Backed by several major manufactures and retails, the Consumer Goods Forum's Forest Positive Coalition of Action has launched its first phase in strategy to transform areas equivalent to the size of Coalition's combined production-base footprint to forest positive by 2030.

Seven retailers including Carrefour, Sainsbury's, Sodexo, Tesco and Walmart and 13 manufacturers including Colgate-Palmolive, Danone, Mars, Mondelēz International, Nestlé, P&G, PepsiCo, Reckitt, and Unilever, made the announcement at COP26 after Jim Andrew, chief sustainability officer of PepsiCo, shared details of the Coalition's Landscape Strategy during the FACT Dialogue Nature Day Panel at the summit. It also follows the initiative of more than 100 governments to end deforestation by 2030, a pledge that is welcomed by The Consumer Goods Forum and the Forest Positive Coalition.

The strategy will commence with a Learning Phase through 2023 in which all Coalition members will invest annually in at least one programme selected from the Coalition's Learning Through Action Portfolio of Landscape Initiatives. This Portfolio currently includes 20 programmes driving forest positive outcomes in six countries: Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Russia, Indonesia and Malaysia. These initiatives were selected based on the Coalition's Principles of Collective Action, available here.

The Coalition is using its production-base footprint — a neutral estimate to represent the Coalition's impact and leverage in commodity production — to determine the size of its ambition. The Coalition is currently calculating the size of its footprint across its focus commodities in partnership with 3Keel, and with the expert guidance of organisations like the World Wildlife Fund, the Accountability Framework initiative, and The Nature Conservancy. This calculation and the methodology will be released once completed and is expected to be updated periodically.

Each Coalition member has committed to investing in local-level initiatives driving forest conservation, ecosystem restoration, and community inclusion in the production of the Coalition's four key commodities: palm oil, soy, paper, pulp and fibre-based packaging, and beef.

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