2019 Goal 2 assessment

Key Messages

• The current efforts by companies and governments are not sufficient to eliminate deforestation from the production of agricultural commodities by 2020.
• The number of companies across supply chains that have commitments to reduce or eliminate deforestation from their supply chains has barely increased in the past two years. Many companies are yet to make such commitments for cattle and soy.
• Among the companies with a commitment, several have put in place the necessary processes and systems that facilitate commitment implementation and ensure compliance in the supply chain. Reporting on the execution of these processes and on their progress toward achieving sustainability commitments, however, remains inadequate. Unless companies disclose and report progress and enable independent verification, it is impossible to track the movement toward deforestation-free supply chain goals and measure the effectiveness of their efforts.
• An increasing number of civil society organizations continue to support companies in addressing deforestation in their supply chains. Support includes technical assistance in setting and implementing company commitments and in improving monitoring and verification of compliance.
• Efforts by both producer and consumer governments to enable the implementation of private-sector commitments remain limited and mostly in the form of high-level policies and pledges. There is, however, a growing momentum at the jurisdictional level in many producer countries around collaborative actions that can be taken as a holistic approach to addressing deforestation from agricultural production. The implementation of these approaches is still in the early stages and their impact on deforestation from agriculture is yet to be seen.