Regenerative Land Use and Soil Health

Restoring Forests and Landscapes: The key to a sustainable future

The Bonn Challenge and New York Declaration on Forests’ goal of restoring 350 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 could yield up to $9 trillion of net economic benefits, not to mention the incalculable value from vital ecosystem services restored, but how do we get there? This report from the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration (GPFLR) emphasises the need for bold restoration targets to achieve the objectives of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. It provides facts and figures that will help you to understand the damage from degradation; the benefits of restoration; and brief case examples to highlight what restoration in action looks like.

InfoFLR

This resource from IUCN is a good source for news, resources, and updates on forest landscape restoration (FLR) around the globe, and will help you to build your knowledge and understanding of FLR trends in a specific region. InfoFLR has created detailed nation profiles that include discrete country-specific information, national domestic targets, and details and status updates on restoration policies and programs.

Global Land Outlook: Land Restoration for Recovery and Resilience

This comprehensive guide from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification can help change agents, policy advocates and lobbyists, and corporate strategic planners to understand the rationale, enabling factors, and diverse pathways by which land degradation can be reduced and reversed. The guide is divided into three parts: Land In Focus examines the current global land use system, including its status, dynamics, trajectories, and the consequences for people and the planet; Restoration Around the World highlights and explores the range of land restoration activities currently happening around the world; and Framing the Land Restoration Agenda demonstrates the feasibility and applicability of different pathways to recovery and resilience.

Science Based Targets

Building on the momentum of the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) is a collaboration of 45+ global non-profits and mission-driven organizations working together to develop guidance to set science-based targets for all of Earth’s systems. Science Based Targets has created a five-step target-setting framework that helps you to assess; interpret and prioritise; measure, set, and disclose; act upon; and track your science-based goals. They have also created sector-specific guidance and target monitoring for companies and financial institutions.

At present, Science Based Targets helps companies to develop their goals based on the latest science: SBTi specifically focuses on GHG emission reduction goals, and SBTN specifically focuses on nature positive goals, with target-setting guidance for land, biodiversity, and freshwater. Their respective websites provide comprehensive resources, cases, and support for taking credible action.

Leading a Sustainable Land Use Transition

This CEO briefing explains how unsustainable land use is threatening the health of the planet, its people, and economies, and explains the patterns of behaviour contributing to this issue. It explains how it is crucial for the business community to contribute to positive solutions, and highlights some of the key actions that industries can undertake to lead the transition. This primer is a good starting point for introducing business leaders to the topic of land use and the role they can play to creating sustainable built environments.

Global Land Outlook: Land Restoration for Recovery and Resilience

This comprehensive guide from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification can help change agents, policy advocates and lobbyists, and corporate strategic planners to understand the rationale, enabling factors, and diverse pathways by which land degradation can be reduced and reversed. The guide is divided into three parts: Land In Focus examines the current global land use system, including its status, dynamics, trajectories, and the consequences for people and the planet; Restoration Around the World highlights and explores the range of land restoration activities currently happening around the world; and Framing the Land Restoration Agenda demonstrates the feasibility and applicability of different pathways to recovery and resilience.

Landscapes for Life: Approaches to landscape management for sustainable food and agriculture

Every business, knowingly or otherwise, shapes the land beneath it and around it. If you are looking to achieve a better understanding of the positive impacts your company can have on the land, this guide from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) provides summary information on a range of best-practices for land use, including territorial developlment, forest and landscape restoration, and integrated peri-urban systems. The document also includes a variety of short case studies highlighting FAO approaches in action.

SBTN Natural Lands Map

This interactive map from the Science Based Targets Network can help you understand the scale and location of human-caused land degradation through pollution, urban expansion, agriculture, and extractive industry. This detailed map - created via remote sensing data -conservatively estimates non-natural lands. The map has two filter options: the first shows the world divided into natural and non-natural land area, and the second shows the natural areas based on classification (e.g. forests, wetland forests, short vegetation). This information provides a baseline that companies can use to estimate conversion of natural lands from a 2020 baseline with their current production unit or sourcing area data. It also allows companies to set 'no conversion of natural ecosystem' targets under SBTN. However, it does not offer conversion monitoring over time, nor does it intend to define ecosystems or assess their quality. This tool will be most useful to sustainability and supply chain practitioners seeking to measure value chain related impact on natural lands and set goals around nature.

