Commodity Roundtables News

Last October, I took some time off work at the Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber (GPSNR) to learn how to surf. Surfing has always been a dream of mine…

Coffee. Nectar of the gods. Lifesaving energy booster that helps many of us start our days. Ubiquitously consumed around the world by people like me – without my beloved morning…

In a book published in 2016, Henrik Ringsberg of Chalmers University of Technology, wrote that "Product traceability to ensure quality, safety, and sustainability of goods has become a worldwide societal…

Every time I meet someone new and tell them I work on defining sustainability for the rubber industry, a range of questions follows. The most important of these typically is,…

In a recent report entitled “Destruction: certified” Greenpeace concluded that “certification is not a solution to deforestation, forest degradation and other ecosystem conversion”. Although Greenpeace acknowledges some positive impacts of…

Corporations that trade in four forest-risk commodities are failing to do enough to prevent deforestation in their supply chains, according to new analysis by the Climate Disclosure Project (CDP), an…

More than a decade of illegal gold mining around the upstart town of La Pampa in the Peruvian Amazon has tainted local water supplies, razed forests adjacent to a world-class…

The 2010s opened as a moment of optimism for tropical forests. Widely available satellite imagery via platforms like Google Earth brought new levels of accountability which, for the first time,…

In a surprise move even to the sugarcane industry, the president has removed restrictions on Amazon sugarcane production; land speculators could benefit.

Since as far back as the early 1990s, Thailand has been the world’s largest exporter of natural rubber, responsible for as much as 35.1 percent of rubber exports in 2016.…

The fall of the Suharto regime and the beginning of the democratic or reformasi era in Indonesia coincided with a massive surge in deforestation. One of the central reasons for…

The homegrown banks that back the flood of soy into China have with little knowledge of the deforestation their funding is potentially supporting, according to the nonprofit CDP, an international…

2018 was a difficult year for the world's tropical rainforests. Below are of some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year, but we couldn't cover everything, so if there…

JAKARTA — The world’s leading certification body for ethically sourced palm oil has ordered a total ban on deforestation by its members, amid growing pressure from both companies and consumers.…

Food and drinks giant Nestlé was suspended from the world’s largest association for ethical palm oil production late last month and can no longer use the group’s stamp of approval…

We are in the midst of the greatest global effort in history to end tropical deforestation, driven largely by the importance of tropical forests for tackling climate change. An exciting…

Between America's abandonment of leadership on conservation and environmental policy, Brazil's backtracking on forest conservation, massive forest fires worldwide, and the revelation of a sharp increase in global forest loss…

Many companies that deal in commodities linked to heavy tropical deforestation, such as soy or timber, have made commitments to significantly reduce or end deforestation in their supply chains by…

Nearly a million hectares are “missing” from landbanks of the world’s top palm oil producers, a new report shows. While most companies disclose the area of planted land they manage,…

In almost every aisle of the grocery store, you can find products from the palm oil, soy, wood, and cattle industries. Together, these industries are responsible for more than a…

In the summer of 2016, two of the world's largest producers of palm oil, which is found in everything from lipstick to margarine, lost the ability to market what they sold…

Massive forest fires in the Congo and Amazon, surging deforestation in Brazil, and tentative steps toward reform in Indonesia and Myanmar: there were no shortage of major happenings in tropical…

A complaint lodged earlier this year about alleged abuses by a palm oil company in Indonesian Papua has raised questions over the credibility of the industry’s largest certification scheme in…

The cachet of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil has taken a hit with the withdrawal of support for the organization by an Australian watchdog that had pushed some of…

n expert assessment of a globally popular alternative to regulation - voluntary certification standards systems - has found that results are not always effective. Of the increasing number of voluntary…

Just days after pledging $100 million over five years to support efforts to protect the Amazon, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has announced $90 million in grants to improve…

n the summer of 2013, as Indonesian fires enveloped the region in a toxic haze, public ire settled on plantation firms as prime culprits in the disaster. Burning land to…

In January, Rainforest Alliance, one of the world's most influential environmental groups for its work in developing eco-certification as a mechanism for raising social and environmental standards for commodity production,…

The Indonesian government’s sustainable palm oil certification program announced the findings of a joint study with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil on Wednesday that details how the two systems…

Part five in a five-part series on the attitudes of palm oil financiers towards company sustainability. Read the first, second, third and fourth installments. anks and investors are increasingly looking for ways to hold companies accountable for their…