A leading standard for emissions from food and agriculture is being revised to bring it into line with delays in achieving zero-deforestation supply chains.
Companies have until November 6 to weigh in on changes to the Science Based Target initiative’s Forest, Land and Agriculture (FLAG) Guidance. Proposed revisions include pushing back the final deadline for companies to eliminate deforestation to supply chains to 2030. Current guidelines have a December 2025 date, which stakeholders acknowledge companies will not be able to meet.
“To keep the standard relevant and used, we need to revisit the target year and figure out what to do to keep the momentum going,” said Martha Stevenson, a senior director on the forest team at the nonprofit WWF-US and a member of the expert group advising the initiative on the guidelines.
“These deforestation commitments started in 2010; we would have loved to have had action much, much earlier than this,” she added. “No one’s happy about rolling these dates back.”
Stevenson, who led the creation of the first set of FLAG guidelines, said the 2025 deadline has proved unworkable because of international demand for the small group of commodities that drive deforestation — including beef, soy and palm oil — as well as domestic trade in forest countries for those products. Land speculation and ownership rights have also proved difficult to address.
Key commodities
Pushing back the deforestation date will not impact the rest of the FLAG guidelines, which focus on emissions reductions. More than 340 companies have validated FLAG targets, according to the SBTi.
The revisions are also intended to align the guidance with other frameworks and regulations in this area, including the Accountability Framework initiative, a roadmap for achieving ethical supply chains overseen by a coalition of nonprofits, and the European Union’s Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR), which comes into force in December.
Companies interested in responding to the SBTi’s request for comment should consider how the FLAG guidance dovetails with EUDR, suggested Stevenson. The SBTi is proposing aligning the commodities covered by the deforestation part of the guidance with seven key focuses for EUDR: wood, cattle, soy, coffee, cocoa, palm oil and rubber. But these are not the only material commodities, noted Stevenson. For example, barley and cotton are important to beer makers and clothes manufacturers, respectively, but neither is on the EUDR list. “Both of those commodities can drive land use change in specific regions,” said Stevenson.
Jim Giles
Jim Giles is Vice President, Editor-at-Large at Trellis Group. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Atlantic, Economist, Guardian, Nature and other publications. He was the co-founder of Matter, an award-winning investigative publication that was acquired by Medium in 2013. In 2017, he was a graduate of the Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program at Columbia University. He’s also worked as a strategic consultant for several high-impact organizations, including the European Climate Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.
A leading standard for emissions from food and agriculture is being revised to bring it into line with delays in achieving zero-deforestation supply chains.
Companies have until November 6 to weigh in on changes to the Science Based Target initiative’s Forest, Land and Agriculture (FLAG) Guidance. Proposed revisions include pushing back the final deadline for companies to eliminate deforestation to supply chains to 2030. Current guidelines have a December 2025 date, which stakeholders acknowledge companies will not be able to meet.
“To keep the standard relevant and used, we need to revisit the target year and figure out what to do to keep the momentum going,” said Martha Stevenson, a senior director on the forest team at the nonprofit WWF-US and a member of the expert group advising the initiative on the guidelines.
“These deforestation commitments started in 2010; we would have loved to have had action much, much earlier than this,” she added. “No one’s happy about rolling these dates back.”
Stevenson, who led the creation of the first set of FLAG guidelines, said the 2025 deadline has proved unworkable because of international demand for the small group of commodities that drive deforestation — including beef, soy and palm oil — as well as domestic trade in forest countries for those products. Land speculation and ownership rights have also proved difficult to address.
Key commodities
Pushing back the deforestation date will not impact the rest of the FLAG guidelines, which focus on emissions reductions. More than 340 companies have validated FLAG targets, according to the SBTi.
The revisions are also intended to align the guidance with other frameworks and regulations in this area, including the Accountability Framework initiative, a roadmap for achieving ethical supply chains overseen by a coalition of nonprofits, and the European Union’s Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR), which comes into force in December.
Companies interested in responding to the SBTi’s request for comment should consider how the FLAG guidance dovetails with EUDR, suggested Stevenson. The SBTi is proposing aligning the commodities covered by the deforestation part of the guidance with seven key focuses for EUDR: wood, cattle, soy, coffee, cocoa, palm oil and rubber. But these are not the only material commodities, noted Stevenson. For example, barley and cotton are important to beer makers and clothes manufacturers, respectively, but neither is on the EUDR list. “Both of those commodities can drive land use change in specific regions,” said Stevenson.
Jim Giles
Jim Giles is Vice President, Editor-at-Large at Trellis Group. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Atlantic, Economist, Guardian, Nature and other publications. He was the co-founder of Matter, an award-winning investigative publication that was acquired by Medium in 2013. In 2017, he was a graduate of the Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program at Columbia University. He’s also worked as a strategic consultant for several high-impact organizations, including the European Climate Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.
