Launched in 2019, the 2BT program set an ambitious goal: plant two billion saplings by 2031 as part of Canada’s plan to reach net-zero emissions and rehabilitate fire-damaged forests. But progress lagged from the start. According to the auditor general, only 2.3% of promised trees were planted in the program’s first two years. Annual targets were missed again in 2023, the program’s third planting season.

“The 2 Billion Trees program was riddled with challenges . . . its reputation became tarnished,” says Rachel Plotkin, boreal manager at the David Suzuki Foundation. “I don’t know how seriously it was treated.”

Critics called the initiative “broken” and a “failure.” At the same time, Plotkin says, the program represented a commitment, and despite bad press the abrupt end surprised many, especially since it was cut without a proposed replacement. “The 2 Billion Trees program was a kind of centrepiece of having a vision for restoration, and in its absence, there’s a huge void that needs to be filled,” she says.

The majority of our nursery members are privately owned, and they will need to make business decisions as to whether they’re going to start downsizing or not.

 – Rob Keen, executive director, The Canadian Tree Nursery Association

The federal government defends the cancellation as a necessary part of reducing expenses, and the new budget points to ongoing investments in “sustainable forest management.” One billion already-contracted trees will still be planted as the initiative concludes. “The 2BT program will honour and continue to administer funding for existing agreements until 2031,” Devin Baines, a spokesperson for Natural Resources Canada, wrote in an email. “Canada’s commitment to climate action, nature protection, and forest health remains unchanged.”

For Plotkin, the reassurance falls short. “The federal government continues to announce new major projects, many of which will have impacts on ecosystems. To [end the program] in the absence of putting our commitment to restoration front and centre, I think, is just a failure of our responsibility to nature,” she says, adding that the move also ignores the program’s economic value, including job creation associated with tree planting worldwide.

Other countries have led the way in this regard, seeing promising results and proving that socioeconomic improvements and tree planting can go hand in hand. Ethiopia’s ambitious and successful effort to plant 50 billion trees generated 767,000 jobs for nursery managers, forestry agents and seasonal workers. Malawi, the first African country to develop a national forest-restoration strategy, in 2017, has linked restoration targets directly to improved food security and reduced poverty.

Economic impacts

On the flip side, cancellation lands hard on Canadian companies. The Canadian Tree Nursery Association, representing more than 95% of the country’s forest-restoration seedling suppliers, expressed “profound disappointment” in the decision, arguing that the reversal jeopardizes livelihoods of workers and undermines a forestry industry that has built up to meet federal demand.

Rob Keen, a professional forester and the association’s executive director, says the cut will reverberate through the entire supply chain into communities. “There’s no long-term commitments made by the government to restore these forests,” he says. “The majority of our nursery members are privately owned, and they will need to make business decisions as to whether they’re going to start downsizing or not.”

He adds that the program got a slow start partially because it took years for seeds to become ready-to-plant seedlings, plus a significant effort to create the infrastructure to fulfill such ambitious goals. Now that this infrastructure is finally in place, it may need to be dismantled with the sudden drop in demand.

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Keen says the uncertainty created by the program’s end forces employers to make difficult decisions. “Our nurseries were very concerned with this reduced number of seedlings that are being planted at a time when, with all these wildfires, we should be increasing . . . the amount of seedlings being planted, not only for the ecological value that provides, but in the jobs that it provides as well.” Keen notes that many positions created by planting projects go to youth, rural and Indigenous workers. “Then it’s a question of do they start laying off staff?”

Other organizations, including Forests Canada, have issued similar warnings. Evidence for Democracy called the termination “climate backsliding.” Clean50, a sustainability leadership organization, described the move as “short-sighted,” pointing out that more than 8% of Canada’s forests have burned in the past three years and that these areas can no longer regenerate naturally without restoration help. The group wrote in an open letter that some 31,000 existing and expected jobs will be lost as a result of cancelling the program in a move contrary to Canada’s 2030 Nature Strategy, which aims to stop and reverse biodiversity loss.

“Forests are probably our greatest natural resource, and it’s the government’s responsibility to take care of that asset,” he says.

This article was updated with comments from Natural Resources Canada. 

Leah Borts-Kuperman is a journalist based in North Bay, Ontario. Her previous reporting has been published by Canada’s National Observer, The Narwhal, The Logic and The Walrus, among others.

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But that doesn’t mean the project is dead.

Climate action groups, governments, development agencies and even some banks and investors are holding out hope that the trail-blazing fund – known as the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) and spearheaded by COP30 host Brazil – can become a reality, providing billions of dollars annually to halt tropical deforestation.

“This is a landmark moment for nature and climate finance,” Kirsten Schuijt, director general of the World Wildlife Fund, said in a statement. Ani Dasgupta, CEO of the World Resources Institute, said the fund “has real potential to be a breakthrough for the world’s forests.”

Yet only a handful of COP countries pledged to invest in the fund, totalling $6.6 billion in initial capital, well short of the $25-billion target for government contributions set by Brazil. Brazil is aiming to raise a further $100 billion in private money from asset managers, investment funds, private investors, philanthropic organizations and corporations, for a total fund size of $125 billion. (All funds in U.S. dollars.)

The initial contributors included Norway, Brazil, Indonesia, Germany, France, Colombia and Portugal. These countries pledged to invest in the all-important first tier of TFFF’s capital, money that would be used to provide first-loss guarantees to cushion private investors against losses.

Despite the small initial contribution, 53 countries endorsed the concept, suggesting there could be more public money to come. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Asian Infrastructure and Development Bank – two of the world’s largest development banks – are also considering investment in the fund, according to the Devex media platform on international development.

And Daniel Hanna, head of sustainable and transition finance for Barclays, said the British-based bank is looking to support the fund through bond underwriting services. Underwriting is a critical part of the process to sell bonds to institutional investors. “I remain very optimistic around the TFFF moving forward,” Hanna said.

Forests are ‘worth more standing than felled’

The fund was one of the signature projects announced by Brazil at this year’s COP, which was held in the Amazon rainforest city of Belém. The concept was held out as a way for private finance to ramp up support for forest and climate protection while addressing inequalities between the Global North and South.

Tropical forests are suffering severe deforestation from commercial agriculture (particularly from beef, soy and palm oil), logging, mining and infrastructure development, moving the forests from carbon sinks to carbon sources. The fund would be an endowment to provide permanent funding to tropical nations to keep their existing forests intact. “It is an unprecedented initiative,” said Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in launching the fund at COP. “Forests are worth far more standing than felled.”