Environmental Impacts of Food Production

Over the last few centuries, wild habitats such as forests, grasslands, and shrubbery have been transformed by humanity to create space for agriculture. In fact, as explained in this comprehensive article, half of the world's land is now used for agriculture. This resource features charts, table, and summaries to highlight the environmental impacts of food and agriculture, such as their impact on greenhouse gases, land use, freshwater use, eutrophication, and biodiversity. It also highlights a range of solutions for reducing these impacts. This resource may help you to better understand how the land footprint (and their distribution) differs between food types, and to identify areas where your business can directly or indirectly intervene to support positive change.

The Accountability Framework

This framework from the Accountability Framework initiative (AFi) features twelve core principles for building, strengthening, and supporting ethical supply chains. These principles serve as a guide for companies and others in setting, implementing, monitoring, and reporting on effective goals and commitments on deforestation, ecosystem conversion, and human rights in ethical supply chains. AFi has also developed operational guidance to help you put the core principles into practice; a self-assessment to help you with benchmarking your goals, policies, and practices against the framework; and other related tools and guides.

Deforestation-free finance: a guide on tools and frameworks for financial institutions

This report from WBCSD can help you understand how banks and investors can avoid financing deforestation. The report provides an overview of three key frameworks for assessing and disclosing deforestation risk exposure in your investment and lending portfolios, and reviews the assessment and data collection tools you can use to support this work. It also highlights tools for aligning with important global frameworks for nature, such as the Taskforce for Nature-Related Financial Disclosure (TNFD) and the Global Biodiversity Framework. This report will be most useful to sustainability practitioners working in the financial sector who want to quickly identify resources to support deforestation-free finance.

Forest Pathways Report 2023

A global goal was set at the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. This comprehensive report from WWF can help you understand why we are off track from that goal and how we can get back on track. It provides an analysis of deforestation and restoration trends and proposes a blueprint of essential measures to save forests by 2030. Beyond sustainability, this resource contains important insights relevant to supply chain management, public and community relations, and strategy.

Forest 500: A decade of deforestation data

This annual report from Global Canopy can help you understand the lack of progress on market-driven deforestation and what companies and financial institutions can do to get back on track. The report highlights leaders and laggards on deforestation over the past decade and highlights ten lessons that can help companies to take meaningful action. These lessons include recognising the inefficacy of voluntary action, the need for transparent reporting, and the importance of recognising deforestation as being central to the climate action agenda. These insights will be most useful to sustainability and supply chain teams whose value chains are linked to forest products.

The State of the World’s Forests 2022

This report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation will show you how we can work with forests to help address the climate and biodiversity crises. It outlines three interrelated pathways. They are stopping deforestation and maintaining existing forests; restoring degraded lands and expanding agroforestry; and rethinking how we can use forests resources sustainably. The report demonstrates the feasibility and benefit of these pathways and outlines some of the steps both private and public sector can take toward them. These insights will be most useful to procurement and supply chain managers whose value chains rely on the ecosystem goods and services of forests.

The Forest Transition: From Risk to Resilience

Forests are gaining increasing attention for their central role in the resilience of our global economy. This report from CDP can help you understand the importance of addressing deforestation for your business. It explores deforestation risks, current progress on eliminating deforestation, and the essential actions companies need to take to remove deforestation from within their supply chains. It will be most useful to sustainability and supply chain management teams, especially those working in industries with ‘hidden dependencies’ on forests, such as chemicals, retail, and consumer goods.

Deforestation Monitoring and Response Framework

The Forest Positive Coalition has created a framework to proactively monitor and address deforestation and peat non-compliances. The framework is a living document, and it aims to create a more efficient and effective approach for dealing with non-compliance with 'No Deforestation or Peat Development' commitments. It has two sections: guidance on minimum requirements for monitoring, and a response framework that clarifies roles and responsibilities across the supply chain.

Although the scope of the monitoring is for palm oil only, the learning outcomes will be shared for other commodities across the Forest Positive Coalition members.

Deforestation Scorecard: Assessing Corporate Action on Deforestation Amid Growing Regulatory Risk

Ending deforestation is necessary to meet net zero targets, and yet commodity production continues to drive forest loss. In response, regulations are rapidly evolving, creating transition risks for businesses worldwide. This report from Ceres can help you mitigate this risk. It demonstrates what a robust no-deforestation policy looks like, and features a Deforestation Scorecard that examines no-deforestation policies on four measures: cross-commodity coverage, geographic coverage, the presence of a time-bound commitment, and the target deforestation cutoff date. It also uses this scorecard to assess the deforestation policies of 53 large companies. This resource will be most useful to supply chain management, legal, and enterprise risk teams.

