The Consumer Goods Forum's Forest Positive Coalition of Action has published its second Annual Report, outlining how coalition members are making progress on transforming palm oil, soy, paper packaging, and beef supply chains, as well as production landscapes.
Launched during New York Climate Week, the report, Driving Transformational Change Throughout the Value Chain, illustrates the positive efforts being made by members – representing a market value of more than $2 trillion – to accelerate efforts towards a forest positive future.
"Globally, we're losing an area the size of London every week," Grant Reid, CEO and President, Mars, Incorporated, and coalition co-sponsor, said at an event to launch the report. "We need to go beyond commitment – to action."
"This is really about transforming our businesses, and helping to transform our commodity supply chains," added Christine Montenegro McGrath, SVP and Chief Impact and Sustainability Officer, Mondelēz International, another coalition co-sponsor.
Building Trust And Transparency
According to the report, the coalition has advanced on its objective to create a stronger culture of transparency in the consumer goods industry by strengthening disclosure rates for a set of KPIs introduced in 2021.
Coalition members are now collectively reporting on 62% of total deforestation metrics, with ten companies reporting on at least 75% of the KPIs across commodities.
In addition, coalition members have started to share their performance reporting against important metrics such as the percentage of their supply from high-risk/high-priority for deforestation regions, and the performance of upstream suppliers’ against the Coalition’s Forest Positive Approach.
Members are also sharing their methodologies for reporting on each KPI, described as a 'critical step' in aligning methodologies for calculating metrics so that the coalition can accurately evaluate members’ individual and collective performance.
Earlier this year, the coalition expanded its commodity focus to include beef and other cattle-related products with the launch of its first Beef Roadmap, which followed collaboration and dialogue between coalition members, Brazilian meatpackers and civil society organisations.
“Our Coalition has made great progress in the past two years – developing ambitious performance metrics, raising awareness of critical issues, and transforming business practices – but there is still much more to do," commented Wai-Chan Chan, managing director, The Consumer Goods Forum.
"We hope this report will inspire continued dialogue and accelerated action around the global challenge of deforestation, recognising both the positive steps our industry is taking as well as the road to forest positive that still lays before us. It’s on all of us to keep going – the future of our planet depends on it.”
Transforming Production Landscapes
At COP26, the coalition launched its strategy for transforming production landscapes to forest positive by 2030, in areas equivalent to the coalition’s collective production base footprint.
This strategy includes a learning phase to introduce the concept of investing in production landscapes to some companies and strengthen others’ existing knowledge; it also requires all members to invest annually in initiatives that drive people, climate, and nature positive outcomes.
The coalition has continued to work with more than 200 stakeholder organisations from civil society, across the supply chain, production landscapes, and multiple levels of government to build its strategies, evaluate performance, and create the enabling environments necessary for forest protection, conservation, and restoration.
Coalition members include seven retailers, Carrefour, Jerónimo Martins, METRO AG, Sainsbury’s, Sodexo, Tesco and Walmart; and 14 manufacturers, Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) Sinar Mas, Colgate-Palmolive Company, Danone, Essity, General Mills, Grupo Bimbo, Mars, Incorporated, Mondelēz International, Neste, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Reckitt, and Unilever.
For more information, visit: www.tcgfforestpositive.com.
© 2022 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest A Brands news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
