Leveraging Investor Influence to Address Deforestation

Why

Globally, agricultural supply chains are major contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, forest destruction and other negative land impacts. In order to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change, curbing emissions from the agriculture sector will be critical to achieving global GHG reduction goals. Second only to the energy sector – and higher than all European Union countries combined – agriculture and associated deforestation accounts for 19-29% of global GHG emissions.

If we are to curb emissions and limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, agricultural companies and their investors must address tropical deforestation driven by key commodities such as soy, beef, palm oil, and cocoa.

What

Mobilizing investor influence will be a key mechanism to spur company implementation of new and existing commitments to source sustainable palm oil, cattle and soy.

In tropical countries, a major driver of deforestation is the economic incentive to cut and burn forested areas to convert land for agriculture. Ceres aims to change this paradigm – by working large corporations and companies throughout the supply chain on moving from commitments to implementation metrics to address the material business risks from deforestation.

Expected Results

The expected impact on society is lasting reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, as a result of companies throughout the supply chain improve implementation of zero deforestation commitments.

Expected outcomes

• A global cohort of investors engage companies with exposure to cattle, soy and palm oil on the implementation of commitments to eliminate deforestation from supply chain
• Supply chain actors evaluate supplier incentives and address supplier non-compliance across the beef, soy, palm and cocoa value chains
• Companies improve forest protection practices as a result of investor engagements

Partners
Forest Trends

Geography
Global, Brazil, Indonesia