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Earth

A Third of Companies Linked To Deforestation Have No Policy To End It (theguardian.com) 41

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
A third of the companies most linked to the destruction of tropical rainforests have not set a single policy on deforestation, a report reveals. From a report: Research by Global Canopy has found that 31% of the companies with the greatest influence on tropical deforestation risk through their supply chains do not have a single deforestation commitment for any of the commodities to which they are exposed. Many of those who have set policies are not monitoring them correctly, meaning deforestation to produce their commodities could still be taking place. Of the 100 companies with a deforestation commitment for every commodity to which they are exposed, only 50% are monitoring their suppliers or sourcing regions in line with their deforestation commitments for every commodity.

Global Canopy's Forest 500 report states: "We are three years past the 2020 deadline that many organisations set themselves to halt deforestation, and just two years away from the UN's deadline of 2025 for companies and financial institutions to eliminate commodity-driven deforestation, conversion and the associated human rights abuses. This target date is essential to meeting our global net zero targets and averting catastrophic climate change." At Cop26 in 2021, world leaders agreed to remove deforestation from supply chains. Land-clearing by humans accounts for almost a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, largely deriving from the destruction of the world's forests for agricultural products such as palm oil, soy and beef.
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A Third of Companies Linked To Deforestation Have No Policy To End It More

A Third of Companies Linked To Deforestation Have No Policy To End It

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  • Did they say they would? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WoodstockJeff ( 568111 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @12:05PM (#63295687) Homepage

    A third of the companies that were ordered to come up with a plan don't have one. Are they part of the group that decided a plan was "needed", or just part of the people affected by the others?

    Lots of people have plans. Lots of people want to impose plans on others, who don't make plans. If those that don't have plans didn't say they were going to have them, why would they change their minds?

    • Re:Did they say they would? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by leonbev ( 111395 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @12:19PM (#63295741) Journal

      As anyone who's worked with a politician or a salesperson already knows, getting a promise that things will change is easy. Actually doing the work to implement the change is much harder, and in some cases is damn near impossible.

      I'd imagine that similar environmental mandates to switch over to electric cars by 2035 will hit similar roadblocks when they find setting up charging infrastructure in the middle of nowhere is actually somewhat difficult and expensive.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        As elites gather in Davos, conspiracy theories gain traction online [cbsnews.com]
        "When some of the world's wealthiest and most influential figures gathered at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting last year, sessions on climate change drew high-level discussions on topics such as carbon financing and sustainable food systems.

        But an entirely different narrative played out on the internet, where social media users claimed leaders wanted to force the population to eat insects instead of meat in the name of saving th

        • Force them? No. Profit from problems instead of solving them until we wind up at that end? Yep.

        • Not being an idiot, I can read between the lines of "sustainable food systems" when they are discussed by people who own monopolies, industries, and whole countries. "eat the bugs and live in the pod" is a proxy for "we're going to squeeze them even harder and blame the environment or whatever else works for the reduced standard of living." Call me a nutter if you like, but the standard of living in the West has been falling against productivity for decades and I'm not going to let your lies blind me.

      • I'd imagine that similar environmental mandates to switch over to electric cars by 2035 will hit similar roadblocks when they find setting up charging infrastructure in the middle of nowhere is actually somewhat difficult and expensive.

        Why would setting up a charging infrastructure be difficult? Every habitable structure in the developed world has a supply of electricity, nearly all of which arrives via transmission lines. The ones that don't are a rounding error.

        We decided a long time ago that electricity is a necessity. It's unbelievably widespread. You can charge a vehicle literally anywhere humans live long term in the developed world. Sure it may take a while, in the most extreme locations, because the service lines can't delive

        • Putting a charger in is not the problem.

          Work out how much power is required to power a suburb's car fleet - then add that draw to the current suburb's power usage and see if the suburb supply lines can do it... then see if there is enough power generation in that country/state to do that for all vehicles.

          I think basic math will show that it is impossible with current infrastructure... everywhere.

    • The other to thirds have a plan and probably no real intention to implement it, the third we are talking about are just being efficient.

    • Lots of people have plans. Lots of people want to impose plans on others, who don't make plans. If those that don't have plans didn't say they were going to have them, why would they change their minds?

      Because stopping deforestation is good.

    • Do the forests they harvest grow back, or are they permanently gone? There's a big difference between those two outcomes.

  • It ends with a whimper, and a gasp.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 )

      This is the ultimate result of Milton Friedman's redefinition of business ethics as limited to "enhancing shareholder value".

