Forest 500

Civil society is increasingly important in aligning economic activities with social and environmental priorities and can play a central role in influencing forest risk commodity supply chains and addressing tropical forest loss. Where governments and businesses are not able or willing to exert the power to implement sustainable practices, civil society can help to counter this, for example by helping to share knowledge and shape sustainability interventions, develop tools and research, assist businesses in the practical implementation of initiatives, and help further partnership projects between indigenous communities, businesses and governments. Furthermore, civil society is central to ensuring that the voluntary commitments and adopted policies of companies and other corporate actors are achieved and implemented; playing both a vital watchdog role in monitoring the implementation of policies and holding businesses accountable with respect to their ethical responsibilities and commitments, and in directly supporting policy implementation. 

Consumer campaigns show the potential of civil society to influence commodity supply chains. By using investigative research, NGOs, for example, can expose how the supply chain links operations related to deforestation in producer countries to well-known brands in consumer markets. Pressured by the threat of reputational risk linked to being associated with deforestation, which can negatively impact sales, market shares and stock prices, brand owners often alter their business practices. These consumer-facing companies then in turn tend to exert pressure on their suppliers and commodity producers in forest countries to change their operations respectively and address deforestation. Such campaigns can have significant business impacts on corporations and lead to policy changes, as has been the case with several large companies who have been targeted in the past, including Asia Pulp and Paper, McDonalds, and Nestle.  Furthermore, in recognition of the need for collaborative and coordinated efforts to improve governance in the agriculture and forest sectors, involving governments, supply chain actors, and civil society, there are an increasing number of multi-stakeholder initiatives that aim to advance supply chain sustainability. These include various certification schemes and comomdity roundtables, many of which have been established in collaboration with NGOs, such as is the case for the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). There are also several emerging public-private partnerships aiming to solve environmental problems in agricultural supply chains, such as the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 (TFA 2020), which involves the collaboration of several NGOs. 

Civil society also plays a variety of other influential roles in the global political arena, influencing global decision making and governance. For example, by contributing expertise in international policy discussions often beyond the remit and knowledge of governmental institutions or by providing additional pressure to government negotiators in the absence of political will to address global problems requiring collective action by the international community.