Forests Under Fire: Tracking progress on 2030 forest goals

This resource from the Forest Declaration Assessment can help you to better understand the status of international efforts to halt and reverse forest loss and degradation by 2030. The report indicates whether the world, regions, and individual countries are “on track” or “off track” towards 2030 forest goals using the most up-to-date annual data, and it reveals that global goals to protect, conserve, and restore forests are becoming increasingly distant from reality. The report explains the state of global progress towards eliminating deforestation and forest degradation by 2030; the state of tree cover loss due to fires; the state of efforts to protect and conserve biodiversity in forests; and more. It also provides high-level recommendations to help bridge the gaps in progress.

Why Preserving Forest Integrity Is As Vital As Preventing Deforestation

This quick read from the World Resources Institute can help you to understand the importance of forest integrity, which refers to the health of standing forests, including their ability to store carbon and protect biodiversity. This article explains the concept of forest integrity; identifies the greatest threats to forest integrity; explains where forest integrity is most at risk; and identifies actions required to protect high-integrity forests and restore other forests.

Global Forest Watch

This online platform provides data and tools for monitoring forests, and will help you to access near real-time information about where and how forests are changing around the world. The maps features allow you to visualise and analyse historical trends in tree cover loss and gain since 2000, view land cover, and toggle for various country-specific climate and biodiversity factors. This tool may be particularly helpful to sustainability, oversight, and procurement professionals who are responsible for monitoring illegal deforestation, defending land and resources, and ensuring commodities are sustainably sourced.

Investor Guide to Deforestation and Climate Change

This introductory guide from Ceres can help you to understand and act on deforestation-driven climate risks across your portfolios. It features a framework to help investors understand and engage on deforestation-driven climate risks across portfolios. It also outlines key expectations that investors should be looking for in corporate climate and deforestation commitments, and provides example questions for company and sector engagements.

Finance Sector Deforestation Action (FSDA): Expectations for Commercial and Investment Banks

This paper from the FSDA and the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) was created to set out investor expectations for banks on eliminating commodity-driven deforestation, conversion, and associated human rights abuses in their lending and investment practices. It explains investor implementation expectations for commercial and investment banks in relation to risk assessment, commitment and governance, expectations of clients, monitoring and compliance, and disclosure.

Although specifically created for banks, this paper's lessons are also applicable to other financial institutions and investors.

From Commitments to Action at Scale: Critical steps to achieve deforestation-free supply chains

The CDP is a not-for-profit charity that runs the global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states, and regions to manage their environmental impacts. In addition to their work on carbon and climate change, they have created a range of resources to help your company take action on deforestation. Their Global Forests Report is a good resource for helping change agents understand the scale, scope, and rigour of actions required to tackle deforestation so that they can better summarise and translate these findings for executives and boards. Building off previous CDP and Accountability Framework Initiative (AFi) analysis, this report highlights areas of progress and gaps in performance and provides insights that can help your company learn from the progress of industry peers. Each section of the report summarizes key elements of the Accountability Framework’s Core Principles and guidance followed by corresponding analysis of company performance using CDP data.

Time For Transparency: Deforestation- and conversion-free supply chains

This report from CDP can help you understand the current level of corporate disclosure on deforestation- and conversion-free (DCF) supply chains. It shows that while achievement and disclosure of DCF supply chains is possible, it remains uncommon. Of the 881 companies that reported on deforestation to CDP in 2023, only 21% made sufficient disclosures and only 7% demonstrated at least one DCF commodity supply chain. The report explains progress on different commodities and the common issues with disclosure quality; highlights the success factors of those companies leading on DCF; and provides six recommendations for improved reporting. These insights will be useful to supply chain and sustainability practitioners in organisations with commodity supply chains.

CTrees

This interactive map from CTrees can help you understand the scale of tropical forest degradation around the world. It uses artificial intelligence and advanced satellite data to track tree cover loss and forest degradation since 2017 down to 5 square meter areas. Tree cover loss refers to the complete clearing of forests, while forest degradation refers to a loss of trees, carbon, and other ecosystem services. Both are driven by logging, fire, and road construction. The map’s filters allow you to visualise tree cover loss or forest degradation by type. It also provides country-level data on the total hectares of stable forest, tree cover loss, and forest degradation. This map will be most useful to supply chain management and risk teams whose value chains are connected to tropical forests.

Deforestation Disclosure Guide for Financial Institutions: Towards integrated nature and climate-related financial disclosure

This guide from WBCSD can help you understand how deforestation creates risk for financial institutions and how to meet growing expectations for disclosure on deforestation. Written for those working on sustainability at banks, insurers, and asset management firms, the guide begins by providing a background on the interconnection between nature and climate risks; deforestation risk in portfolio companies; and sustainability-related disclosure frameworks. Next, it explores two deforestation-specific disclosure frameworks: the CDP Financial Services questionnaire and the Deforestation-free Finance Roadmap. It then examines how deforestation-risk can be integrated into IFRS S2, TNFD, and select US and European disclosure regulations. It concludes by outlining key challenges and four steps that financial institutions can take immediately to assess and reduce deforestation risks in their portfolios.