      When this form of ethics is used in a business environment focused on quarterly results, long term visions like living on a habitable planet get thrown out the window

  • Strange (Score:3)

    by real_nickname ( 6922224 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @12:53PM (#63295871)
    Companies making money by cutting trees don't want to stop cutting trees? Wow. If this CEO has a good heart and reduce deforestation, its revenue drop then investor are angry and invest in another companies which doesn't mind cutting trees.
    • Actually, in the west, companies have moved to more farming of trees. Most of our hardwood is done that way.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 )

        Farming trees does have a place in a long term goal of reducing carbon in the atmosphere, but it also incurs some costs when business that happen to be located due to an abundance of resources (aka rain forests) do not want to bear.

        This is particularly noticeable when the former rain forests are being actively converted to range land for cattle, with their abundance of methane and lack of carbon capture

      • Unilever is a company from the west, they grow palm oil which is a major source of deforestation. The west has its share of deforestation.
    • Alternatively, these companies are on course to meet their targets of cutting down more trees than ever! (The one's they don't tell the press about). Simple solution: It's mostly rich countries degrading developing ones. Put environmental import tariffs on the materials & raise them until they're no longer financially viable. That'll set some targets for those companies.

    • Iâ(TM)d upvote this if i could.

      Deforesters are paid to deforest.

  • Nearly all linked to china (Score:3)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @01:18PM (#63295953) Journal
    Where does majority of soy beans go to? China to feed their pigs.
    Where does some 80% of Brazilian beef go to? China.
    I will lay odds that the 1/3 companies are Chinese as well.
  • "A Third of Companies Linked to Deforestation Have No Greenwashing Propaganda to Fool You"

    Seriously, if your business model is turning forests (that don't even belong to you) into lucrative private profits, then why stop? That's like asking casinos to cure gambling addiction... oh wait, we do that too.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      Deforestation almost always happens at the behest of the land owner, because the land itself (and specifically the desire to use the land for something else than forest) is generally the driving motivation.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I'm guessing that they non-US companies on the list don't care because they've bought into the notion that climate change is all America's fault and the US is to blame for third-world countries being stuck in third-world status and therefore it's not their problem.

  • They can just purchase carbon credits and they are golden

  • Cooking the books, much? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Land-clearing by humans accounts for almost a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.

    That one activity alone produces 25% of greenhouse gas emissions? Really? So all of the transport and manufacturing operations, power generation and heat generation account only for the remaining 75%? And livestock burping and farting? And ocean emissions? I'd like to go through all the /. stories citing greenhouse gas emissions figures during the last twelve months and see how many thousand percent they add up to.

  • You cannot expect evil... (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @04:42PM (#63296599)

    ... to police itself. That does not work and cannot work.

  • They only surveyed financial institutions. (Score:5, Informative)

    by w3woody ( 44457 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @05:44PM (#63296725) Homepage

    Looking at the actual data from the survey [globalcanopy.org] it appears they only surveyed banks, asset managers, transaction services companies, and pension funds.

    They did not seem to survey companies who are actually engaged in forestry projects, land development or in other areas of the economy where they actually deal with trees.

    I can't help but think this is noting but advocacy, and advocacy targeting banks to get them to divest any investments they may have with paper and wood product companies who aren't somehow publishing the right greenwashing phrases on their own internal publications--regardless of the care they may actually be taking of the land under their control.

    It's also worth looking at the actual questions [globalcanopy.org] asked--many of which may be important (such as indigenous rights), but which have nothing whatsoever to do with "deforestation." (For example, Indicator #6: Does the financial institution have a policy that requires clients/holdings to ensure their business operations and supply chains meet key labour standards?) It's sort of odd to me that we'd be holding banks responsible for the hiring practices or land acquisition practices of individual companies. And tying all this under the rubric "combating deforestation" seems a bit... dishonest.

  • Look, their behavior is unethical but legal. For such a company to pretend to care about the issue is disingenuous. I respect the companies that do not pretend to care more than I respect the companies that ignore the issue.

  • A third of companies refused to green wash themselves by making empty commitments.
  • It's the government's role to tell them how much they can log and when they need to end it. Otherwise it's like telling a tobacco company to please stop selling cigarettes if they feel it's not healthy to do so.
  • Land management policy in the developing world is not tech news. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

    So, why the hell is it here? Why the BS pretense that any of the entirely-political climate change crap that gets smeared all over here is tech news?

  • Thanks to increased CO2 the world is already about 15% greener than 20th century. Surely, the deforestation of the tropics is not a great idea along with totalitarian agriculture, mono crops (palm oil, soy, grains, no animal husbandry to restore the top soil).

    Still, do not worry too much. The average temperature of Earth is directly proportional to the total biomass of life. Cold is death, warmth is life.

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