Title
The Forest First Approach: A New Framing that Addresses Supply Chain Risk and Reduces Deforestation at the Forest and Farm Frontier
Author(s)
Matt Leggett and Leonie Lawrence
Published
2021
Abstract
Despite a growing number of commitments and increasing efforts to address commodity-driven deforestation, forest loss across the tropics continues to rise. From 2010 to 2019, total tropical tree cover loss increased by three percent annually, reaching 13.1 million hectares in 2019. With increasing urgency around halting deforestation and responding to the climate emergency, there is a need to examine where and how we can re-focus our interventions to more effectively reduce commodity-driven deforestation and protect vital standing forests. In this report, we examine the interplay between deforestation trends and current implementation challenges, and propose a new risk-based framing for action on deforestation that prioritises efforts towards the forests and farm frontier – The ‘Forest First Approach.’
We find that an increasing proportion of tropical deforestation, and associated deforestation risk in commodity supply chains, is concentrated within relatively low production volumes originating in a small number of districts or municipalities at
the forest frontier. Just three percent of all municipalities and districts in tropical forest countries account for over 50 percent of tropical tree cover loss. Deforestation at the forest frontier is also associated with far higher greenhouse gas emissions and presents an outsized threat to primary and intact forests – just 34 subnational jurisdictions (states or provinces) account for only 31 percent of total deforestation, but 64 percent of remaining primary forests and 76 percent of the remaining intact forest landscapes in tropical regions, making these regions priority areas for action to mitigate climate change and address biodiversity loss. There is also evidence that deforestation is increasing outside industrial and large-scale concessions and farms on land managed by smallholder farmers.
Many brands, commodity producers, and traders have made considerable progress towards securing traceable and verified deforestation-free supply chains, supported by the actions of producer and consumer country governments. However, while essential and effective in places, the majority of the strategies relied upon to identify and tackle commodity-driven deforestation are designed primarily to mitigate corporate exposure to supply chain risk, rather than to actively protect standing forests – in fact, they work most effectively in areas where deforestation has taken place historically. The lag time between initial forest clearance and subsequent crop or commodity maturity is such that by the time substantive deforestation risk materialises in supply chains, forests have already been converted or degraded at scale. Global deforestation rates and lessons from the last decade of implementation have also taught us that actions taken to avoid or mitigate further deforestation and associated supply chain risks at this point are complex, expensive, and can be prone to failure.
The Forest First Approach is centred on the principle that prioritising efforts towards forest frontiers has the potential to aggressively address current deforestation whilst also providing pre-emptive protection against the future conversion of adjacent intact or primary forests. For this approach to be effective, we must consider where and how interventions are enacted to tackle deforestation, now and in the future, by first re-defining how deforestation risk within supply chains is understood, recognising the links between emerging production areas at the forest frontier and future supply chain risk; and second by re-thinking the framing of corporate responsibility to encompass support for measures beyond the immediate supply chain that pre-emptively protect intact and primary forests from future production.
This framing enables the public and private sector to proactively triage and target emerging deforestation risks before they are heavily embedded within supply chains and provides a lens through which emerging deforestation frontiers can be identified. This is critical to counter the impacts of two-tier markets, where there is progress among a subset of companies and a primary focus on lower-risk areas in one tier, and business-as-usual production and supply chains linked to unchanged (and often increasing) deforestation in higher risk areas in the other. This is particularly relevant in the context of emerging legislation in the UK, US, and EU designed to minimise the risk that products linked to deforestation are placed on the market.
The Forest First Approach is intended to be a set of guiding principles that are essential components of strategies to tackle the deforestation challenges we face. These are:
1. Prioritise actions to the forest frontier, where ‘embedded risk’ of deforestation in commodity production is highest and intersects with at-risk primary and intact forests. This has key implications for the strategies of importing countries and companies seeking to address their deforestation risks. It provides an opportunity to ensure measures support the protection of standing forests and in doing so reduce future risk while maximising contributions to climate and biodiversity goals.
2. Support smallholder farmers and local communities at the forest frontier. Securing a living wage for farmers at the forest frontier is a key building block to prevent future forest conversion, support farmers that underpin commodity sectors, and secure long-term sustainable supply. The horizon of corporate responsibility must shift to identify and foster stronger relationships with smallholder producers at the forest frontier, even in areas outside of current supply sheds.
3. Catalyse collective action, and collective responsibility, at the forest frontier. Collaborative and pre-competitive action can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of action at the forest frontier. This can result in cost savings by companies seeking to improve the sustainability of their supply chains. Cooperation with communities, local government, and NGOs, supported by donor governments and philanthropy at the forest frontier, can impact livelihoods, development, climate, and biodiversity conservation. Development assistance and philanthropy, particularly the use of sustainable and blended finance, has a critical role to play in de-risking private sector engagement and financial investment in these areas.
This framing, that supports an intensification of efforts at the forest frontier, has the potential to increase support for smallholder farmers; reduce supply chain deforestation risk whilst providing pre-emptive protection against the future conversion of adjacent intact or primary forests; and in doing so, achieves disproportionate benefits for mitigating climate change and protecting biodiversity. These inherent benefits are likely to represent significant medium- and long-term cost savings to the public and private sector and should be explored as a matter of priority.
Keywords
forest; farm; deforestation
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