How Greenpeace Changes Big Business
Greenpeace finds striking success in targeting big business.
Tropical deforestation claimed roughly 13 million hectares of forest per year during the first half of this decade, about the same rate of loss as the 1990s. But while the overall numbers have remained relatively constant, they mask a transition of great significance: a shift from poverty-driven to industry-driven deforestation and geographic consolidation of where deforestation occurs. These changes have important implications for efforts to protect the world's remaining tropical forests in that environmental groups now have identifiable targets that may be more responsive to pressure on environmental concerns than tens of millions of impoverished rural farmers. In other words, activists have more leverage than ever to impact corporate behavior as it relates to deforestation.
A prime example of this power is evident in a string of successful Greenpeace campaigns, which have targeted some of the largest drivers of deforestation, including the palm oil industry in Indonesia and Malaysia and the soy and cattle industries in the Brazilian Amazon. The campaigns have shared a common approach: target large, conspicuous consumer-facing companies that sell in western markets.
Amazon soy
Of the three campaigns, the one targeting the Amazon soy industry—launched in 2006—was the first to show results. That campaign targeted animal feed used to fatten chickens used by major fast food chains, the most notable of which was McDonalds in Europe. Greenpeace spent a year tracking soy as it moved through the supply chain from farms in the southern Amazon to ports on the Amazon River, across the Atlantic, and eventually to poultry facilities in Britain and Ireland. 
The response was immediate. McDonalds—stung by the McLibel case of the 1990s and other activist campaigns—immediately demanded its suppliers provide deforestation-free soy, presenting the industry was presented with a daunting dilemma: move towards environmental respectability or of its biggest, and most influential, customers. The largest soy players—whose vast portfolio of commodities are sold globally—chose the former, agreeing to a moratorium on soy grown on newly deforested lands that has changed the way commodities are produced in the Amazon. The moratorium has been extended every year since and through monitoring, which has has continually improved, has shown to be effective at reducing direct forest clearing for soy production.
Palm oil
With palm oil, the process has been slower, but the impact has been substantial. Since 2008 Greenpeace has released a series of reports linking deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia to various consumer products giants including Unilever, Nestle, and Cadbury. The reports have been accompanied with colorful campaigns—often featuring activists dressed as orangutans—to highlight the role consumers are playing in destruction of forest habitats by purchasing products containing palm oil from unsustainably managed sources. In the aftermath of the campaigns, all three companies have unveiled new palm oil sourcing policies. The companies' actions—and new policies—may eventually influence the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, a certification system for the industry.
Amazon cattle
Greenpeace's biggest success may have come with a 2009 report on cattle ranching in the Brazilian Amazon. Cattle ranching is overwhelmingly the biggest driver of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: the fate of nearly 80 percent of cleared rainforest land is to serve as forage for livestock. Since 2006 more than 38,600 square miles has been cleared for pasture, bringing the total area occupied by cattle ranches in the Brazilian Amazon to 214,000 square miles, a landscape larger than France. The Brazilian Amazon, region consisting of rainforests and a biologically rich wooded grassland known as cerrado, is now home to more than 80 million head of cattle, up from 26.6 million in 1990 and equivalent to more than 85 percent of the total U.S. herd. Brazil is today the world's largest exporter and producer of beef.
Brazilian cattle products end up in a wide array of consumer goods. Fresh beef is converted into burgers sold in fast-food restaurants and grocery stores across Brazil, Russia, Venezuela, and a number of other countries. Processed meat finds its way into canned products in Europe and America, while leather goes to China, Italy, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. But as Brazil's beef industry has grown along with its ties to global conglomerates, so has its vulnerability.
The role of the cattle industry in deforestation is no secret. Environmental groups issued reports for years warning that cattle production is the dominant driver of forest destruction, but their campaigns have had no discernible impact on deforestation. Forest clearing remained stubbornly high while beef production continued to expand, enabling the industry to become an economic and political juggernaut, seemingly unstoppable. But in catering toward conglomerates serving an international market producers left themselves exposed to consumer backlash. It's tough for an environment group to target a subsistence farmer who's clearing land to feed his family; it's much easier to go after a multinational enterprise bent on maximizing profits by minimizing raw material costs. Thus in its strength, the multibillion dollar Brazilian cattle industry developed an Achilles' heel—it was only a clever campaign away from facing this new reality.
In June 2009 Greenpeace leveraged this vulnerability. The green group issued Slaughtering the Amazon [PDF], a report that linked some of the world's most prominent brands to illegal destruction of the Amazon rainforest. The fallout was immediate and substantial.
Days after the report was released, Brazil's biggest domestic beef buyers, supermarket chains Walmart, Carrefour, and Pão de Açúcar, announced they would suspend contracts with suppliers found to be involved in Amazon deforestation. Bertin, the world's second largest beef exporter, saw its $90 million loan from the World Bank's International Finance Corporation withdrawn. Investigators raided the offices of JBS, the world's largest beef processor, and other firms, arresting executives for corruption, fraud, and collusion. And a Brazilian federal prosecutor filed a billion-dollar law suit against the cattle industry for environmental damage, warning that firms found to be marketing tainted meat will be subject to fines of 500 reais ($260) per kilo. BNDES, the development bank that accounts for most financing for the agricultural sector in Brazil, announced it would reform its lending policies, making loans contingent on environmental performance. The cattle industry in the Brazilian Amazon was brought to a virtual standstill, leading major meatpackers and traders to agree to a moratorium—modeled on the 2006 soy moratorium—on deforestation. The industry is now engaged in efforts to develop credible land registries to ensure that beef and leather in the Amazon is no longer produced at the expense of primary rainforests.
Pulp and Paper
Fresh off its success in the Amazon, Greenpeace has returned its focus to Southeast Asia, continuing its campaigns against destructive palm oil producers and launching a new effort against Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), a logging company long criticized by green groups for its environmental transgressions. Greenpeace released a report, titled 'How Sinar Mas is Pulping the Planet' [PDF] earlier this month alleging that APP—a subsidiary of the Singapore-listed conglomerate Sinar Mas—is destroying carbon-rich peatlands and rainforests. The report once again names major consumer products companies in the United States linked to the firm.
This article was written by Rhett A. Butler and originally published on Mongabay.com. The article includes an interview with Rolf Skar, a Senior Forest Campaigner with Greenpeace. Read the interview here.
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