Sustainable production and development

The 2022 Theme 2 Assessment of the Forest Declaration finds that the world is not on track to meet 2030 forest goals or 2025 zero-deforestation targets for agricultural supply chains. While commodity-driven tree cover loss declined by 6% in 2021 compared to 2018-20, rates remain higher than in any year before 2016. The report highlights a significant gap between government 'green growth' agendas and actual investment, noting that trillions of dollars are mobilized for infrastructure like the Belt and Road Initiative while global public investments in forest goals are only USD 2.3 billion per year. In the private sector, only a quarter of major agricultural companies have ambitious policies to eliminate deforestation, and less than 20% of companies disclosing to CDP report near full compliance. The extractives sector shows even lower transparency and a lack of explicit forest-focused policies. Grassroots resistance, led by Indigenous Peoples and local communities, has achieved some successes, such as a temporary moratorium on new concessions in Ecuador, but defenders face high rates of violence, with over 200 killed in 2021.

• Global deforestation rates indicate that the world is not on track to meet 2030 forest goals or the 2025 private sector target to eliminate deforestation from agricultural supply chains. Although commodity-driven tree cover loss decreased by 6% in 2021 relative to the 2018-20 average, rates are still higher than any year prior to 2016.
• To reach zero commodity-driven deforestation by 2025, the annual forest clearance for commodity production—which averaged six million hectares between 2018 and 2020—must decrease by an average of 1.2 million hectares per year from 2021 through 2025.
• There is a vast disparity between investments in economic sectors that drive deforestation and those aligned with forest goals. The Chinese-promoted Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has mobilized trillions of dollars for infrastructure across 147 countries, whereas global public investments in forest goals are approximately USD 2.3 billion annually.
• The agriculture sector has failed to make sufficient progress in removing deforestation from supply chains. Only 25% of major global companies in the sector have announced clear and ambitious policies to eliminate deforestation, and fewer than 20% of companies reporting to CDP claim near complete compliance with zero deforestation commitments.
• Corporate transparency and action in the extractives sector lag behind the agriculture sector. While 68% of 38 mining and coal companies reporting to CDP have a public commitment to avoid biodiversity loss, only 32% of those companies pledged to use the mitigation hierarchy approach.
• Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPs and LCs) are central to forest protection, with their managed lands sequestering more than twice as much carbon dioxide-equivalent as other lands. In Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, 92% of forested IP and LC lands are net carbon sinks, sequestering an average of 30 tons of CO2 per hectare annually.
• Environmental defenders, particularly those from IP and LC groups, face extreme risks. In 2021, over 200 land and environmental defenders were killed, and the mining and extractives sector is consistently among the deadliest for these actors.
• The Amazon Soy Moratorium is cited as one of the most successful market-based conservation initiatives, with non-compliant area representing only 2% of total soy grown in the Amazon Biome in the 2019/20 crop year.
• In Ecuador, mass resistance and lawsuits by Indigenous groups led the government in September 2022 to agree to a temporary moratorium on new concessions and projects in Indigenous territory and protected areas, putting 16 Amazonian oil blocks on hold.

APA

Forest Declaration Assessment (2022). Sustainable production and development. https://forestdeclaration.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/2022Theme2.pdf

Chicago

Forest Declaration Assessment. Sustainable production and development. 2022. https://forestdeclaration.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/2022Theme2.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Forest Declaration Assessment |title=Sustainable production and development |date=October 2022 |url=https://forestdeclaration.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/2022Theme2.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{forestdeclarationassessment2022sustainable, author = {{Forest Declaration Assessment}}, title = {{Sustainable production and development}}, institution = {Forest Declaration Assessment}, year = {2022}, month = oct, url = {https://forestdeclaration.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/2022Theme2.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }