How do we identify the companies and financial institutions?

Every two years, Global Canopy identifies the companies with the greatest influence on deforestation, based on their exposure to forest risk commodities, and the financial institutions that provide the most finance to them. 

Selecting the Forest 500 companies

To identify the companies with the most influence in these nine commodity supply chains, we identify the key producing and trading countries. Producing countries are those with the largest areas of forest that are losing this forest cover at a rapid rate and high volume due to expanding commodity production. Trading countries are those importing the largest value of commodities from these producer countries.

Our country selection methodology guides the selection of the most influential companies operating in these jurisdictions.

We select companies based on a variety of different metrics that indicate their exposure to forest risk commodities and thus to deforestation risk. This can include data like the scale of their commodity production areas, the volume of commodities they process or trade, and their market share within global manufacturing and retail sectors. Forest 500 includes companies operating at different stages of the supply chain: producers, processors, traders, manufacturers and retailers. Each year there are small changes to the Forest 500 company selection reflecting corporate mergers and acquisitions. The next selection cycle is currently taking place and the updated methodology will be published in 2026.

Selecting the Forest 500 financial institutions

Once the companies have been selected, the financial institutions that provide the most finance to those companies in the form of shareholdings, bondholdings, loans and underwritings are identified. They are the banks, pension funds, asset managers and other financial institutions with the greatest exposure to deforestation risk – and those with the greatest power to transform commodity supply chains.