Just a handful of companies are taking the steps needed to halt the destruction of the world’s tropical forests, a new global ranking system has found.
The analysis by the Global Canopy Programme assessed 500 companies, governments and investors that are key to meeting an ambitious pledge made by countries last year to cut global deforestation to zero by 2020.
It found that few of the 500, who control global supply chains of products such as soya, palm oil, beef, timber, pulp and paper which are worth €89 billion a year and found in more than 50 per cent of packaged goods in supermarkets, have policies to address the risk they pose to forests.
As a result, the goal of zero deforestation by 2020 in the New York Declaration on Forests signed at the UN climate summit in New York last September will not be met, the Global Canopy Programme warned.
Deforestation is in our chocolate and our toothpaste, our animal feed and our textbooks, our buildings and our furniture, our investments and our pensions
The assessment included 250 companies with total annual revenues of €4 trillion, 150 investors and lenders, 50 countries and regions where most of the world’s tropical forests are found or to which goods are imported, and 50 other key players.
Just seven, including UK-based companies Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser Group, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble and Group Danone, as well as banking giant HSBC, scored full marks against a series of measures on deforestation.
For companies these include a commitment to zero deforestation, taking steps to make sure their supply chain is fully traceable and applying policies to all operations and suppliers, while measures for investors including incorporating environmental considerations into investment decisions.
But 30 companies – many of them based in Asia and the Middle East – and dozens of investors scored no points in the Forest 500 analysis for policies to address the problem.
Deforestation causes more than 10 per cent of global greenhouse gases, undermines regional water supplies and livelihoods for more than a billion people worldwide, the Global Canopy Programme said.
The think tank’s drivers of deforestation programme manager Mario Rautner said: “We are currently all part of a global deforestation economy.
“Deforestation is in our chocolate and our toothpaste, our animal feed and our textbooks, our buildings and our furniture, our investments and our pensions.
“Our goal with the Forest 500 is to provide precise and actionable information to measure the progress of society to achieve zero deforestation.”
And he said: “Though the Forest 500 findings highlight that much work needs to be done, the good news is that a number of big players across sectors are demonstrating the leadership that is needed.
“Putting policies in place is just the necessary first step in addressing tropical deforestation and their implementation will be critical in order to transition to deforestation free supply chains by 2020.”