World's Leading Consumer Goods Companies Put Transparency and Transformation at Forefront of Latest Deforestation Report

NEW YORK and PARIS, October 14, 2022 /3BL Media/ — The Consumer Goods Forum’s (CGF) Forest Positive Coalition of Action has released its second Annual Report, sharing the Coalition’s progress on commitments to remove deforestation, forest degradation, and conversion from key commodity supply chains.

• • The Consumer Goods Forum’s Forest Positive Coalition of Action, an initiative of 21 consumer goods companies, shares progress on removing commodity-driven deforestation from supply chains
  • With increase in disclosure rates on performance metrics introduced in 2021, Coalition members are now collectively reporting on 62% of a complete set of Key Performance Indicators, demonstrating progress to report against and launch additional measures of impact

• Report shows how the world’s leading initiative of consumer goods companies taking collective action on deforestation are taking individual and collective steps to transform palm oil, soy, paper packaging, and beef supply chains and production landscapes

Launched during an event at New York Climate Week, the report features new data to demonstrate collectively how all Coalition members are reporting on 62% of the Coalition’s ambitious set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

As the world’s leading initiative of consumer goods companies taking collective action for a forest positive future, representing a market value of more than USD 2 trillion, the report demonstrates the positive impact of continued collaboration to tackle deforestation, as well as encourages businesses and stakeholders to continue and accelerate efforts, particularly around supply chain transparency and public disclosure, towards a forest positive future.

Highlights of this new publication, entitled “Driving Transformational Change Throughout the Value Chain,” include:

• Building trust and transparency. The Coalition has advanced on its objective to create a stronger culture of transparency in the consumer goods industry by strengthening disclosure rates for the KPIs introduced in 2021 – a critical part of increasing transparency and measuring progress – and also introducing new metrics for evaluating progress across other areas of action. As a result, all Coalition members are now collectively reporting on 62% of the total deforestation metrics, with nearly half of companies reporting on at least 75% of the KPIs across commodities. This includes a 6% increase in collective disclosure rates between 2021 and 2022 on the original set of KPIs from 2021 for the 20 returning Coalition members.

• Evaluating performance and aligning methodologies. 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 also share their methodologies for reporting on each KPI, a critical step in aligning methodologies for calculating metrics so that the Coalition can accurately evaluate members’ individual and collective performance.

• Expanding commodity focus. After its conception, the Coalition decided to expand its commodity focus to include beef and other cattle-derived products. The Coalition launched its first version of the Beef Roadmap earlier in 2022, a major milestone built on collaboration and dialogue between Coalition members and Brazilian meatpackers and civil society organisations to align and accelerate actions in this sector which is at high-risk for deforestation and conversion.

• Transforming production landscapes. At COP26, the Coalition launched its ambitious 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.

• Leading collective action. The Coalition has continued to work with more than 150 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. Furthermore, the ongoing collaboration between Coalition members and other CGF Coalitions has continued to be a source for learning, progress, and action.

The publication of today’s report follows the release of the Coalition’s first-ever Annual Report in 2021, which provided a baseline analysis of members’ disclosure rates against their new, ambitious Key Performance Indicators. The latest report includes a progress update on this initial analysis, demonstrating increased disclosure rates against existing KPIs, and providing a baseline measurement of disclosure rates for new KPIs.

Wai-Chan Chan, Managing Director, The Consumer Goods Forum, said, “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. 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.”

The CGF members joining today’s announcement are 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. The Coalition is supported by its strategic and technical partners, Proforest and the Tropical Forest Alliance.

Grant F. Reid, CEO and Office of the President, Mars, Incorporated, the Coalition’s manufacturer CEO Co-sponsor, said, “Creating a forest positive future means completely transforming how we do business at every step of the value chain, from CEOs to smallholder farmers. We are proud to demonstrate our progress driving this transformational change throughout the value chain in this latest report, and invite everyone, from other businesses to civil society to consumers, to join us in our journey to forest positive.”