The fund plans to invest in government and corporate bonds (excluding bonds in fossil fuels and environmentally destructive sectors) primarily in developing countries.

The fund is also based on a “blended finance” model. The sponsor money from governments would provide a reserve against losses by private investors, mitigating the risk of placing capital in higher-interest investments. This would enable the fund to attract capital from a broad range of market players such as pension funds, asset managers and investment funds.

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The total target return is 7.6%. Investors would receive the lion’s share of this income (targeting a 4.9% return), and the remaining 2.7% would be used to pay developing countries a fee for maintaining tracts of tropical forest within their boundaries. Penalties would be incurred for deforestation. Indigenous communities on those lands would receive at least 20% of the funds to manage the forests.

At the target level of capitalization of $125 billion, the fund would generate $3 to $4 billion annually to be disbursed to about 75 tropical countries and their Indigenous communities. The World Bank estimates this would work out to about $4 per hectare of protected forest land.

TFFF is “quite unique and quite pioneering” in the world of blended finance, says Nick Zelenczuk, a researcher with the Toronto-based Convergence blended finance think tank. Blended finance models typically use public capital to cushion losses by private investors in higher-risk impact ventures. But rather than generating a direct return from the project, TFFF shares the proceeds of the bond fund between the forest and the investors. “Using the return from the fund to drive the incentive scheme is novel in the [blended finance] market,” Zelenczuk says.

Forest payments versus carbon markets

One of the reasons there is high interest in making TFFF work is that it is considered a more promising climate finance model than carbon markets, the option that has commanded much attention at recent COP meetings.

The idea of carbon markets is that corporations or financial institutions buy “carbon offsets” that are linked to specific volumes of carbon avoided, reduced or removed through activities such as reforestation or renewable energy. The system of accounting for these carbon volumes is not well established. The value of carbon credits is based on estimates of future carbon reductions, estimates that may be wrong to begin with or fail to meet projections. A study last year of more than 2,000 carbon-credit projects found that only 16% of the projects achieved the carbon savings claimed. As a result, corporations and investors are losing interest in carbon markets, and money for projects is drying up.

The TFFF represents an alternative focused on forest lands – not estimated carbon – which can be transparently and accurately tracked over time. If the lands become deforested, the annual payments will stop or be reduced.

“Offsets have too often been used as a license to pollute,” Australian billionaire businessman Andrew Forrest said in a statement announcing a $10-million investment in TFFF. “They categorically do not work the vast majority of times they have been independently measured. This is the opposite. The TFFF makes forest protection a strong economic choice in favour of our environment – rewarding countries that actually keep their forests intact.”

But will there be enough money?

With such a disappointing start, however, will the fund be large enough to create lasting impact? After the British government signalled early on at COP that it would not be supporting the TFFF, the project lost some momentum.

At the current level of capitalization, tropical forest nations will receive only 16 cents per hectare per year, a far cry from the $4 projected by the World Bank. But the Brazilian government believes the fund is well positioned to attract more funds. Finance Minister Fernando Haddad called the initial investment “auspicious,” anticipating that “after this first investment . . . we will have a very good start.”

Launch of the TFFF fund has come at a timely moment. The U.S. government under Donald Trump has slashed development assistance and decimated its international development agency, USAID. Other countries like the United Kingdom are also cutting assistance to poor countries. At the same time, market-based approaches like carbon credits have fallen out of favour.

A third way is needed. TFFF represents a new approach, one that uses the financial power of the markets to create a very non-market outcome, the survival of the world’s tropical forests.

Eugene Ellmen writes on sustainable business and finance. He is a former executive director of the Canadian Social Investment Organization (now the Responsible Investment Association).

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The RV industry, which is dominated by three manufacturers, is the largest U.S. consumer of tropical wood. NGOs operating in Indonesia claim the industry devours 500 giant trees every day. Its preferred hardwood is lauan, which makes light, moisture-resistant floors and cabinets. Lauan is plentiful on the island of Borneo, but activists have found that price-conscious RV manufacturers regularly buy the wood from unethical suppliers who bulldoze forests rather than manage them sustainably. 

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Last fall, Washington, D.C.–based Mighty Earth and London-based Earthsight invited a team from The New York Times on an investigative mission to Borneo’s interior, home of the Dayak people. They found drained wetlands, ruined landscapes and communities displaced. According to Mighty Earth’s forest commodities director, Amanda Hurowitz, the probe “exposed the destruction of 100,000 acres of orangutan habitat and Indigenous Dayak forest, fueled by Winnebago and other RV companies.”

Most RV makers and suppliers contacted by The Times chose not to comment on the issue. The largest RV company, Thor Industries, which makes Jayco and Airstream products, said it was “not aware” of any deforested wood in its supply chain. 

Hurowitz wants the RV industry to insist on transparency and sustainability in its supply chain. Mighty Earth estimates that buying from responsible lauan suppliers would cost the industry less than US$20 per vehicle. She says Indonesian authorities have worked hard to reduce commercial deforestation, although “a handful of unprincipled companies have attempted to evade forest protections.”

Hurowitz challenges RV owners to demand change from the industry. It shouldn’t be too hard, as the RV industry purports to revere the environment. Jayco, for instance, offers tips on “Making Your Next RV Trip More Green,” such as separating trash, turning down the thermostat and making your own cleaning products. Now it’s time for RV owners to ask the manufacturers to clean up their act.

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It’s the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, that lofty climate pledge that has helped push – in some cases reluctantly – countries toward carbon-cutting measures. COP30 organizers are determined to make this year different, shifting from “ambition to implementation,” and they’re making the point with a backdrop of stark inequality.  

“We cannot hide the fact that we are in a world with lots of inequalities and where sustainability and fighting climate change is something that has to get closer to people,” André Aranha Corrêa do Lago, president designate for COP30, said in an interview with the Associated Press. “President Lula wants this to be the COP of truth. He wants people to be told the truth about how climate change will affect their countries,” he added in September.  

Brazil proved to be its own study in contradictions in the lead-up to Belém, which has made headlines for a dearth in accommodations for the influx of thousands of delegates, as well as a controversial new highway cutting through rainforest to facilitate the conference. South America’s largest country, with a population of more than 212 million, Brazil has sought to regain environmental bona fides that were left in tatters under the previous administration of Jair Bolsonaro, when deforestation ran rampant in the Amazon.  

Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, former union leader turned president, assumed his third term in office in 2023 with bold pledges to end deforestation in the Amazon by 2030, boosting the use of satellite monitoring and other mechanisms to guard against illegal logging and mining in the so-called lungs of the earth. He also established a dedicated ministry for Indigenous Peoples as a way to protect their rights, setting out to demarcate their territories. In the lead-up to COP30, Brazil launched a tropical-forest conservation fund that aims to raise US$125 billion. Hosting COP30 was an important show of his government’s environmental commitment. Brazil has pledged to reduce its emissions by 59% and 67% below 2005 levels by 2035. But various activists and organizations have drawn attention to the cracks in Brazil’s narrative, not least for its plan to continue to exploit its oil reserves.  

Lula has pushed for Brazil to drill in the mouth of the Amazon, arguing that the development will help the country complete its energy transition. The Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources approved the drilling of an exploratory well in an offshore oil field in the Amazon, a site that had long been in the sights of the national oil company, Petrobras. The petroleum giant had previously been denied rights to explore, in large measure because of doubts over its ability to respond to oil spills or other accidents in the ecologically sensitive area. In its October approval, the environmental watchdog said the company had made various improvements to its emergency response plan, which led to the green light. 

Brazil is also pushing ahead with new mining projects for critical minerals, with as many as 800 mining companies exploring in the Amazon. “There is no energy transition without mining,” Alexandre Silveira, minister of mines and energy, said in early 2024. 

“Brazil cannot lead the world to a cleaner, healthier future by loosening environmental regulations, promoting a fossil fuel build out, and allowing mining projects that violate Indigenous sovereignty and destroy carbon sinks like the Amazon,” Patricia Rodriguez and Jan Morrill wrote in a commentary for Earthworks, an organization that advocates against oil, gas and mining pollution.   

The question of environmental regulations has exposed fault lines within Lula’s administration. Environment and Climate Change Minister Marina Silva, an internationally acclaimed environmentalist, slammed a decision by the Brazilian Senate in May to approve a bill that loosened environmental licensing rules, calling it a “death blow” to important protections in Brazil. Her position in turn drew the ire of industry and other sectors. The legislation was later modified, earning Silva’s support. 

But the showdown underscored the powerful forces that are at play in Brazil, which has taken an even more prominent role on the international stage as President Lula presents one of the clearest voices of opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump and his trade war tactics.  

In opening remarks at COP30 last week, Lula stressed the need for true climate commitments, to “take the scientific warnings seriously” and “face reality.” He closed by thanking people for coming to the Amazon.

“Many people did not believe that it was possible to bring a COP to an Amazonian state, because people are more used to parading around big cities,” he noted. “We wanted people to come here to see what the Amazon really is.”

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And on 200 acres of woodlands and forest gardens an hour outside of Ottawa, Diana Beresford-Kroeger is trying to seed a revolution to save the global forests. “This is a living planet. We will not have a living planet without those trees,” says the 80-year-old Irish botanist and medical biochemist over tea in the home she and her husband built by hand half a century ago in Merrickville, Ontario.  

Beresford-Kroeger has been called “the Jane Goodall of trees,” though she’s also an old-school renaissance woman: over the years, she’s conducted scientific research on organ transplants and open-heart surgery, cloned endangered trees for her forest genome project, and studied the plant aerosols that she says make forests a “living library of medicine.”  

Having just published her eighth book, Our Green Heart: The Soul and Science of Forests, she’s made it her life’s work to educate the rest of us – from schoolchildren to world leaders – on how none of us would be here without trees. “They are the top and the bottom of the pyramid of life,” she writes, explaining how the molecules of decaying leaves reach the oceans to feed fish and whale calves and how the “fingers of the forest touch the atmosphere and dip into the human heart to keep it pumping.”  

In early September, speaking at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival an hour outside Toronto, she’s frank about what’s at stake in a world with fewer trees. “The oxygen that is in the atmosphere does not come from a mysterious place. It doesn’t come from fairyland. It comes from the bloody trees over your head right now,” she says to a chuckling audience. 

The problem: “We’ve only been so stupid as to cut down the global forests . . . So it means there’s less oxygen in the air and more carbon dioxide. Today, we have [roughly] 420 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The last time it was like that was millions of years ago. We’re heading to danger.”  

Beresford-Kroeger was first warned about climate change in the ’60s by her uncle Pat. As an orphan growing up in Ireland, the self-described “aristocratic mongrel” immersed herself in her uncle’s library and spent summers on her great-aunt’s farm in the Lisheens valley.  

“I inherited knowledge rather than money,” she laughs, explaining that she received an ancient Druidic education, instructed in Celtic knowledge of plants, nature and the sacred importance of trees. Later, she was told to go to the New World to become “as educated as she possibly could” and teach people about the value of nature to help humanity shed our destructive ways. 

Roughly 10 million hectares of forest are cut down every year around the globe, according to the United Nations. Foresters would make the case that they’re replanting trees, sometimes at a two-to-one rate. The hitch: “We are planting the wrong trees in the wrong place.” It’s like, she says, hoping for a donkey to win the Kentucky Derby.  

And, she explains, we’re paying the price with more destructive fires. Up the western seaboard, for thousands of years, giant redwoods acted as a great green firewall – until they began to come down and get replaced with non-native trees like eucalyptus in California and Scots pine in Canada.  

“The species of North America are used to fires, but not to eucalyptus fires, not to Scots pine fires,” she says. “It’s an inferno.” 

She knows from experience the impact of planting the wrong trees in the wrong place. A decade after Beresford-Kroeger moved up to Canada from the United States in the 1970s to work at the University of Ottawa as a research scientist, she and her husband bought a neighbouring plantation of Pinus banksiana – a non-native Jack pine from the Boreal north – hoping to put an end to chemical pesticide use on the property

The species of North America are used to fires, but not to eucalyptus fires, not to Scots pine fires. It’s an inferno.

“They’re not trees. They’re a fire hazard,” she says of the monoculture woods lining her kilometre-long driveway. Being the scientist she is, she also sees them as a bigger blackboard for her research on the climate crisis. For decades, she’s been tinkering in her research garden, planting what she calls a Noah’s ark of thousands of rare and endangered trees, like the native pawpaw, the cucumber tree (Canada’s only native magnolia) and the mighty kingnut (which she says would double the plant-based protein of any farming operation). The kingnut was wiped out in wartime for use as sailing masts, she says, pointing to the “little darling” she grew from seed on a tour of her forest gardens. She’s gathering seeds from the most climate-resilient of her trees. “I’ll find people to take them and to grow them.”

