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The 2016 assessment of NYDF Goal 2 reveals a growing number of corporate commitments to deforestation-free supply chains, with 415 companies making 701 pledges. However, progress is uneven across commodities; palm oil and wood products have the highest commitment rates, while cattle—the largest driver of deforestation—has the lowest. Implementation remains a challenge, as few companies have time-bound actionable plans or full traceability to the production level. While companies in deforestation hotspots (Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Paraguay) are more advanced in operationalizing pledges, overall global impact on forest loss cannot yet be measured due to data gaps. The report emphasizes that private sector efforts require stronger support from financial institutions and improved forest governance from national governments to be effective.

This working paper by the Climate Policy Initiative, supported by PILAR and UNPAR, proposes a framework for district-level natural capital assessment in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. It argues that current land valuations underestimate the true value of ecosystem services and are hindered by inconsistent government regulations and data gaps. The paper recommends a pilot assessment in Kotawaringin Timur due to its high concentration of palm oil infrastructure and critical high conservation value areas.

Mighty Earth and an international coalition of civil society organizations have called on wind energy companies—including Siemens, Nordex, Suzlon, Iberdrola, and Gamesa—to stop sourcing wind towers from Korindo's subsidiary, KOUSA. The organization argues that the climate benefits of the wind energy generated by these towers are negated by the environmental damage caused by Korindo's deforestation and burning practices. In response, Gamesa, Siemens, and Nordex stated they are investigating the matter, while Clipper and Vestas confirmed they are not customers of Korindo.

The project developed a 2012 base year emissions inventory and projections to 2030 for Pakistan, identifying that emissions are expected to grow significantly without additional intervention. It analyzed mitigation options across agriculture, forestry, energy, industry, transport, and waste, concluding that implementing these measures could reduce emissions by over 100 megatonnes. A sensitivity analysis highlighted that GDP growth is a primary driver of future emissions, with higher growth rates leading to substantially higher GHG levels.

The report examines Colombia's struggle to transition toward green growth while remaining heavily dependent on oil and coal exports. It highlights a fragmented state where ministries tied to extractive industries often oppose environmental regulations. While the country has a low-carbon electricity grid dominated by hydropower, it is vulnerable to climate-induced droughts, leading to a push for thermal power and fracking. The report suggests linking renewable energy incentives to post-conflict rural development and leveraging a vanguard of sustainable private sector companies to drive a national transition.

The paper argues that current land valuation in Indonesia fails to account for critical ecosystem services such as carbon stocks and water provision, leading to suboptimal land-use decisions. It proposes a new valuation approach combining GIS, participatory methods, and expert opinion to align conflicting government regulations. The authors specifically highlight Kotawaringin Timur as a priority area for this approach due to its high deforestation rates, significant concentration of palm oil mills, and the presence of 27,502 hectares of high conservation value areas that are currently under-protected.

The study identifies that over half of Central Kalimantan's land area consists of High Conservation Value (HCV) zones, with approximately 61.6% of these areas currently threatened by planned development. The analysis focuses on five specific HCV categories—protected areas, large natural landscapes, transition ecosystems, rare/endangered ecosystems, and specific environmental services—to provide a scientific basis for the province's spatial planning and sustainable development goals.

Mozambique possesses high agricultural potential but remains a net food importer due to low productivity and high climate vulnerability. The report identifies four primary areas for improvement: simplifying bureaucratic tax administration to reduce investment costs, developing public financial incentives and public-private partnerships (PPPs) to mitigate risk for farmers, prioritizing critical infrastructure in energy and irrigation, and enhancing revenue-sharing mechanisms to protect natural resources. It highlights that administrative delays and high interest rates (often over 20%) are more significant barriers than tax rates themselves. The document also emphasizes the need for better community consultation in PPPs and the implementation of a more transparent fiscal rule for sharing extractive industry royalties with local communities.

The paper argues that land in Indonesia is systematically undervalued because current assessments fail to comprehensively account for ecosystem services and lack integration with spatial planning and licensing processes. To address this, the authors propose a district-level natural capital assessment pilot, specifically recommending Kotawaringin Timur due to its high concentration of high conservation value areas under plantation status and its potential for low-emission oil palm productivity gains. The proposed methodology integrates Ministry of Environment and Forestry Regulation No. 15/2012 and Ministry of Finance Regulation No. 98/PMK.06/2010, utilizing a combination of GIS, inventories, participatory approaches, and expert judgment to inform a 'Production and Protection' approach to land management.

The report provides a comprehensive overview of Brazil's rural land tenure system, tracing its history from colonial sesmarias to the 1988 Constitution. It highlights a fragmented system of multiple rural registries and cadastres that lack integration, which facilitates 'grilagem' (illegal land grabbing). The document details the specific regularization processes and obstacles for five key land categories: Indigenous Lands, quilombola territories, Conservation Units, agrarian reform settlements, and individual possessions on federal lands. It concludes by analyzing the complexities of implementing the 2012 Forest Code, particularly the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), in the context of collective land tenure and overlapping territorial claims.

