Global Canopy: Using data tools to inform governments and corporations about deforestation risks
Global Canopy, along with other partners, have developed innovative data tools that shine a light on deforestation risks within the supply chains of governments, corporations and financial institutions. Recently their Trase tools have seen particular success with Trase Finance winning ‘Most Innovative ESG Product’ at the ESG Investing Awards in February 2022.
Trase is a unique supply chain mapping tool which brings together disparate, publicly available data to connect consumer markets to deforestation and other impacts related to the production of commodities such as soy, palm oil, timber and beef.
Trase has been used by the French government to support the implementation of its strategy to end deforestation linked to imports of unsustainable agricultural products, such as beef, cocoa, palm oil, rubber and soy by 2030.
Working with the French government, Global Canopy and partner organisations have used Trase to create an interactive risk assessment dashboard for the Ministry of Ecological Transition to increase supply chain transparency and encourage action by companies to decouple imports of soy from the risk of contributing to deforestation.
The tool has also been used by fund managers such as Storebrand Asset Management to demonstrate how investors can identify and assess deforestation risks in their portfolios to inform engagement and divestment activities.
Vemund Olsen, Storebrand’s Senior Sustainability Analyst has said that: ‘using a combination of data from Forest500 [another Global Canopy tool] and Trase allows us to identify companies at risk in our portfolio and to develop company-specific engagement strategies’.