Using supply chain data to monitor zero deforestation commitments: an assessment of progress in the Brazilian soy sector
Journal article, 2020
Zero deforestation commitments (ZDCs) are voluntary initiatives where companies or countries pledge to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains. These commitments offer much promise for sustainable commodity production, but are undermined by a lack of transparency about their coverage and impacts. Here, using state-of-the-art supply chain data, we introduce an approach to evaluate the impact of ZDCs, linking traders and international markets to commodity-associated deforestation in the sub-national jurisdictions from which they source. We focus on the Brazilian soy sector, where we find that ZDC coverage is increasing, but under-represents the Cerrado biome where most soy-associated deforestation currently takes place. Though soy-associated deforestation declined in the Amazon after the introduction of the Soy Moratorium, we observe no change in the exposure of companies or countries adopting ZDCs to soy-associated deforestation in the Cerrado. We further assess the formulation and implementation of these ZDCs and identify several systematic weaknesses that must be addressed to increase the likelihood that they achieve meaningful reductions in deforestation in future. As the 2020 deadline for several of these commitments approaches, our approach can provide independent monitoring of progress toward the goal of ending commodity-associated deforestation.
environmental governance
sustainability standards
transparency
agriculture
soy
supply chain
Author
Erasmus K.H.J. Zu Ermgassen
Universite catholique de Louvain
National Fund for Scientific Research
Ben Ayre
Global Canopy Programme
J. Godar
Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)
Mairon G. Bastos Lima
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Physical Resource Theory
Simone Bauch
Global Canopy Programme
R. Garrett
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH)
Jonathan Green
University of York
Michael J. Lathuilli re
Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)
Pernilla Löfgren
Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)
Christina Macfarquhar
Global Canopy Programme
P. Meyfroidt
National Fund for Scientific Research
Universite catholique de Louvain
C. Suavet
Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)
C. West
University of York
T. A. Gardner
Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)
Environmental Research Letters
17489318 (ISSN) 17489326 (eISSN)
Vol. 15 3 035003Subject Categories
Other Mechanical Engineering
Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Environmental Management
DOI
10.1088/1748-9326/ab6497