Environmental Leader

The Forest Footprint Disclosure Project in the UK will run in parallel to the Carbon Disclosure Project, with the aim to get corporations to disclose how their activities and supply chain practices lead to tropical deforestation.

Started with a $123,000 grant from the government and the support of 12 financial institutions, the Forest Footprint Disclosure Project will reveal corporations’ forest stewardship practices – or lack thereof – to investors on an annual basis.

The first report is due out in January. The group’s Global Forest Footprints Report (PDF) details how corporate activities affect deforestation.

The group defines forest footprint as “the total amount of deforestation caused directly or indirectly by an individual, organisation or product.”

The group says that deforestation is at the root of 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. It is predicted that the successor to the Kyoto Protocol will in some way, shape or form address deforestation.

The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, being debated in the Senate, has provisions for penalizing U.S. biofuel producers for the amount of forest land that is converted to agriculture use in developing countries. This is as a consequence of markets fulfilling the lack of supply of foodstuffs in the U.S. caused by devoting agrarian land to biofuel feedstock instead of grains for humans and livestock.