This week, our UK Food and drink and sustainability teams attended the Food and Drink Federation Networking Breakfast “Forests and Food: How to procure more sustainable commodities”.
It was an insightful session featuring a panel of experts exploring how businesses can reduce deforestation risks and build more sustainable supply chains.
Reducing deforestation risks and building sustainable supply chains
Here are our key takeaways from the discussion:
- Regulation remains a major driver, even with shifting timelines. Nonetheless, this should be viewed as a tool to set a common baseline rather than acting as an end goal
- Certification schemes are a valuable tool. However, they remain one lever that should sit within a wider risk based due diligence framework
- Local context matters. Understand which issues resonate most in the regions you source from and how reframing challenges. For example linking deforestation to carbon impacts can strengthen engagement
- People and nature are interconnected. Sustainability efforts must consider the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and other vulnerable groups within the value chain
- Industry wide collaboration is essential. Market transformation doesn’t happen in isolation, coordinated action accelerates progress
- Sustainability is both a risk and an opportunity. Linking actions to long term business resilience and cost management helps secure internal buy in
- Stopping deforestation is only the start. Restoration and regeneration activities must also be part of long term nature positive roadmaps
It was encouraging to hear about the progress already underway to halt commodity driven deforestation, and we look forward to supporting organisations as this area continues to develop.
If you’d like to explore this topic further, reach out to our Sustainability team.
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