Focus turned on deforestation-free leather

A due diligence assessment tool covering ‘deforestation risk management’ is to be created.

Personnel from four organisations – the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the USA’s National Wildlife Federation, the Leather Working Group and the University of Wisconsin Madison – are joining forces in an effort to tackle deforestation and alleged links to leather supply chains.

One of the aims of the project is to build on existing commitments to help tanners and buyers of leather, including footwear producers, confirm that their supply chains are what is being termed ‘deforestation-free’.

Gibbs Land Use and Environment Laboratory researchers from the University of Wisconsin Madison will map and assess data relating to deforestation in the Amazon and Cerrado regions in Brazil, as well as in Paraguay’s Chaco area. The Leather Working Group will thereafter develop a due diligence assessment tool covering ‘deforestation risk management’.

“This work is an important step forward to achieve zero-deforestation supply chains for leather,” said WWF’s senior director for leather and beef supply chains, Mauricio Bauer, who added: “Aiming to address deforestation in an open, science based, data-driven way is a substantial contribution to the leather sector as a whole.”

Also commenting on the new project, Simon Hall – director of a tropical forests and agriculture programme at the National Wildlife Federation (the United States’ largest private nonprofit conservation organisation) – remarked: “We are facing a climate crisis on top of a biodiversity crisis, and deforestation is at the centre of both. Implementing deforestation-free production and sourcing practices is a critical part of the solution, and it will take collective action from companies up and down the value chain to achieve this goal.”

Publishing Data

This article was originally published on page 2 of the January 2022 issue of SATRA Bulletin.

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