Progress on the New York Declaration on Forests Goal 2 Assessment Technical Annex to the Five-Year Assessment Report

The report finds that current efforts by companies and governments are insufficient to meet the 2020 goal of eliminating deforestation from agricultural supply chains. While some progress has been made in palm oil and timber, commitments for soy and cattle remain low, and reporting on implementation is often inadequate and self-reported. The document highlights a shift toward jurisdictional approaches in producer countries and the introduction of demand-side regulations in consumer regions like the EU and California.

• Current efforts by governments and companies are insufficient to eliminate deforestation from agricultural commodity production by 2020, with a stagnation in the number of companies making new commitments since 2016.
• Commitments are uneven across commodities; palm oil and timber have higher adoption rates, while soy and cattle lag significantly despite high deforestation risks in Latin America. Only 12 percent of companies assessed by Forest 500 have a zero- or zero-net-deforestation commitment covering all sourced commodities.
• Implementation of commitments is hindered by a reliance on self-reported data and a lack of independent verification. While 81 to 94 percent of companies with commitments reported having traceability systems in 2018, the depth of these systems varies, and fewer can trace products back to the point of origin.
• Certification adoption varies by commodity: RSPO is widely used for palm oil, and FSC/PEFC for timber and pulp, but RTRS certified soy volumes remain less than one percent globally. Cattle products have the lowest certification rates, with only two Forest 500 companies using such standards.
• There is a growing trend toward jurisdictional and landscape-level approaches in producer countries to address systemic drivers of deforestation, with pilots active in Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Peru, Ghana, Ethiopia, and Kenya.
• Consumer governments are implementing demand-side measures, such as the US Lacey Act, the EU Timber Regulation, and the California Deforestation-Free Procurement Act, to ensure imported commodities are deforestation-free.
• Financial institutions are lagging in their efforts to address deforestation risks, with 65 percent of the 150 largest financial institutions assessed by Forest 500 lacking commitments for any forest-risk commodities they finance.

APA

Forest Declaration Assessment (2019). Progress on the New York Declaration on Forests Goal 2 Assessment Technical Annex to the Five-Year Assessment Report. https://forestdeclaration.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/2019NYDFGoal2.pdf

Chicago

Forest Declaration Assessment. Progress on the New York Declaration on Forests Goal 2 Assessment Technical Annex to the Five-Year Assessment Report. 2019. https://forestdeclaration.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/2019NYDFGoal2.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Forest Declaration Assessment |title=Progress on the New York Declaration on Forests Goal 2 Assessment Technical Annex to the Five-Year Assessment Report |date=September 2019 |url=https://forestdeclaration.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/2019NYDFGoal2.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{forestdeclarationassessment2019progress, author = {{Forest Declaration Assessment}}, title = {{Progress on the New York Declaration on Forests Goal 2 Assessment Technical Annex to the Five-Year Assessment Report}}, institution = {Forest Declaration Assessment}, year = {2019}, month = sep, url = {https://forestdeclaration.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/2019NYDFGoal2.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }