There is no solution to the growing climate and nature crisis the world faces without a solution to deforestation. Currently, two thirds of tropical deforestation is driven by agricultural expansion to produce commodities such as soy, palm oil, timber, and beef. Over the last decade leading companies, financial institutions and governments took on ambitious commitments to address deforestation in their supply chains and financing by 2020. But by the start of 2020 – the year the problem was to have been all but resolved – even the leaders have fallen well short of their targets, and tropical primary forest loss had increased by 44% since the signing of the landmark New York Declaration on Forests, announced by the Secretary General at the UN General Assembly in 2014.
Forest 500 assesses companies and financial institutions on the strength and implementation of their voluntary commitments and policies to address deforestation, including their reporting on progress. Since 2014, Forest 500 has identified the 350 most influential companies in forest risk commodity supply chains and the 150 financial institutions that provide the most finance to those companies, and annually assessed them on their publicly available14 commitments and policies to tackle deforestation in their supply chains or portfolios. They are assessed against more than 20 indicators per commodity each year, aligned with the principles and guidance of the Accountability Framework.
This report pulls out a snapshot of the entire database and highlights key findings from the latest assessments, as well as a series of conclusions and recommendations for the year ahead.