DOSSIER Deforestation up rainforests. In the Amazon, according to WWF, this means that about 15 per cent of the deforested area (150.000 sq km) is in recovery. The appetite for enforcement is also key and was the case for Brazil’s modest success story. ‘It’s about the rule of law and whether the structures are in place,’ says Hansen. ‘That was important for Brazil and it did change behaviour.’

Baldwin-Cantello points to progress in recent years, including the commitment by many international companies, such as Unilever, Carrefour and Tesco to deforestation-free supply chains. ‘We need to see that change [expanded]. A lot of companies pledged to change their conduct by 2020 – many haven’t. Producers still have the option to move around. If you want to sell your food, you will find a buyer somewhere.’

Yet the activity in the Congo rainforest appears to reinforce this point; that the business model that produces palm oil, soya, timber, paper and pulp, far from being restructured by multinational companies, still has plenty of life in it. Not just that but it is being applied to new products. ‘The scale of deforestation linked to cocoa is becoming apparent,’ says Greenpeace’s Richard George. ‘Rubber is an increasing issue, as are maize, coconut, avocado and durian. You see the same business model applied time and time again: acquire land, clear it, plant it, clear it, sell it. Anything that becomes popular enough becomes a driver of deforestation.’ The reality is that a company facing the pressure of regulation or international scrutiny can still relocate much of its unsustainable practices to regions with less demanding legal structures. The debate on just how to tackle deforestation is often thrown back to the consumer: if we in the rich West did not choose to eat so much meat or buy furniture made from attractive tropical trees, the demand would not be met. While acknowledging the responsibility of individuals, George feels that international corporations must now take the main share of responsibility. ‘As individuals we have to eat less meat but it doesn’t just matter what we do, it matters what the food producers do.’

Greenpeace has little time for the business case that

2.0 (%)

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Average Annual Deforestation Rate

1991 – 2000

2001 – 2010 2011 – 2016

Argentina

Ecuador ia liv

B o la

Venezue

Peru

Brazil

Guyana ia lomb

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French iana

Gu says if one company does the right thing, it will lose out to a more unscrupulous company. ‘The idea that if you don’t do it someone else will is not true,’ says George. ‘What’s actually happening is that companies are spending millions of dollars getting us to buy stuff we didn’t know we needed. If they want to stop deforestation and they want us to keep buying food from them then they have to make root and branch reforms to their business models.’

He points out that fast food companies are normalising a Western-style, meat-based diet in developing countries, saying ‘It’s not about selling a token vegan burger, it’s about how we meet most of our food needs with plants and how they make that connection with their customers. There is no way we are going to protect the rainforests if we are squeezing the palm oil and meat out of its resources. We need to be asking if these companies are fit for purpose to meet the changes in our society.’

Hansen points to a similar mindset when it comes to how companies invest their profits. ‘If a company

Rainforests and climate change n The clearing and burning of tropical forests and peatlands – with the resultant loss of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (nitrous oxide, methane, and other nitrogen oxides) – accounts for about ten per cent of greenhouse gases from human activities.

Rainforests are thought to store at least 250 billion tons of carbon and are considered crucial to preventing dangerous climate change. The ability of rainforests to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into harmless carbon and oxygen is incorporated in the Paris Agreement. Forests are recognised as the most important natural carbon sinks; every year, trees collectively suck more than a hundred billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

A study by the Woods Hole Research Center, Rainforest Trust and Protecting, found that restoring and better managing tropical forests could provide as much as half the carbon emission reduction required to meet a 2°C climate target. ‘It is unlikely that fossil fuel emissions will fall by more than 80 per cent by 2050,’

the authors write, calculating that cumulative carbon emissions will exceed 400bn tonnes of carbon between 2000 and 2050, and a greater-than-50 per cent chance of exceeding a global warming of 2°C. So are we already committed to a warming of 2°C or greater?’ the authors write. ‘Not necessarily — absorption of carbon by tropical forests could offset much of the release of fossil fuel carbon, thus stabilising and then reducing the CO² concentration in the atmosphere within just a few decades, and providing a bridge to a fossil-fuel-free world.’

22 • Geographical