 It all plays into the larger “bioplan” she has for us. Step one of the bioplan: stop cutting down ancient virgin forests. These mother trees are survivors – they are grandparents that hold in their DNA the knowledge of how to weather hundreds, even thousands, of years of climate hardship, as well as vital medicines still being discovered by scientists. But in British Columbia, for instance, ecologists say that just 3% to 20% of old-growth trees – more than 250 years old – are still standing, despite promises from the provincial government.  

Step two: plant the right trees in the right place; one native tree per person per year over the next six years for a global total of 50 billion trees by 2030. “That will start reversing the CO2 in the atmosphere in parts per million down into the three hundreds.”  

In recent years, politicians in Canada, the United States and other countries have promised to plant billions of trees to counter rising carbon in the atmosphere, but, Beresford-Kroeger says, they’re failing. “Climate change is too important [to be left to] politicians. It has to be in the hands of people.” 

We must plant native trees, one per person per year for the next six years. That will start reversing the CO2 in the atmosphere.

Our Green Heart weighs in on solutions for industry, too. Beresford-Kroeger is optimistic about direct carbon capture – nascent technology pulling carbon from the air – to turn planet-warming gases into hydrocarbon fuels for cars, planes and tractors. “All of nature’s currency is carbon. So what you’re doing is you’re using some of nature’s carbon currency. As long as you’re not abusing it, it can be managed harmoniously.”  

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But she slams geoengineering – climate engineering that involves the likes of shooting fine dust into the upper stratosphere to reflect sunlight back to space – as arrogance of the highest order. Especially when the very service of shielding the earth against sunlight is easily provided by the clouds that form in part through moisture released from the globe’s forests. Although in places like the Amazon, so much forest has been cut down that rain clouds have been vanishing, drying up riverbeds and dragging out a historic drought that’s fuelling South America’s fires. 

When I ask what she thinks of companies using tree-planting as a shell game to offset their polluting emissions, she says that if carbon-intensive industries are having a hard time curbing emissions, they should be tapping young minds at universities for the most innovative solutions.  

Education is step three of her bioplan. She’s looking for ambassadors to help her spread her message. “I’ve written all of these books,” she says. “I can only do so much. I want to get the message out there to people: they’ve got to pay attention to nature. It tears me apart that I know that window of opportunity is closing and I won’t be around.” 

As we finish our tea, I ask if she has hope for us. “Oh, yeah!” she says, lighting up. “What I have is hope in the young people. There are some extraordinary young people who are doing incredible things.” 

And for the rest of us, there is still time to turn over a new leaf.

Adria Vasil is the managing editor of Corporate Knights and the author of the Ecoholic book series.

The post The soul and science of forests appeared first on Corporate Knights.

On the ground, the trails are marked by culturally modified trees, circles carved into bark, proof of the Wet’suwet’en Nation’s history in this area. As we approached Caas Tl’aat Kwah (aka Serb Creek), a 15,054 hectare watershed that has not yet been logged or mined, the forest stitched together in a blanket of deep green, cleaved only by yellow-green wetlands threaded with glacial blue streams.

“We want to conserve it for future generations,” says Charlotte Euverman, the Wet’suwet’en woman leading a fight to save this area, which includes a traditional gathering and feasting site. “We have to leave them something.”

Like most First Nations here, the Wet’suwet’en never signed treaties with Canada or the province. Nevertheless, the latter took the land and leased forested areas to logging companies. Today just 20% of British Columbia’s old-growth forests remain. In 2020, after decades of activist pressure, the province released its Old Growth Strategic Review, a report that identified about a quarter of the remaining old growth as high risk for logging and recommended a pause while land-use decisions were made. Yet four years on, logging has been deferred in less than half of the high-risk area.

First Nations and an array of species have paid dearly for the wide-scale logging, and now some forestry experts say its effects are being felt farther afield too.

Scientists are finding that industrial logging can contribute to the intensity and frequency of forest fires because it dries out the land. In summer 2023, more than 150,000 square kilometres (58,000 square miles) burned across Canada, an all-time record, carrying smoke across the continent and air pollution all the way to Europe and China.

Despite promises from the province’s Ministry of Forests, environmental activists say that classic “talk and log” delay tactics continue. Independent analysis by the Wilderness Committee, Sierra Club BC and Stand.earth found that 50,000 to 100,000 hectares (123,000 to 247,000 acres) of the at-risk forests have been logged or approved for logging in British Columbia since the province’s 2020 report.

“With so little old growth left, it is crucial [for the province] to step up to the plate for watersheds like Serb Creek and offer nations every support needed for long-term solutions,” says Jens Wieting, senior forest and climate campaigner with Sierra Club BC.

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Before boarding the helicopter, de Wit leads us in a ceremony, inviting us to rub charcoal on our cheeks. It’s a sign to their ancestors that we’re coming with respect, he explains, acknowledging that they reside on the land and that alpine places are sacred. Because the area is not yet accessible by road, nation members Caroline Muir and Sandra Harris are seeing it for the first time.

After 30 minutes of flying, the pilot waggles the helicopter down, setting it upon a boggy meadow. As we step out, Muir takes a moment, eyes closed, hand on her heart. Harris stoops to examine the plants: low cedar (Diphasiastrum complanatum), Labrador tea (Ledum groenlandicum Oeder), frilly white bogbean (Menyanthes trifoliata) flowers.

Harris’s great-grandfather and Muir’s great-uncle, Jack Joseph, had a cabin here. It’s gone now, but we follow de Wit through the trees to a newer cabin. He opens his backpack and pulls out a framed photo of Joseph and nails it to the wall in a place of pride.

Harris explains the significance of this moment for her. “We have a lot of stress in our lives with racism, working with colonial systems that are so unkind to our ways.” The land is healing, she says.

“Today, we can feel our ancestors. We remember our stories when we are able to put our feet on the land,” Harris says. “My spirit needs that . . . There’s lots of good medicine there for us.”

Where there’s logging, there’s fire

Canadian governments’ commitments to reconciliation with First Nations and to biodiversity conservation might lead the Ministry of Forests to spare some of the remaining old growth. But the rise in extreme fires does not appear to factor into its calculus, says Torrance Coste, associate director of the Wilderness Committee. The link between logging and fires is “absolutely not” acknowledged by the province, he says.

Yet Coste says that industry lobby groups use the threat of wildfire to argue for more logging, saying, “We need to log these areas so they don’t burn.” That argument is driven by the conventional wisdom that increased fire severity is due not just to climate change but also fire suppression that created “fuel loading” – dense growth.

