Risk factor: public health 3

Part 1: How lack of transparency in the cattle sector drives Amazon destruction

The butcher’s block – how lack of transparency and traceability enables forest crime

1 October 2018, Amazonas, Brazil, 3°24’3.6” S 59°24’10.98” W: Deforestation and fire monitoring in the Amazon. ©Daniel Beltrá/Greenpeace The proliferation of political and corporate commitments to end deforestation have not translated into meaningful change on the ground, and the global commodities trade remains a leading driver of forest destruction. Three interrelated failures, each prevalent at both political and market level, help to explain this:

1. Data deficiency: • Governments of countries where large-scale commodity-driven deforestation is occurring, or that import forest risk commodities in significant quantities, are failing to produce definitive, legally verified maps showing land tenure and identifying ultimate ownership, and/or to set up tracking systems to monitor the flows of commodities. • Companies that trade, process, use or retail commodities or provide financial support to the sector are failing to identify and record their entire commodity supply chains to the producer level.

2. Failure of transparency: • Where they have produced maps or established tracking systems as described above, governments are failing to provide their citizens and civil society with timely access to such information in formats that are easy to locate, access, understand and evaluate. • Where they have amassed data on their own commodity supply chains, companies are failing to make that data available to enable independent monitoring and verification of their sustainability claims.

3. Failure of due diligence: • Governments in producer and consumer countries are failing to defend the public interest and uphold the rule of law. • Companies that have established zerodeforestation and human rights policies with which they require their suppliers to comply are failing to enforce that compliance, in that they have not yet made it a condition of trade or financial support.

These failures undermine accountability and create the conditions in which corruption, human rights abuses and forest crime thrive. Transparency – public access to highquality information – is vital to ensuring that commodity sectors can be held to account for their externalised environmental and social costs, and is thus a precondition for any meaningful efforts to address the social injustices and environmental challenges the world faces.