"The loss of tropical forests is a primary cause of global biodiversity decline and the source of roughly 10 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Still, despite decades of environmental campaigning to save the world’s remaining rainforests, clearing has continued more or less unabated in most of the tropics. In recent years, however, we have seen a new development in forest conservation. Big, multinational consumer goods companies like Unilever, Nestlé, McDonalds, Walmart, H&M and Ikea, have pledged to stop buying products originating from cleared forest land. In Brazil, major slaughterhouses and traders in soybeans have done the same, contributing to reducing deforestation in the Amazon by 70 percent.

 

In this lecture Martin Persson will discuss the promises and limitations of these new supply-chain initiatives and what you, as a consumer and citizen, can do to help halting tropical forest loss."