The money trees: the role of corporate action in the fight against deforestation

Despite some ambitious commitments from major corporate stakeholders to reduce deforestation, awareness of the risks associated with commodities like timber, palm oil, cattle and soy is not spreading to suppliers, according to a new report from CDP. 38% of purchasing organizations and 77% of suppliers lack deforestation commitments. 63% of suppliers have no policy on the issue and 28% have taken no action. For buyers, those figures are 28% and 10% respectively. The 450 companies that have committed to ridding their supply chains of deforestation by 2020 will not meet this goal since they have not done enough to push these commitments to their suppliers, according to the report.