Global Canopy: Action-oriented accountability in the financial services industry

Global Canopy’s Forest 500 initiative is a powerful tool identifying and ranking the 350 companies with the most potential links to deforestation, and the 150 financial institutions that provide the most finance to those companies. Global Canopy data shows that financial institutions without policies on deforestation provide $3.6 trillion in finance to the companies with the highest exposure to deforestation risk. Forest 500 is working to transform global commodity supply chains by engaging companies and financial institutions towards improved action on deforestation using their tailored guidance and data.

In last year’s assessment, Schroders Asset Management received a very low Forest 500 score of 4%. Since then, having received guidance from Global Canopy, Schroders have publicly committed to eliminating commodity-driven deforestation from their portfolios by 2025 and to address human rights abuses linked with deforestation. In this year’s assessment, Schroders increased their score to 50%, bringing them to the top of the ranking for financial institutions.

Global Canopy are now upscaling their guidance offerings for the finance sector and direct engagement with financial institutions to enable more institutions to follow Schroders’s path towards progress on deforestation.