Forest Declaration Dashboard

This data dashboard was created by the Forest Declaration Assessment and Systems Change Lab. It tracks the progress of countries on their commitments to end deforestation by 2030, which were made at COP26 in 2021 under the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use. The dashboard showcases progress on the six articles outlined in the declaration, including ecosystems, trade, livelihoods, agriculture, increasing finance, and aligning finance. For each article, the dashboard provides a summary of collective progress revealing that, in all cases, it is insufficient. The tool also allows users to explore progress on the indicators at a country level. This tool may be particularly useful to procurement and supply chain professionals assessing sourcing regions or sustainability professionals monitoring policy and financing developments around deforestation.

The secret world beneath our feet is mind-blowing – and the key to our planet’s future

Healthy soil is essential for healthy plant growth, human nutrition, and water filtration, but what exactly is soil? This fascinating article from George Monbiot can help you to understand the complexity and significance of soil; the consequences of our agricultural practices on soil health, and how they are contributing to a looming (and global) food crisis; and the actions and innovations required to restore, preserve, and advance good soil health.

A Global Standard for the Identification of Key Biodiversity Areas

This guidebook from IUCN sets out globally agreed criteria for the identification of Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) worldwide. The standard establishes a science-based, threshold-informed process for KBA identification, and will help you to grow your understanding of why particular sites are especially important for preserving vital biodiversity, as well as how to identify vulnerable and at-risk ecosystems.

Guidelines on Business and KBAs: Managing Risk to Biodiversity

This report builds on IUCN's global standard for the identification of Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) and provides recommendations that will help your business to manage its direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts on KBAs. The guide explains how KBAs are identified and provides an overview of how the guidelines can be applied in different contexts. This report will be particularly useful for business professionals whose work is related to designing, implementing, and reviewing risk and impact mitigation standards.

The Protected Areas Benefits Assessment Tool

This practical tool from WWF can help you understand how to collect information on the benefits protected areas. It provides an introduction to protected areas, and explains how why and how to use the PA-BAT assessment tool. The tool is designed to be used with stakeholders to identify the values that should be prioritised in protecting natural spaces and the range of benefits that this protection provides. It can also be used to guide future monitoring and assessment. This tool will be most useful to protected area managers, sustainability practitioners focusing on biodiversity, and community relations managers.

Protected Planet: Discover the world's protected and conserved areas

This tool from Protected Planet can help you look up protected and conserved areas around the globe. It compiles data from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), the World Database on Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs), the Global Database on Protected Area Management Effectiveness (GD-PAME), and other sources. The tool allows you to explore these protected areas through an interactive global map of eight thematic areas. This information will be most useful to business planning and risk teams; for instance, it is used in the extractive and finance sectors to help identify project-related biodiversity risks and opportunities.

Risk Management in Protected Areas

This report can help you to better understand the role investors need to play to help halt and reverse biodiversity loss through their investment policies, capital allocation, and portfolio stewardship processes. Developed by ShareAction and the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), the report explains the biodiversity crisis and how protected areas are a key conservation tool; introduces different types of protected areas; and explains why investors should care about protected areas. It also identifies practical steps that investors should take to mitigate risks of investing in and around protected areas.

The frontline of conservation: how Indigenous guardians are reinforcing sovereignty and science on their lands

Indigenous land defenders often patrol large tracts of land and coast that don't otherwise receive sufficient monitoring from governments. This fascinating article from the Narwhal highlights how Indigenous guardians are leading efforts to catch poachers, document species, and save lives along the coast of British Columbia - all while filling major gaps in knowledge and conservation. This resource can help you to understand the immense (and unique) value that Indigenous communities provide towards protecting natural spaces, and the importance of supporting these efforts as well as Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination.

This Canadian river is now legally a person. It’s not the only one.

This article from National Geographic can help you understand the novel and increasingly important concept of legal rights for nature. It begins with an example of a Canadian river that has been granted legal personhood, which means it has been appointed a guardian who will advocate on the river’s behalf and protect it from human impacts. The article explains how legal rights for nature bridges Western and Indigenous legal systems and reconceptualises the relationship between people and rivers or forests. It also explains how non-extractive industry such as tourism can support reconciliation and become an alternative income source for local communities in protected areas. These insights may be most useful to sustainability and community relations teams interested in learning how legal rights for nature may affect their operations and value chain activities.