Deforestation-Free Supply Chains A Promising Route to Achieve Climate Targets!

As countries strive to achieve the climate goals of the Paris Agreement, Dr Pratibha Baveja, Karishma Vohra, Sanjana Das and Vishal Dev highlight the often-ignored linkages that exist between climate and forests. Moving towards responsible sourcing of forest and agriculture-based commodities can facilitate the halting of deforestation and conversion in supply chains which can significantly contribute to achieving the global climate targets.

- Dr Pratibha Baveja, Karishma Vohra, Sanjana Das, Vishal Dev

Climate change is currently the foremost challenge that the humanity faces. Not only does it endanger human survival through physical threats such as the loss of forests, biodiversity, global warming, climate disasters, and sea-level rise, but also through social and economic threats related to risk to vulnerable communities, infrastructural damage costs, and so on. From identifying the imminent dangers and challenges of climate change at the Rio Summit in 1992 to the target of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5°C by means of the Paris Agreement in 2015, humanity has come a long way through collaborative efforts. Along the way, innovative economic and technological climate solutions such as carbon credits, renewable energy, and electrical mobility were invented that have supported climate mitigation. Despite these efforts, there are some issues that still require urgent attention of global leaders. The linkages between climate and forests often remain a complex and unaddressed issue. However, with the evolving global agendas, there is growing realization around the significant contribution that could be made towards achieving the climate goals and targets by moving towards sustainable sourcing practices that ensure the protection of existing forests.

Healthy Forests Lead to a Healthy Economy and a Healthy Climate 

Forests cover only one-third of the global land but their contribution to human life and welfare is far greater. Many communities and people depend on forests directly for their livelihoods while, half of the world's GDP is directly or indirectly dependent on ecosystem services provided by forests. The economic value of world's forests is estimated to be USD 150 trillion,² 90 per cent of which can be attributed to benefits of carbon storage that leads to climate regulation.³