Coalition-wide Actions

Coalition members are engaging with suppliers and traders and ask they implement forest positive business practices that are in line with the Coalition’s mission. This ask and subsequent support from Coalition members is essential in reaching our goal to help businesses operate completely deforestation- and conversion-free. Importantly, members seek to ensure that not only are the products they source from suppliers are forest positive, but that all the products the suppliers create are forest positive as well.

The Coalition has released three documents that can aid companies in their efforts to become forest positive businesses:

• Guidance for Forest Positive Palm Oil Suppliers (Own Brand Manufacturers
• Guidance for Forest Positive Soy Suppliers and Traders
• Guidance for Forest Positive Suppliers of Cattle Derived Products (Meatpackers in Brazil) (English)
• Guia para Fornecedores Positivos para a Floresta de Produtos Derivados da Pecuária (Frigoríficos no Brasil)

These documents detail clear proposed requirements for implementing a forest positive commitment for deforestation and conversion-free palm oil, soy and beef across companies’ entire commodity businesses. Known as the Coalition’s “Forest Positive Approach”, these are proposed requirements that Coalition members may set themselves and report against to achieve the Coalition’s commitments. They may also communicate these proposed requirements to their suppliers with a view to encourage suppliers to adopt the same approach along their supply chain. The five basic requirements of the Coalition’s “Forest Positive Approach” are for businesses to have:

1. Public commitment to ‘deforestation and conversion-free’ across entire commodity business including a public time-bound action plan with clear milestones
2. Process for regular supplier/producer engagement
3. Mechanism to identify and to respond to grievances/non-compliances
4. Support initiatives delivering forest positive development at landscape/jurisdictional and/or sectoral level
5. Regular public reporting against key KPIs

Businesses are invited to use these Guidances to inform their engagement with their palm oil suppliers (starting with own brand manufacturers), large soy suppliers and traders, and meatpackers in Brazil, and to also measure and assess their performance. 

Coalition members are focusing on areas where the Coalition can have the strongest impact. This means focusing on commodities that we know well and whose production methods we can have a real impact in changing, as well as concentrating our efforts in key production landscapes that need immediate action. Learn more about our production landscape ambitions, including our first collective investment in a landscape-level programme, the Siak Pelalawan Landscape Program, in our new short film from BBC Storyworks.

At COP26 in Glasgow, the Coalition launched its Landscape Engagement Ambition, which is to transform production landscape areas the size equivalent of the Coalition’s combined production-base footprint to forest positive by 2030. By collaborating with local stakeholders, organisations, and governments to support these initiatives, the Coalition seeks to use its influence as 21 of the world’s leading retailers and manufacturers to catalyse wider transformation in commodity supply chains, production landscapes and jurisdictions worldwide. Each Coalition member has committed to investing in local-level initiatives driving forest conservation, ecosystem restoration, and community inclusion in the production of the Coalition’s four key commodities: palm oil, soy, paper, pulp and fibre-based packaging, and beef. The initiatives included in the Coalition’s Learning Portfolio, which was created in 2021 and will be updated regularly, are listed here:

Coalition members will work with key stakeholders from governments and civil society. A key point in the Coalition’s approach is understanding that there are several drivers of deforestation, and while businesses can make a big impact in stopping them, they can’t do it alone. By working with governments to create enabling environments for forest positive policies and collaborating with NGOs to inform our approach and implement participatory strategies, we know our work will be stronger. Currently, the Coalition is initially focusing its government engagement efforts in Brazil, China, the European Union and Indonesia.

In December 2020, CGF members, including members of the Forest Positive Coalition, endorsed a paper from the Tropical Forest Alliance entitled, “Collective Position Paper on EU Action to Protect and Restore the World’s Forests: Proposal for a ‘Smart Mix’ of Measures” to encourage the European Union to adopt a smart mix of measures to address imported deforestation. 

Coalition members have a strong commitment to working with transparency and accountability. Regularly reporting on progress, consulting and collaborating with stakeholders, and adapting our approach to changing conditions are critical examples of putting this commitment into practice.

In September 2021, the Coalition issued its first Annual Report, which includes an initial baseline analysis of Coalition members’ progress advancing on their commitment to reporting publicly against 100% of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in the Commodity Roadmaps, for commodities material to their businesses. A full list of KPIs included in the Commodity Roadmaps is available here.

This publication follows the Coalition’s first-ever collective report, “Taking Root: Embarking on the Forest Positive Journey”, which offers a comprehensive look into the Coalition’s Theory of Change, Commodity Roadmaps, and Coalition-wide Actions.

To follow the Coalition members’ individual and collective progress publicly reporting against the Roadmap KPIs, visit our Communications webpage.