Mission

Forests cover almost 30 percent of the world’s land area, but they are disappearing at an alarming rate. Stopping commodity-driven deforestation is critical to addressing global climate change, preserving biodiversity and ensuring reliable and sustainable raw materials and supply chains. Everyone – from the private sector to governments to NGOs, smallholder farmers and local stakeholders – has a role to play. Companies play an important role but cannot stop deforestation alone.

To continue driving our work on deforestation, the CGF has launched the Forest Positive Coalition of Action, comprised of ambitious member companies committed to moving efficiently and quickly towards a forest positive future, and who understand the need to work collaboratively with multiple stakeholders.

These 21 companies, with their collective market value of more than US$1.8 trillion, are in a leading position to leverage collective action and accelerate systemic efforts to remove deforestation, forest degradation and conversion from key commodity supply chains.

Hear our CGF Board Co-sponsors, Alexandre Bompard of Carrefour and Grant F. Reid of Mars, International, and our Managing Director, Wai-Chan Chan, introduce the Coalition’s ambitions.

The Forest Positive Coalition of Action will use our collective influence to drive and accelerate efforts to remove deforestation from not only our own commodity supply chains, but across our suppliers’ entire supply base. We believe that our collective reach will enable us to make progress on four goals:

1. Accelerate efforts to remove commodity-driven deforestation from our individual supply chains.
2. Set higher expectations for traders to act across their entire supply base.
3. Drive transformational change in key commodity landscapes.
4. Define measurable outcomes on which all members agree to track and report individually and collectively.

Forests are precious ecosystems that need to be preserved. They provide livelihoods to communities, sustain habitats for wildlife species, store carbon emissions, offer watershed protection and prevent soil erosion. Consequently, there are a variety of factors that contribute to deforestation. For us, being forest positive is therefore about leveraging forest-related, nature-based solutions to launch innovative solutions for deforestation-free commodity supply chains that boost economic development and improve livelihoods.

Now more than ever, our work takes on greater precedence in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. We must ensure that efforts to protect forests are part of the global response. This response requires all actors with an interest in mainstreaming the issue of deforestation and who are committed to being part of the solution to come together. Our Coalition is committed to doing its part.