Can corporate forest policies achieve global conservation objectives?

by Felix Zaussinger

“I have been obsessed with tropical conservation since high school”, Prof. Garrett disclosed when starting her talk. She has stuck with the topic ever since, and her passionate interest does not seem to have changed a bit over the course of her career. What changed, however, is the primary driver of tropical deforestation: while smallholder farming was the dominating factor in the past, large-scale commodity-driven deforestation for soy, oil palm, coffee and cattle farming now is of primary concern. A growing number of multinational corporations are recognising that they have to act upon the deforestation risk in their food supply chains. This development has resulted in a range of zero-deforestation commitments (ZDC), pledges to not source from suppliers who have recently deforested. Prof. Garrett’s talk focused on addressing two questions: First, how effective are ZDCs likely to be on a global scale and second, have existing food supply chain policies improved forest conservation and rural livelihoods?

How effective are zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs) likely to be?

This question was tackled in a workshop organized by Prof. Garrett, bringing together key stakeholders from academia, NGOs and industry. To answer it, they first had to agree on a meaningful definition of effectiveness. It turned out that it meant very different things to the various stakeholders: while for companies a ZDC is effective if it eliminates goods produced on lands that have recently been deforestated from their supply chain, scientists and NGOs may not consider the ZDC effective unless it achieves global conservation and livelihood improvements. In the end, effectiveness was defined on several levels: as compliance within the supply chain, proven additionality within a region (i.e., the policy has clear positive impacts) and the avoidance of policy spillovers globally (i.e., effects of a policy leak outside of the targeted domain).

Second, key criteria for determining effectiveness had to be established. Regarding deforestation reduction, ZDCs that articulate zero-net goals (allowing reforestation to compensate for forest loss), are likely to be less effective than those with zero-gross targets (prohibiting any deforesta-tion). Problems also arise from the lack of a universally applicable definition of forest: “There are literally hundreds of definitions around”, Prof. Garrett remarked. Another important criterion is the implementation mechanism. Most companies rely on certifications (e.g., RSPO, RTRS, UTZ) to implement their commitments, but these currently cover only a small amount of the world’s production. In addition, geospatial monitoring capacities and public regulations in the regions of im-plementation, as well as company market shares are crucial for rendering a ZDC effective.

Lastly, the team around Prof. Garrett assessed existing ZDCs based on data on 250 companies extracted from the Global Canopy Forest 500 data base. They found that by 2016, only ~20% of those companies had zero-net or zero-gross targets (the rest had no clear target at all). Although commitment stringency was rather high, Prof. Garrett concluded that the scope of implementation was severely flawed: “The goals are not implemented at all!” Clearly, as long as there is no robust way of matching deforestation to individual supply chain actors, compliance can’t be en-forced. In addition, the low market share of commodity trade covered by ZDCs represents a major challenge. For these reasons, the answer is that existing ZDCs are unlikely to be globally effective.

Have existing food supply chain policies (FSPs) improved forest conservation and rural livelihoods?

Based on a systematic literature review, Prof. Garrett’s team found that most existing studies on FSPs focused on the impact of certification schemes on conservation targets and were mostly constrained to coffee in Latin America. Moreover, most policies targeting soy and beef were based on market exclusion mechanisms. Overall, although livelihoods have been positively af-fected on average (depending on the specific farming system), most studies found no additional forest conservation. According to Prof. Garrett, selection bias is one of the main drawbacks of studying the impact of voluntary policies: corporations who voluntarily commit to ZDCs are already behaving in an environmentally conscious manner or have already cleared their land, resulting in no conservation additionality. In the end, geospatial monitoring capacities influence conservation outcomes for all FSP implementation mechanisms and point out to the fact that if properties can’t be tracked, there will neither be conservation compliance nor additionality.

Future research

Prof. Garrett just recently submitted three research grant proposals (one to SNSF and two to the ERC) to expand on her ongoing research on corporate forest policies. Moreover, she is keen to foster joint engagement in cross-sectoral supply-chain analysis: “There is an opportunity here to collaborate, to work with people that have experience in other types of supply chains.”, Prof. Garrett stated in closing her talk, pointing towards the ISTP Minerals research group. On behalf of the whole institute, I would like to thank Prof. Garrett for her compelling talk at the ISTP colloquium.