Ramon Laguarta, CEO, PepsiCo, and CGF Board Member, said, “Our PepsiCo Positive (pep+) transformation is working to accelerate our efforts to make the food system more sustainable, regenerative and inclusive. Through increased transparency in reporting, the Forest Positive Coalition has helped us to accelerate and scale critical work that delivers impact on the ground. Together we expect to move towards greater collective action and investment to transform agricultural production and production landscapes to support sustainable ingredients, and thriving communities and ecosystems. We hope more companies will join us in this journey so we can work together to drive positive impact for nature, people and climate.”

Ken Murphy, CEO, Tesco, and CGF Board Member, said, “Tackling systemic commodity supply chain issues requires strong, collective action from business, civil society and government. By working together, beyond individual supply chains, we can support local producing communities to implement more sustainable agricultural practices in a way that ensures livelihoods are protected, rights are respected and ecosystems are maintained and strengthened. The Forest Positive Coalition of Action’s second annual report highlights the progress being made in partnership with committed and engaged front-line organisations. This includes the work being done to embed the UK Soy Manifesto within soy supply chains, and the launch of the Responsible Commodities Facility, a new system of financial incentives which will directly benefit farmers in Brazil who commit to deforestation- and conversion free (DCF) soy cultivation. We know we have more work to do, but hope that this report demonstrates greater transparency in the actions being taken to tackle deforestation in our shared commodity supply chains.”

Ruth Nussbaum, Executive Director of Proforest, the Coalition’s technical and strategic partner, said, “Proforest is proud to be a strategic and technical partner of the Forest Positive Coalition. We believe that greater collective transparency and alignment is one of the most important ways to drive sectoral improvement and change towards greater sustainability. Knowing the complexities of company supply chains in various commodities, it is an exciting milestone to have 21 companies reporting against a single set of KPIs, focused on performance and transparency. It has also been important to work with CDP, AFI, and other key actors to scale impact across the sector and meet our shared ambition for a forest positive future. The strength of the Coalition is in sharing best practice and the strong push for transparency will hopefully translate into a broader adoption of metrics across the wider industry.”

Petra Tanos, Head of Private Sector Engagement and Strategic Partnerships of the Tropical Forest Alliance, the Coalition’s strategic partner, said, “The urgency of ending tropical deforestation to curb emissions cannot be understated: there is no pathway to the 1.5°C targets set out in the Paris Agreement without halting forest loss. As a multistakeholder platform, TFA is encouraged to see increased alignment and collaboration between companies, civil society organisations, and other actors through the Forest Positive Coalition of Action to address deforestation within commodity supply chains and beyond in broader production landscapes. We are calling to other companies, inside and out of The Consumer Goods Forum and its Forest Positive Coalition, to join these efforts, collaborate, and accelerate forest-related actions to move us towards a climate, people, and nature positive future.”

The full publication is available to view here. For more information, visit www.tcgfforestpositive.com.

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For more information, please contact:

Georgie Smith: georgie@forster.co.uk / +447528 856405 or Harry Day: harry@forster.co.uk / +4477 3432 9067

About the Forest Positive Coalition

The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) Forest Positive Coalition of Action is a CEO-led initiative representing 21 CGF member companies who are committed to leveraging collective action and accelerating systemic efforts to remove deforestation, forest degradation and conversion from key commodity supply chains. Launched in 2020, the Coalition represents a dynamic shift in the industry’s approach to stopping deforestation: by mobilising the leading position of member companies to build multi-stakeholder partnerships and develop effective implementation and engagement strategies, the Coalition brings together diverse stakeholders for sustainable impact. These efforts support the development of forest-positive businesses that drive transformational change in key landscapes and commodity supply chains, strengthening the resilience of communities and ecosystems worldwide. To learn more about the Forest Positive Coalition, visit www.tcgfforestpositive.com.

About The Consumer Goods Forum

The Consumer Goods Forum (“CGF”) is a global, parity-based industry network that is driven by its members to encourage the global adoption of practices and standards that serves the consumer goods industry worldwide. It brings together the CEOs and senior management of some 400 retailers, manufacturers, service providers, and other stakeholders across 70 countries, and it reflects the diversity of the industry in geography, size, product category and format. Its member companies have combined sales of EUR 4.6 trillion and directly employ nearly 10 million people, with a further 90 million related jobs estimated along the value chain. It is governed by its Board of Directors, which comprises more than 55 manufacturer and retailer CEOs. For more information, please visit: www.theconsumergoodsforum.com.