The assessment finds that 60% of Central Kalimantan's land area contains High Conservation Value (HCV) areas, with 62% of these areas threatened by development. The report identifies critical hotspots in five districts and highlights logging and spatial planning as primary drivers of forest loss, which declined by 32% between 1973 and 2012.

Friends of the Earth International asserts that humanity has entered the 'Decade Zero', the final window to prevent dangerous climate change through drastic action. The document criticizes the neoliberal economic system and the power of transnational corporations, which it claims drive the climate crisis and promote 'false solutions' like carbon markets and REDD. It proposes a transition to 'energy sovereignty', agro-ecology, and community forest management, while demanding that wealthy industrialised nations pay their 'climate debt' to support developing countries.

The Cerrado, Brazil's second largest biome, is a biodiversity hotspot and critical carbon sink that has seen over half of its native vegetation cleared, primarily for soy and cattle production. While the Amazon has seen a decrease in deforestation, the Cerrado has faced increasing pressure, with deforestation rates surpassing the Amazon by 2011. The document highlights the biome's unique underground carbon storage and warns that climate mitigation policies favoring afforestation and fire suppression may inadvertently harm this fire-adapted ecosystem.

The Living Planet Report 2016 highlights a critical decline in global vertebrate populations, which fell by 58% between 1970 and 2012. It introduces the 'Anthropocene' as a new geological epoch where human activity is the primary driver of planetary change, pushing four of nine planetary boundaries—climate change, biosphere integrity, biogeochemical flows, and land-system change—beyond safe operating limits. The report emphasizes that current consumption patterns exceed the Earth's biocapacity, requiring 1.6 Earths to sustain annual demand. It advocates for a 'One Planet Perspective' to decouple human development from environmental degradation, specifically calling for the transformation of global energy and food systems through renewable energy and agroecological farming.

The 'Sustainable Landscapes in Eastern Madagascar' project is a cross-cutting mitigation and adaptation initiative requesting US$53.5 million from the Green Climate Fund. It employs a three-pronged financial approach: a US$15.3 million grant for public sector capacity building and sustainable agriculture, a US$35 million equity investment in a US$50.5 million private sector Investment Fund managed by Althelia, and a US$3.2 million grant to establish a national Climate Change Trust Fund. The project targets the Ankeniheny-Zahamena (CAZ) and Ambositra-Vondrozo (COFAV) forest corridors, aiming to reduce 10 MtCO2eq of emissions, provide 33 MW of renewable energy capacity, and benefit 562,000 direct beneficiaries. Key innovations include the use of a first-of-its-kind EIB Green/Climate Bond to mobilize private capital for a least developed country.

The Clean Air Task Force (CATF) opposes New York City's proposed biodiesel heating fuel mandate, arguing that increasing demand for vegetable oil-derived biodiesel drives the expansion of palm oil production. This expansion leads to the destruction of tropical peatland forests, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia, resulting in significant carbon dioxide releases and public health crises. CATF contends that even soybean-based biodiesel contributes to these impacts through global market fungibility and that current USEPA lifecycle analyses underestimate these greenhouse gas emissions.

The report establishes a business-as-usual (BAU) GHG emissions baseline for Pakistan, projecting total emissions to reach 768 Mt CO2e by 2030. Agriculture is identified as the largest emission source, accounting for over 40% of emissions in 2012. The energy sector is further divided into residential, commercial, industrial, transport, and electricity generation. The analysis highlights significant data gaps in agriculture, LULUCF, and waste sectors, and concludes that GDP growth is the primary driver of future emission levels, with a high-growth scenario potentially increasing 2030 emissions by 36% relative to the reference case.

The study finds that Resolution 3,545, implemented in 2008, led to a substantial reduction in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, primarily by restricting access to rural credit for cattle ranching. Using a difference-in-differences approach and 2SLS estimation, the authors estimate that total deforested area from 2009 to 2011 was approximately 60% smaller than it would have been without the policy. The results indicate that cattle ranching is highly dependent on official credit and that credit constraints in the region lead to reduced expansion at the extensive margin. In contrast, crop-oriented municipalities showed no significant impact on deforestation, as crop production is less dependent on official rural credit and more focused on intensification.

The Union of Concerned Scientists evaluated several global beef buyers using a 100-point scorecard to measure their efforts to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains. The assessment focused on five categories: ambition of commitments, time-bound implementation plans, compliance protocols, transparency, and traceability/verification. Results varied significantly, with Walmart achieving the highest score of 52, followed by McDonald's at 48 and Mars at 37. Several companies, including Burger King, Pizza Hut, Kroger, and Conagra, received a total score of 0, indicating a lack of documented commitments or practices meeting the scorecard's criteria.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) developed a scoring system to evaluate 13 large companies across the retail, fast food, and manufacturing sectors that source beef from South America. The methodology uses a 100-point scale across five categories: ambition of deforestation-free commitment, time-bound implementation plans, compliance, transparency, and traceability, monitoring, and verification. Scoring is based on official company sources and Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) reports, with a specific emphasis on whether commitments cover all cattle products and are global in scope.