A “Commodity First” Approach to Identifying Landscapes for Private Sector Engagement

This report by presents a “commodity-first” lens to identifying key landscapes where supply chain companies can make critical interventions to tackle deforestation. As supply chain actors will likely only engage with geographies in their direct supply chain, it focuses on commodity production and utilises recent data on drivers of deforestation to identify landscapes where deforestation is high, driven largely by the expansion of forest-risk commodities.

The study found that transformative impact will require commodity supply chain companies to broaden their efforts to complement individual supply chain action by engaging in jurisdictional approaches. Over a dozen landscapes are of particular importance given commodity production levels and associated deforestation. Amongst the top producing countries, 14 landscapes exhibit particularly high rates of deforestation, in total accounting for 32 percent of the total deforestation across Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America between 2010 and 2017.

The study also found that a relative lack of jurisdictional approaches in landscapes relevant from a “commodity-first” perspective could create challenges for deeper private sector engagement. Out of about 95 currently active jurisdictional initiatives, only 20 are in the top commodity producing regions. Further, 90 percent of top producing regions of key commodities do not have an active jurisdictional initiative in place.