Why corporate sustainability initiatives fail to reduce deforestation and what to do about it

Abstract

Deforestation is a complex environmental problem that has eluded a series of public policies and private‐sector interventions. The need to develop effective solutions to this problem is urgent because unabated deforestation exacerbates climate change, biodiversity loss, human rights violations, displacement of Indigenous communities, and breakouts of zoonotic diseases. This paper focuses on corporate‐led efforts to stop deforestation and identifies four reasons behind their failure: global trade and supply‐chain obscurity, power dynamics in supply chains, neglected consumption in emerging economies, and diluted goal setting. We call upon corporate sustainability scholars, specifically in entrepreneurship, marketing, strategy, and supply‐chain management domains, to dedicate efforts to develop novel corporate sustainability initiatives that can address the complex, rampant, and stubborn challenge of deforestation. We propose three broad areas of research to advance scholarship on the role of corporate sustainability in stopping deforestation: zero‐deforestation supply chains, zero‐deforestation consumption, and nature‐positive business models.

Sustainability assessment in cities in the eastern amazon

“…Therefore, soy produced on properties that have illegal deforestation cannot be exported, due to the zero-deforestation agreement (Heilmayr et al, 2020;Paim, 2021). Panwar et al (2023) cite in their study the changes caused in biodiversity, climate and life on the planet linked to rampant deforestation which, even with all the public policies implemented and incentives from the private sector, is still on the rise, in order to slow down this problem, more effective alternatives are needed, as well as meeting zero deforestation goals. In this study they point out areas that should be investigated to reduce deforestation with the aim of an economy and business aligned with sustainability.…”

Moving beyond “the” business case: How to make corporate sustainability work

“…Despite a proliferation of corporate pledges and programs to tackle climate change, more than half of all CO 2 emissions since the industrial revolution have occurred within the last three decades and they show no sign of decline. The world's biosphere is declining unabatedly (Barnosky et al, 2012;IPBES, 2019;IPCC, 2018), deforestation is expanding (Panwar et al, 2023), biodiversity loss is at an alarmingly high rate, oceans continue to be overfilled with plastics (Avio et al, 2017), and soil toxicity is rising (Loska et al, 2004).…”