Global advocacy organisation Mighty Earth has said it is “disappointed” by the new soy deforestation roadmap, warning it does not go far enough.
The roadmap published by the Tropical Forest Alliance in partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, which aims to put an end to deforestation in soy supply chain by 2025, was set out at COP27 this week.
The plan looked at the output from 14 major companies such as Cargill, JBS, ADM, Olam Agri and Musim Mas, with milestones including regular progress reporting.
As reported by Reuters, COFCO International CEO, Wei Dong said that the roadmap “represents a significant sector milestone in eliminating commodity-driven deforestation in line with a 1.5°C pathway.”
However, Mighty Earth founder and CEO, Glenn Hurowitz said that he was “disappointed but not surprised by that the roadmap is lacking much forward action,” and that this is “a starting pistol for deforestation, they’re telling their suppliers to get out the bulldozers while the bulldozers can.”
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WWF president and CEO, Carter Roberts added: “For soy, the roadmap includes deforestation but not habitat conversion.
“In so doing, it cherry picks which lands it will cover, leaving out significant parts of the most important landscapes, including 74% of the Cerrado in Brazil where 250 million tons of greenhouse gases are emitted on a yearly basis.”
Roberts said however, that these companies have “made progress in some parts of their business but we know they can do more in others, and if agricultural commodity traders don’t do more, particularly with soy in places like the Cerrado, then neither can thousands of companies around the world that buy from them.”
The Retail Soy Group – who’s members include major UK supermarkets such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Co-op – also criticized the new roadmap.
Its representative Will Schreiber said “by delaying a cut-off date for several years, but stating there will be one at some point, land owners are potentially being given a signal to clear as much as the can, as fast as they can, over the next few years.”
While he added that retailers had taken positive action to limit deforestation, with land clearing still possible, any targets “will probably not matter as we will have most likely crossed a tipping point resulting in the loss of these ecosystems forever.”
