3 Ways GFW Pro can Help Commodity Processors and Traders Go Deforestation-Free
Deforestation-free regulation and obligations to monitor and report on supply chain climate impacts are here to stay. A one-year delay in implementation of the European Union’s Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) offers more time to prepare, but more requirements are looming. Similar legislation is taking shape in the UK, while the European Commission is set to publish its omnibus package in February 2025, which aims to streamline reporting requirements across key regulations including the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).
While there continues to be speculation over what these rules will precisely entail, what is clear is that robust risk assessment procedures are increasingly becoming a must-have for companies.
This rapidly evolving landscape makes it more urgent than ever for companies to credibly and transparently measure, manage and reduce their risk of contributing to deforestation and associated emissions. This is especially so for agricultural commodity traders and processors as they play a key role in efforts to eliminate deforestation.
A cocoa farm in Ghana. Photo by: James Warburton/WRI
While diverse tools are now available to meet these companies’ needs, each applying different methods and offering different capabilities, GFW Pro, the supply chains edition of Global Forest Watch (GFW), offers a cost-effective baseline for deforestation assessment.
Processors and traders can harness GFW Pro’s geospatial imaging, analytics and near-real-time data to meet three critical requirements for achieving a deforestation-free supply chain:
• Assess where to intensify due diligence investments
• Monitor, identify and rapidly respond to risks
• Provide a robust evidence base for reporting and compliance
Read on to learn more about how GFW Pro helps companies meet each of these needs.
Assess where to intensify due diligence efforts
GFW Pro is not a traceability platform, but it is explicitly designed to support decisions on where to invest in traceability and apply more extensive due diligence efforts.
Production units and farm plots, represented by geospatial polygons, offer the highest level of traceability. However, some companies may only be able to trace a commodity to the larger landscape where production is occurring, commonly referred to as a supply shed or sourcing area.
Within this context, companies may use the Negligible Risk indicator on GFW Pro, which is aligned with the Accountability Framework initiative (AFi) and adapted from an approach developed by Trase. It identifies deforestation risk at a sub-national level, determining the likelihood that deforestation occurred following a 2020 cut-off date. While negligible risk does not mean zero deforestation, companies can use this measure to prioritize their due diligence process and investigative efforts. This is analogous to the EUDR benchmarking system to classify countries or parts thereof as low, standard or high risk, requiring enhanced scrutiny in high-risk countries while allowing for exercise of simplified due diligence in low-risk countries or areas.
Risk can be analyzed by traceability level on GFW Pro
2. Monitor, identify and rapidly respond to risks
Companies can use GFW Pro to monitor historic and ongoing trends in deforestation and track the forest impact of their supply chain over time. Data and analyses can also be integrated into existing in-house or service provider systems and workflows through an API.
Using the GFW Pro platform, companies can compare and evaluate where tree cover loss, natural forest loss and land use change occurred in their sourcing or production locations using various maps such as:
• Global Forest Cover 2020 map (version 1) from the Joint Research Centre (JRC)
• Natural vs. planted forest layers from the Natural Lands Map by the Science-Based Targets Network (SBTN)
• Tree cover loss from the University of Maryland’s GLAD Lab (UMD)
By cross-referencing multiple complementary data sets, companies can strengthen deforestation assessments and increase confidence in the results. For example, if tree cover loss occurred in an area where both SBTN’s Natural Lands Map and the JRC’s Global Forest Cover 2020 map agree on a forest designation, it could be considered a high priority for follow-up investigations. GFW Pro delivers a range of analyses based on a curated collection of 38 supply chain-relevant data sets.
High-resolution monthly Planet imagery, as well as publicly available Google Maps imagery, integrated into the platform, can then be used to visually assess whether the base map forest classification was correct, whether the loss in tree cover was caused by natural events or human activity and whether there was a non-compliant change in land use.
Companies can monitor EUDR-relevant commodities (cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soy and wood) or any commodity of interest by uploading portfolios of source locations using GFW Pro templates that can be downloaded directly from the platform. For palm oil companies, the Palm Risk tool and Universal Mill List are available on GFW Pro to benchmark and compare mill-specific deforestation exposure for source mills.
GFW Pro also offers near-real-time alerts for deforestation and fire events. Integrated alerts combine GLAD (30-meter) and GLAD-S2 (10-meter) optical and RADD (10-meter) radar deforestation alerts in the tropics to provide a faster, more confident view of forest disturbances. Companies can use this data to prioritize upstream engagement with, and request action from, direct or indirect suppliers or to track grievances raised downstream.
Map view of locations with deforestation alerts in the past month, as seen on GFW Pro
3. Provide a robust evidence base for reporting and compliance
Companies can use these GFW Pro analyses to assess compliance risk for regulations like the EUDR as well as selected national legal requirements. Several national data sets are already available on GFW Pro that companies can use to assess compliance with national laws in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Indonesia, and more will be added soon to increase coverage in Latin America. Companies can share analytical outputs directly with government regulators as corroborating evidence for sourcing area claims. Read more here about how GFW Pro supports EUDR due diligence.
GFW Pro also supports companies disclosing to the CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) Forests questionnaire, which asks report preparers to describe the methods and data sources used to monitor or estimate deforestation footprint; the tools and methods used for identifying and assessing forest-related risks; and methodology used for classifying levels of risk. For example, in Cargill’s 2023 CDP filing, it described analytical methods made available by GFW as key to its approach for monitoring deforestation and assessing deforestation-related risks.
This underscores the importance for companies to be able to clearly explain how they assess and classify risk. Transparent, peer-reviewed methodologies and open data allow for independent verification, creating a foundation of trust and credibility for corporate disclosure.
GFW Pro also offers API-based access to digitally signed Deforestation Reports (based on the Post-2020 Risk Assessment), providing assurance of content provenance, integrity and authenticity when analyses are used as supporting evidence for EUDR due diligence statements and sourcing decisions.
These are three important ways in which GFW Pro provides a cost-effective platform for companies to focus their due diligence efforts, monitor and reduce deforestation in their supply chains and meet regulatory requirements credibly and transparently. Get started with GFW Pro here.