The Ministry of Forests would not make someone available for an interview. But a spokesperson wrote in an email that their approach to reducing wildfire severity is thinning (some logging) and prescribed burns.

Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist for Wild Heritage, says that thinning forests reduces fire severity only in narrow circumstances. “It’s critical to leave large, fire-resistant trees in place,” he says, and not to remove too much of the forest canopy, which dries out plants and soil and allows winds to blow fires longer distances. Even if done right, benefits last only about a decade, he says, and thwart fire only when the weather isn’t too hot or dry.

Susan Prichard, a fire ecologist at the University of Washington, says thinning can be a helpful step before prescribed burns in certain ecosystems, such as interior Douglas fir and ponderosa pine forests that Indigenous Peoples used to burn regularly. Outlawing the practice has led to overgrowth. Caas Tl’aat Kwah, on the other hand, contains interior cedar hemlock and Engelmann spruce subalpine fir ecosystems, with trees up to 350 years old. Prichard says thinning or prescribed burns in these types of forests would not reduce fire severity.

DellaSala and other scientists say that the focus on fuel loading and thinning fails to recognize the way in which industrial logging increases fire severity: it kills complex communities of life that stabilize the water cycle, leading to much drier landscapes.

One paper that DellaSala co-authored looked at the severity of 1,500 fires in Western U.S. states over 30 years and found that protected forests, with higher levels of biomass [plants] and fuel loading, actually had lower fire severity than intensively managed areas of commercial logging. Another from 2018 found that “intensive plantation forestry characterized by young forests and spatially homogenized fuels, rather than pre-fire biomass, were significant drivers of wildfire severity.” Another from 2022 found that clear-cutting was a key factor leading to “frequent, high-severity fire.”

Other studies suggest that old growth reduces fire severity by retaining moisture and helping to generate rain. In an intact forest, dense, layered canopies of multiple species slow rain when it falls, and roots provide pathways for water to move underground. From there, it filters into creeks, wetlands and rivers over weeks and months. As trees photosynthesize, they release water vapour into the air, forming clouds.

They also release particles of microbes and fungi that help vapour coalesce into rain. Their rough surfaces slow wind, keeping moisture in the area. Old trees transpire more water, even through the dry season, because their roots tap groundwater from deep below. This phenomenon, called hydraulic lift, also distributes water to seedlings and weaker trees through the soil and mycorrhizal networks, keeping the whole forest moist, says University of British Columbia forest ecologist Suzanne Simard, author of Finding the Mother Tree.

Damp soil, plant litter and woody debris are filled with living beings – fungi, microbes, insects and other animals – that hold on to water for a long time and “really help with fire resistance,” Simard says.

For example, wild forests can hold more than 10 times the species of mycorrhizal fungi than young plantations. Trees feed the fungi via their own photosynthesis. After clear-cutting, the few species that survive are not ones seen in old growth that are “big and fat and that really take up water and move it around the ecosystem,” Simard says.

Although British Columbia requires logging companies to replant after cutting, typically they install just a few marketable species. Deciduous trees such as maples, aspen and birch are less flammable; their stands create fire breaks in natural landscapes. But they are also less marketable, so standard operating practice is to kill their sprouts with herbicide, Simard says. Herbicides can also kill living matter in the soil, making it far less able to absorb water, contributing to drought and landslides.

These differences are obvious even to laypeople, Coste says. “The forest floor is spongy and, if you dug in your hands, would have moisture, whereas the cut blocks are crispy and dry,” he says. And the lack of shade and evaporative cooling means that “walking from a standing forest into a clear-cut, the temperature can go up 15 degrees.”

Harris has observed this too. “The soil health is a concern. Walking on our territory, it’s crunchy.” And water isn’t filtering underground as much: “We used to have springs to drink from. And those are drying up.”

A plan to save Caas Tl’aat Kwah

From the province’s perspective, Caas Tl’aat Kwah is the jurisdiction of British Columbia Timber Sales (BCTS), a commercial arm of the Ministry of Forests. Under the Old Growth Strategic Review, the Wet’suwet’en notified BCTS that they support a logging deferral, which the Ministry of Forests acknowledged in 2023.

BCTS had proposed a 10-kilometre (6.2-mile) road and logging in the area, which Sierra Club BC verified by accessing recent planning maps. But, the Ministry of Forests spokesperson wrote in an email, “Deferrals will remain in place until a long-term forest management approach is implemented.”

Wet’suwet’en Nation is composed of five clans, each made up of several houses. To the Wet’suwet’en, Caas Tl’aat Kwah is the jurisdiction of Kwen Bea Yex (House Beside the Fire) of the Laksilyu (Small Frog Clan). Euverman is a member of Kwen Bea Yex. Sitting above the rushing Bulkley River, cottonwood fluff drifting like snow, she explains her motivation to protect Caas Tl’aat Kwah from logging. “Coastal tailed frog is my biggest reason. The frog is on our crest,” she says.

A species of special concern under Canada’s Species at Risk Act, the frog is ancient. It is one of just two tailed frogs in the world and significantly different from other frogs. It doesn’t vocalize, and its “tail” is actually used for making more frogs. Other species that survive in the Caas Tl’aat Kwah watershed include wolverine, grizzly, wolf, mountain goat, moose, bull trout, cutthroat trout, Western red cedar, whitebark pine and arboreal lichen, which feed endangered caribou.

The frogs are “very sensitive to their surroundings being disturbed,” Euverman says, adding that noise prevents them from breeding. “They’re important, and so are all the other animals.” If BCTS goes against Wet’suwet’en desires to protect the watershed, “we’ll fight to the end to keep them out,” she says.

Wet’suwet’en played an outsized role in getting the province and Canada to engage with First Nations in land-use decisions. It was one of two nations to bring the precedent-setting 1997 case in which the Supreme Court of Canada acknowledged that First Nations have collective property rights and their oral histories are valid. However, the ruling didn’t actually grant nations property rights, leaving details vague. Canadian governments since have frequently delayed and dissembled.

In recent years, British Columbia and Canada have both passed into law the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). That requires colonial governments to engage in “free, prior and informed consent” with First Nations. However, Canadian and provincial governments do not give nations veto power over development projects within their territories. Wet’suwet’en activists experienced this firsthand: they waged a decade-long effort to prevent the Coastal GasLink pipeline from bifurcating their territory – and lost.

