Why a few words in Montreal are key to ending deforestation
By Hermine Kleymann, Head, Policy, WWF Forest Practice and Jean-François Timmers, WWF Policy and Advocacy Manager, Deforestation and Conversion-Free Supply Chains
“Parties should clearly take responsibility to ensure that businesses ensure immediately that their supply chains are deforestation and conversion free.”
It’s not the most exciting sentence ever written. But it’s one that could make a massive difference to the future of our planet.
In December, all eyes will be on Montreal, which hosts the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP15). At the conference, governments will be meeting to agree a global biodiversity framework — nothing less than a plan to halt and reverse the loss of nature.
Ending the destruction of forests and other natural ecosystems is critical to the CBD’s goal of reversing biodiversity loss and building a nature-positive world by 2030, as well as efforts to prevent catastrophic climate change. And we now have an unmissable opportunity to enshrine in international law one of the key parts of this: making supply chains deforestation and conversion free.
Every year, around 10 million hectares of forests are destroyed, along with other natural habitats like savannahs, grasslands and wetlands. The number one cause is agriculture, often linked to international trade in commodities like soy, palm oil and beef. By preventing commodities linked to deforestation and habitat destruction from entering commercial supply chains, we can disable one of the key drivers of nature loss.
Broken pledges
The will to end deforestation is there. Just last week, a new Forests and Climate Leaders Partnership was announced by the COP26 Presidency. The Partnership aims to accelerate implementation of the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use by paving the way for governments and partners to work together to protect, conserve and restore the world’s forests, support sustainable development and promote inclusive rural transformation. The Glasgow Leaders Declaration was signed last year by 145 leaders representing more than 90% of the world’s forests. Finance institutions and companies made related commitments to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030.
While these pledges are to be celebrated, promises alone aren’t enough. Back in 2010, members of the Consumer Goods Forum said they would end deforestation in their supply chains by 2020. In 2015, all 193 UN member states adopted SDG 15.2 to halt deforestation by the same date.
We can’t let 2030 become the new 2020: we need all hands on deck to halt deforestation much earlier than 2030.
Many corporate sector actors are willing to eliminate deforestation by 2025, and more than 30 leading financial institutions, collectively with over US$8.7 trillion in assets under management, have also set a target date of 2025 to eliminate deforestation linked to agricultural commodities from their portfolios. Other influential initiatives such as the Accountability Framework, Science-Based Targets and the Forest Declaration Platform also support a 2025 deadline to end deforestation and conversion.
We know it can be done — there’s plenty of toolkits, guides and commodity roadmaps showing how. But anchoring this in international law for the first time would be a huge step forward, helping to align and coordinate the various commitments and initiatives already under way.
Negotiations
At the last meeting in Nairobi in June, negotiators pulled a late-night shift thrashing out the latest draft of the global biodiversity framework. The current text includes target 15, which aims to spur government actions, including policies, regulations and sanctions, that require businesses and financial institutions to disclose impacts on biodiversity along their supply and value chains and follow a rights-based approach.
Much of the text is still in brackets, waiting to be taken up again at the next working group meeting in Montreal on the eve of COP15. WWF’s full asks are laid out in our previous position paper, but right now we’re just asking for the addition of a single sentence, calling on parties to take responsibility for businesses ensuring that their supply chains are deforestation and conversion free.
Mandating deforestation- and conversion-free supply chains through an international convention would demonstrate true leadership, provide clarity and level the playing field for private sector actions.
Deforestation-and conversion-free supply chains form part of a broader transformation of our food system, reflected in the CBD’s other proposed targets. Target 10 calls for a clear commitment to agroecological principles — working with nature, not against it. We also need to produce more food with less, halve food waste and loss, and ensure everybody will have access to and adopt sustainable and healthy diets (target 16).
Everyone has a part to play in this transformation. Governments in producer and consumer countries need to set the right policy incentives — due diligence legislation proposals in the EU, UK and US offers some promising examples, but these need sufficient ambition — including natural grasslands and savannahs and all risk products and derivatives in their scope, requiring full transparency and traceability to the origin — to have impact. The private sector also needs to make good on its commitments, as well as holding governments to account. Public and private finance need to step up to support sustainable production, especially for smallholders.
Above all, we need world leaders, businesses, finance institutions and others who’ve made pledges on forests need to turn their words into action. Let’s not waste this opportunity in Montreal to agree the right words.
