Global Canopy’s 2021/2022 Annual Report

Global Canopy’s work and impact over the last financial year are highlighted in the organisation’s latest Annual Report.

Over the last financial year, protecting nature has made it into the heart of the political conversation about climate change. It began in April 2021 when President Biden used Earth Day as the backdrop for his first major political summit; continued through COP26 in Glasgow; and finished with a series of reports in February and March by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlighting the importance of nature in mitigating the climate crisis.

Global Canopy’s role this year, as highlighted in our latest Annual Report, has been critical to ensuring companies and financial institutions understand the role they need to play in ending tropical deforestation and protecting nature.

Forest 500

Focusing on deforestation, the current scale of corporate inaction was highlighted by Global Canopy’s latest Forest 500 report which was released in January. Now in its eighth year, it drew together publicly reported information from some 180,000 data points, assessing the policies and performance of the 350 companies and 150 financial institutions most exposed to tropical deforestation. It highlighted another year of non-performance with far too many organisations simply not doing enough, leaving both companies and financial institutions ill-prepared for the regulatory changes coming down the track.

But the report and the publicity surrounding it has highlighted a growing awareness of the issues. The launch webinar was our most successful to date and received considerable media attention with coverage in print, in broadcast and online. And more importantly, the data itself has been downloaded more than 1,100 times.

Finance Sector

The finance sector holds the key to halting and reversing deforestation. That’s why Global Canopy, alongside partners, created the Finance Sector Roadmap, launched at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021. It’s a step by step guide setting out a pathway for eliminating deforestation, conversion and human rights abuses from portfolios by 2025. The Roadmap was launched alongside a letter signed by 33 financial institutions with over US$ 8.7 trillion in assets under management, committing to tackle agricultural commodity-driven deforestation.

In February 2022, we shone a spotlight on UK pension funds in particular, publishing research together with Make My Money Matter and SYSTEMIQ outlining their exposure to deforestation and associated human rights abuses.

Trase

The role of the UK finance sector in funding deforestation was also  highlighted in our Trase Finance work that informed the WWFs Risky Finance report in September 2021. The analysis looked at more than 500 financial institutions and 2,800 funds in the UK with exposure to companies producing, trading, processing and financing Indonesian palm oil and Brazilian soy and beef through their lending and investment. It showed that UK financiers provided over £40 billion to companies at risk of causing deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia. 

Over the last financial year Trase has released supply chain data based on soy imports in France, the soy and beef trade in Paraguay, and the cocoa trade in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. By the end of March 2022 the Trase web platforms had 78,000 unique visitors and over the last financial year specific data was downloaded almost 900 times.

TNFD

A crucial focus of our work over the past financial year, was the launch of the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) in June 2021, which is backed by the G7. As a founding partner, Global Canopy has provided strategic direction, technical input and all communications support for the initiative, which is developing a risk management and disclosure framework for organisations to report and act on evolving nature-related risks. The first beta version of the framework was released in March.

Since the publication of the annual report, a second beta version of the TNFD framework has been released and as an official piloting partner, Global Canopy is taking a lead on the testing of the framework to ensure it is market-ready and scalable to drive change. Following the publication of the Finance Sector Roadmap, we have also published our first suite of sector-specific guidance, for pensions funds, showing them the path to deforestation-free portfolios. And we’ve completed work with the German government to assess its exposure to deforestation via its consumption of imported agricultural commodities.

The last financial year has seen rapidly growing market appetite for data and tools in the nature space as recognition finally builds that protecting nature is crucial to tackling climate change. Over the last year we’ve worked closely with governments in the UK and the EU, including providing input on new diligence legislation, and we’ve seen more interaction with companies and financial institutions than ever before. This is clearly welcome, but there is much more to be done, because as the IPCC report on climate change made clear we have “a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a livable future.”

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