An uncertain future

Ultimately, BCTS could decide to log Caas Tl’aat Kwah. The spokesperson for the Ministry of Forests writes, “If the temporary deferral is lifted for areas within the Serb Creek watershed, BC Timber Sales will continue to work with First Nations, biologists, ecologists and other professionals to plan any potential future harvest [logging] in a way that would preserve the area’s biodiversity, wildlife, cultural values and recreational opportunities.”

Coste, with the Wilderness Committee, is skeptical. “The whole structure of government is built around the prioritization of timber and its extraction,” he says. “So, these other values, like conservation or protecting forests for cultural value . . . it’s hard to do.”

One of the most challenging aspects, Harris says, is that provincial rules change every couple of years, with each new government. In fact, British Columbia is holding an election in October, which could change priorities yet again. Wet’suwet’en laws, on the other hand, are unchanging; gifts from their ancestors and the Creator, Harris says: “Our stories help us learn our laws, what our responsibilities are. That doesn’t change.”

Wieting says he’s familiar with this issue. “We’ve seen countless examples in this province. A nation is successful at opposing logging, only to confront the same struggle a few years later – and sometimes losing that battle.”

Besides the old-growth program, Caas Tl’aat Kwah could be protected as a park or as part of a carbon-storage or biodiversity-conservation program.

But de Wit dismisses those approaches. “All those Western tools are the Western system realizing that they made a mistake. I wouldn’t say that they are the instrument for protection.”

Another possibility is a recent movement in which First Nations declare places Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas. But Wieting says, “We have not seen examples of colonial governments quickly respecting unilaterally declared Indigenous Protected Areas.”

Instead, de Wit wants Wet’suwet’en to protect it entirely according to its own governance traditions. That requires members of Kwen Bea Yex to decide that Caas Tl’aat Kwah is needed for cultural and ecological purposes and off-limits to commercial logging, he says. The house would then secure agreement from its clan followed by all the clans. Then they’d have a feast, which ratifies the agreement.

“The feast hall is the site of the Wet’suwet’en Parliament,” de Wit says.

The B.C. Supreme Court previously upheld Wet’suwet’en governance to prevent logging in another culturally important place.

Harris works on the nation’s watershed planning committee and is a member of Ginehklaiyex (House of Many Eyes), which is also part of Laksilyu Clan. “Serb Creek is of interest for the whole nation,” she says. “The houses support keeping it in a pristine state.”

Meanwhile, the fires continue. In August, 353 fires were burning across British Columbia, including a “wildfire of note” just outside of Witset, a Wet’suwet’en reserve. Racism and colonialism have left deep wounds, Harris says. But de Wit sounds an optimistic note, saying, “When we heal the land, we will heal the people.”

This article was published collaboratively with The Guardian. Reporting for this story was supported by the Science Media Centre of Canada and the Sitka Foundation.

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Research by Global Witness found that US asset managers BlackRock and Vanguard are among six firms holding over $11 million in active bonds issued by JBS and its subsidiaries via funds with “environmental, social and governance” (ESG) in their name.

While most of the funds’ documentation analysed explicitly cite exclusions relating to fossil fuels and controversial weapons, none outright exclude companies linked to deforestation in their screening process.

This is despite forest loss contributing to up to 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with agricultural clearance driving more than 90% of global tropical forest loss.

More than half of financial institutions with the largest exposure to deforestation, including BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street, are yet to publish a single policy on deforestation, according to Forest 500’s 2024 annual report. This suggests overall levels of engagement from the financial sector with forest-risk companies are minimal.

“Simply incorporating the ‘ESG brand’ in fund names is often far too vague, failing to exclude climate-destructive companies like JBS,” said Global Witness’s US Senior Policy Advisor, Ashley Thomson.

“One of the clear issues with relying on self-reporting, self-managed ESG funds is the lack of standardisation on what exactly ESG means.”

Analysis by Global Witness of Eikon Refinitiv data obtained in June 2024 shows that 15 ESG-labelled funds held $11.6m in 16 JBS bonds.

“The fact that a company like JBS is included in an ESG-focused fund should speak volumes about the limitations of regulations governing these funds, and the dangers of allowing companies to grade their own homework,” Thomson added.

One of the clear issues with relying on self-reporting, self-managed ESG funds is the lack of standardisation on what exactly ESG means.

– Ashley Thomson, Global Witness’s US Senior Policy Advisor

Similar concerns have also been raised by Tariq Fancy, BlackRock’s former sustainable investment chief, who criticised the firm for “misleading investors” by using the ESG label, calling it a “dangerous placebo”. He argued that BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink made hollow promises about ESG, which were quickly abandoned when it was becoming politically controversial.

JBS is widely regarded as an ESG pariah. From 2021 to May this year, 22 investors, including banks and pension funds, have divested from JBS or its subsidiaries, citing its links to biodiversity loss and governance issues, according to the Financial Exclusion Tracker project.

Earlier this year, Global Witness published a report linking JBS, along with other meatpackers Marfrig and Minerva, to more than 80,000 football fields of deforestation in Brazil.

In addition to well-documented environmental and social concerns, JBS has faced governance issues in the past, with the executive of its parent exposed for their involvement in a widespread corruption scandal in Brazil in 2017. The executives also pleaded guilty to US foreign bribery charges in 2020 as part of a plea deal.

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Palm oil companies in Indonesia, the world’s top producer of the commodity, cleared 30,000 hectares (about 74,100 acres) of forest last year to make way for plantations, up from 22,000 hectares (54,400 acres) in 2022. These increases mark the end of a declining trend that began after the record 227,000 hectares (561,000 acres) — an area nearly twice the size of Los Angeles — of deforestation in 2012.

France-based TheTreeMap used plantation concession data from Greenpeace to identify 53 companies behind the plantation expansion and resulting deforestation, of which 20 had cleared carbon-rich peatlands.

The single biggest deforester was the company Ciliandry Anky Abadi (CAA), whose three subsidiaries deforested 2,302 hectares (5,688 acres) across their concessions.

A recent investigation by The Gecko Project has linked CAA to Indonesian conglomerate First Resources, a member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the world’s largest association for ethical palm oil production. The investigation alleges that First Resources used “shadow companies” to circumvent sustainability standards while still presenting an image of environmental accountability as it adopted a zero-deforestation pledge in 2015.

According to the investigation, companies controlled by the group have cleared more than 95,000 hectares (235,000 acres) of forest since First Resources announced its zero-deforestation pledge.

TheTreeMap also identified deforestation in the concessions of a group of companies known as New Borneo Agri (NBA) or the Sulaidy Group, also allegedly linked to First Resources. These purported ties led to a complaint being lodged against First Resources at the RSPO in 2021.

