Are deforestation-free commodities too good to be true?

Thanks to pressure and advocacy from civil society, governments, shareholders and consumers in the Global North, many companies using and selling commodities have begun to clean up their acts. They’ve sought to become – or at least appear – more accountable for the environmental impacts of their supply chain activities. As a result, recent years have seen many make zero deforestation commitments (ZDCs) for the provenance of the commodities on which they rely.

A new occasional paper by Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) scientist George Schoneveld and Particip GmbH consultant Peter Jopke seeks to assess the ZDCs of 50 ‘powerbrokers’ – companies that have the potential to shape rules in major commodities’ global value chains. The work attempts to unravel what these bold-sounding commitments might actually mean for forests, producers and communities on the ground. Read the full story on Forests News.