres of shipping, fuel use, and carbon dioxide. Transport-emissions estimates for global food-trade show transport alone can account for roughly 19% of total food-system emissions. 

Combine that with the fact that sugar is already identified as a health-risk product linked to obesity, diabetes and other chronic disease, and it begins to look doubly problematic: high carbon footprint and negative health impact. 

In short: importing sugar from thousands of miles away makes little environmental sense and even less sense when the product itself is harmful for health. When the value of life and nature is taken into account, the numbers simply do not add up.  

It’s time for leaders to confront the real cost of sugar. Climate-aligned trade policy must stop rewarding environmentally destructive and socially unjust supply chains – and start putting people and the planet first.