In the latest development in the case, in January this year a coalition of Indonesian civil society organizations submitted further allegations against First Resources, using fresh evidence collected by The Gecko Project’s investigation.

“Documents obtained in the course of The Gecko Project’s investigation provide strong evidence that First Resources Ltd. is in breach of the current RSPO Group Membership rules which require the compulsory registration of corporate groups under one membership,” the coalition said.

The ongoing complaint against First Resources is the first to test the robustness of the 2020 RSPO Membership Rules, and is still in the deliberation phase, which means a formal investigation hasn’t yet commenced.

“It is hoped the new evidence will be considered by the Independent Investigator in their forthcoming investigation,” the CSOs said.

First Resources has denied operating any shadow companies.

“It is pivotal for us to highlight factual inaccuracies in the report, and we would like to state that First Resources does not have any ownership stake or hold any management roles in CAA and NBA/Sulaidy Group,” the company told Mongabay in an email.

“First Resources has not purchased any palm oil products from CAA and NBA/Sulaidy Group, and will not buy from any company that is not in compliance with our Policy on Sustainable Palm Oil. Therefore, First Resources cannot be held accountable for the actions or inactions of CAA or NBA/Sulaidy Group.”

Responding to the multiple complaints at the RSPO, First Resources said it remains fully cooperative throughout the process.

“Furthermore, it is crucial to convey to our stakeholders that this process will now undergo an independent investigation,” the company said. “This step is taken to ensure a thorough, fair, and unbiased examination of the matter at hand. Thus, First Resources kindly request all parties to respect the ongoing process and await the result before drawing conclusions or making any claims.”

A fifth of total national emissions

Zero-deforestation pledges like those made by First Resources have been credited with the decade-long decline in deforestation driven by oil palm plantations. Known in the industry as NDPE policies, for “no deforestation, no peat, no exploitation,” they’ve been widely adopted by producers, traders and consumers of palm oil following public pressure and campaigns by environmental NGOs and consumer groups.

Historically, deforestation for plantations in Indonesia was concentrated on the island of Sumatra, which today is the country’s palm oil heartland. But the surge in deforestation in the past two years has been mostly on the islands of Indonesian Borneo and Papua.

Crucially, a third of the 2023 deforestation, 10,787 hectares (26,655 acres), occurred on peatlands, a carbon-rich landscape that, when cleared and drained, becomes highly susceptible to fires. These can burn for weeks on end, fueled by the combustible peat soil, releasing vast volumes of greenhouse gases in the process.

Data from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) show that oil palm plantations were the largest contributor to deforestation in Indonesia between 2021 and 2022, resulting in annual GHG emissions of 200 million metric ton.

Indonesia’s total emissions for 2022, not including from the land-use sector that covers plantations, was 1,240 million metric ton, a record high, according to data from the European Commission.

“So emissions from the palm oil [industry] is around a fifth of Indonesia’s emissions,” said Herry Purnomo, CIFOR senior scientist and deputy country director.

He said the challenge that the industry faces at the moment is how to reduce its emissions through protecting forests while at the same time developing the economy of palm oil-producing regions in Indonesia. To start tackling this question, CIFOR has developed a platform called the Simulation of Indonesian Palm Oil Sustainability (SIPOS), which allows users to assess the trade-off between economic development, emissions reductions, and social benefits.

The platform can calculate the amount of emissions produced by the plantation industry, and the increase in emissions for a given increase in production output and income for smallholder farmers. The identified increase in emissions can then be offset or even reduced through various interventions, such as a moratorium on peat and forest clearance, boosting the productivity of smallholders, or buying carbon credits.

EU deforestation regulation

Beni Okarda, a senior research officer at CIFOR, said that the SIPOS platform could also be used by stakeholders to measure the impact of the European Union regulation on deforestation-free products, also known as the EUDR.

The recently adopted law bans imports into the EU of agricultural products that come from deforestation and illegal sources, with the aim of ensuring that products consumed within the EU market aren’t contributing to deforestation or forest degradation anywhere in the world since 2020.

The law applies to seven commodities — beef, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber, soy and wood — and the producers and traders of these commodities have to carry out due diligence throughout their supply chains before being allowed to trade these products in the EU market.

In Indonesia, there are concerns that the regulation will disproportionately affect smallholder oil palm farmers, who account for a significant share of the country’s total palm oil production. Abetnego Tarigan, the deputy for human development in the office of the president’s chief of staff, cited government data showing that 15.7 million independent smallholders would have their livelihoods affected by the EUDR.

CIFOR’s Herry said Indonesia could actually benefit from the EUDR, but only if the country addresses the issues still plaguing the industry, such as illegal plantations in forest areas and the ongoing rate of deforestation. He noted that the cutoff date of 2020 makes it easy for Indonesia to comply, given that only 1% of oil palm production in Indonesia since then has taken place on deforested land, according to CIFOR data. This compares with 14% since 2010, and 54% from 1995 to 2000.

“We can achieve sustainable palm oil,” Herry said. “It’s OK to still have lots of work to do, seeing as how other countries aren’t much better than us [on sustainable palm oil]. So we have to be confident since we have achieved a lot, such as declining deforestation.”

This story first appeared on Mongabay. Read the original article here.

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Deforestation levels are down a dramatic 55.8% from 2022 to 2023, according to the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP). The largest declines occurred in the Brazilian-controlled part of the jungle, which dropped 59%, and in Colombia, which plunged 67%. Peru’s forest loss dropped 37%. “Compared to the peak year of 2020, forest loss has dropped by over two-thirds, or 67.7%,” MAAP said in a press release.

The political backdrop is impossible to ignore. President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, Brazil’s left-wing leader, has been rehabilitating the country’s environmental reputation after the tenure of Jair Bolsonaro, who created the conditions for open season on forest districts. Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, has also made the energy transition and environmental protection a cornerstone of his mandate.

The eight Amazon nations that gathered for a summit in Belém, Brazil, in August agreed to adopt more aggressive conservation methods, although they fell short of committing to stop deforestation altogether. Brazil has the largest share of the Amazon, with 60% stretching out across its territory.

An estimated 20% of the Amazon has already been cut down, driven largely by aggressive agricultural expansion, illegal mining, logging and fires. A record-setting drought this year has also primed the Amazon for forest fires, in particular in the swaths that have degraded and are in poorer health, which amounts to 40% of its surface.

