This podcast was originally published by Innovation Forum here.
In this podcast, Patrick Mallet, Director of Innovations at ISEAL, and Leony Aurora, Landscapes and Partnership Lead at the Tropical Forest Alliance, discuss some new guiding practices for companies engaging in supply chain landscape approaches and jurisdictional initiatives – including how actions can best contribute to performance and how to communicate the results of these actions.
ISEAL’s guiding practices are the result of work from the Tropical Forest Alliance, Proforest, WWF and CDP. They have pulled together information on what best practice looks like and how companies can engage in landscape and jurisdictional approaches. It is a concise, step-by-step guiding document that companies can use to think about what are the things that need to be in place and how can they make sure that their investments are having as big an impact as possible.
The guidance offers companies 4 clear steps for engagement:
- Where it makes sense to invest
- How to maximise impact through collective action
- How to measure effectiveness of your actions and landscape performance
- How to communicate credibly and clearly
The changing approach of companies towards landscape engagement goes side by side with the changing approach to supply chain action; the key shift in supply chain is the recognition that to achieve transformation companies need to work on their supply chain but not only to make sure that the commodities that they buy are deforestation-free, they need to assist and work with their suppliers to make sure that they become deforestation-free across their business, and to lead the way by example.
The other key shift in landscape engagement, is the realisation that to address deforestation at scale, companies need to work with farmers, smallholders, local communities, local governments – basically all stakeholders that are making use of and benefitting from the landscape that produces the commodities. So this is to say that companies need to support sustainable land use efforts beyond their supply chain.