Agriculture is a particular threat to the preservation of crucial carbon-capturing forest stocks around the world. In Brazil, the area occupied by agriculture grew 50% between 1985 and 2022, according to MapBiomas, gobbling up 95.1 million hectares. Much of that growth occurred in the Amazon. In its latest report card on corporate deforestation, the non-profit Ceres assessed 53 major companies, including Cargill and Procter & Gamble, facing “the greatest risks” from sourcing soy, timber and palm oil. “Most of them lack robust no-deforestation policies, despite recognizing the importance of deforestation action,” Ceres reports. Adidas and Amazon got failing grades.

U.S. food giant Cargill announced in November that it would speed up its promise to eliminate deforestation and land conversion from its supply chain of key crops, including soy, corn, wheat and cotton, in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. The company had already pledged to produce deforestation-free commodities and conversion-free soy across South America by 2030 but now says it will do so by 2025 in those three countries.

Mighty Earth, a global environmental advocacy organization, called Cargill’s announcement “important but incomplete,”  noting that it is one of the “top drivers of ecosystem destruction in Latin America.”

“Bolivia experienced a 32% increase in primary forest loss between 2021 and 2022 – four times the rate of Brazil. This is, in part, due to Cargill’s continued willingness to buy from suppliers engaged in deforestation,” Mighty Earth CEO Glenn Hurowitz wrote in November. “We’re calling on Cargill – along with the signatories of the COP27 Agribusiness Roadmap – to agree to a cut off date of 2020 to ensure this incomplete policy does not spark a ‘race to bulldoze’ in biomes such as the Grand Chaco and the Chiquitano ahead of 2025.”

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The tool, NatureHelm, provides a subscription-based platform where large corporate entities or individual landowners can track significant species and ecosystem markers on their properties. The platform also provides analysis of how factors are changing over time and recommendations to improve biodiversity outcomes. NatureHelm plans to launch this month.

“[Tracking biodiversity] is no longer something that is a nice thing; this is going to become regulated,” says Debbie Saunders, a conservation ecologist and founder of NatureHelm. “It’s quite revolutionary for me. I used to go bird-watching for my job, and all of a sudden, I feel like I can help create positive change at a global scale.”

The new push toward better accounting for biodiversity comes in part from the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adapted by the United Nations in December 2022. Its targets include “30 by 30,” which aims to protect 30% of terrestrial, inland water, coastal and marine areas by 2030. The plan also has a target to place 30% of degraded ecosystems under effective restoration plans. Already, the EU has formally adopted rules requiring that companies prove their products aren’t causing deforestation or forest degradation.

Saunders’s idea for NatureHelm came from a decade of working with her other for-profit company, Wildlife Drones, which sells aerial drones that can track radio-frequency wildlife tags. In working with biologists and conservation organizations, Saunders saw just how much data new technology was collecting — images from camera traps, animal tracking paths, satellite measures of tree cover, bioacoustic surveys — and yet that this information was rarely used to measure the health of whole ecosystems. When the EU adopted the Kunming-Montreal Framework, she saw an opportunity to put all of that data to good use.

Take, for example, a hypothetical coffee grower with a small farm. Upon subscribing to NatureHelm, the company deploys an algorithm that scrapes global databases and scientific papers about the region, looking for significant local biodiversity targets. This could be an endangered bird that needs protection, an invasive rat that could be targeted for removal, or local pollinators known to be key for coffee plants.

As managers begin tracking any of these measures — say, conducting surveys, placing bioacoustic monitors, or installing camera traps — they can automatically upload or manually add their findings to their individual portal. Graphs and charts will show how metrics change across space and time. Every year, subscribers receive a report of how biodiversity indicators on their lands have changed and, ideally, in response to conservation actions.

NatureHelm also offers consulting to any customers who want to learn how to deploy new technology for monitoring.

“Wherever possible, we want to empower them to do the work themselves, because that’s the most affordable and sustainable way.” Saunders says. “And it means that they’re really engaged in it as well.”

In addition to smallholder farms, the company is targeting its services to large corporations, which might track the same metrics across their supply chains, especially as new regulations come into force. NatureHelm is currently a venture of Wildlife Drones, but Saunders says they plan to split it off as its own company within the coming year. The company recently hired Julia Haake, a French economist and chair of the European Association of Sustainability Agencies, as its director, bringing on experience in the European market.

“We are not going to be the database of all biodiversity data; there are already massive organizations building really amazing databases that people can access, but those are still just the data,” Saunders says. “There are no insights with that. There’s no meaning for people. They need something that they can relate to, and so a big part of this is just that pulling-together of things.”

This is one of the appeals for the company Aluan, which produces virgin organic coconut oil from Indonesia and is an early partner of NatureHelm. Aluan has multiple conservation projects across 300 smallholder farms, including restoration projects for several species of sea turtle and the re-release and monitoring of locally important birds, including two subspecies of white-rumped shama (Copsychus malabaricus). While Aluan currently sells its coconut oil to some large companies, including U.K.-based Lush Cosmetics, it’s actively looking for more buyers attracted to its conservation credentials.

“We’re already collecting quite a lot of data from rangers in the field, but we’re not presenting that well at all,” says Luke Swainson, Aluan’s co-founder. “One of the big things we’re looking at is a way to bring that data together and present that in an interactive way.”

Vince Heffernan, another early subscriber and the owner of Moorlands Biodynamic Lamb, a 1,214-hectare (3,000-acre) sheep farm in New South Wales, Australia, says he also has active conservation programs, such as planting trees to create habitat for migrating birds, like Latham’s snipe (Gallinago hardwickii) and the rainbow bee-eater (Merops ornatus). He says having data from NatureHelm proving the impact of his work could help him sell to more conservation-minded buyers. But he also sees the potential for it to improve the system more broadly.

“Banks seem to be absolutely thrilled at the idea of running ads talking about a better greener world, and I’d like to hold them to account by saying: ‘If you want a better greener world, when a client like me can prove [that’s] what I’m doing, shouldn’t you therefore give [me] a better rate of interest on my mortgage?’” Heffernan says. “I think it’s the opposite of greenwashing — it’s adding integrity to the processes, and that’s what we all want. We want to buy products and deal with banks that walk the talk.”

This is, ultimately, Saunders’s big vision: ensuring that there’s transparency in biodiversity accounting, and to see that transparency leading to change.

“What I want to see is that biodiversity uptick,” she says. “I want to see people improving their lands, and to be part of that change. To think beyond a Band-aid, and actually improve things, is so badly needed.”

This story was originally published on Mongabay.com. Read the original story here.

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