Shift
Supply
Chains
Thanks to these innovative collaborations, we have helped shift supply chains and save forests from Canada to Indonesia and beyond.
How we protect forests
The heart of our mission
We are dedicated to protecting the world's Ancient and Endangered Forests through collaboration, innovation, and restless leadership.
We work collaboratively with brands, decision-makers, innovators, NGOs, front-line communities, and local governments to transform supply chains and solve the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. Our approach uses the power of the global marketplace to secure large-scale and just conservation of the world’s climate-critical and biodiversity-rich forests.
Three (of the many) Reasons Ancient and Endangered Forests Need To Be Conserved
1
Counteract
climate change
Ancient and Endangered Forests are the lifelines of our planet
Globally, deforestation and degradation generate over a tenth of annual carbon emissions. Keeping existing forests standing is therefore one of the fastest, cheapest, and most effective ways to stabilize the climate.
At current scale, demand for forest commodities is incompatible with global targets to protect 30–50% of the planet's land and waters by 2030. Ancient and Endangered Forests took centuries to millennia to evolve and cannot simply be replanted. (Reducing fibre use overall, maximizing recycled content, and switching to Next Gen alternative products that don’t rely on wood-based feedstocks takes pressure off these irreplaceable forests that continue to be logged at alarming rates.)
2
Reverse
terrestrial
biodiversity
loss
Biodiversity is declining faster than at any other time in human history, and an estimated one million species — more than one in eight — are threatened with extinction. Forests are Earth's wildlife metropolises, bursting with a rich, interconnected web of species. Protecting these habitats is pivotal to planetary health. Forests are home to the majority of the world’s terrestrial species, many of which exist nowhere else on Earth:
- The Leuser Ecosystem is the only place where elephants, orangutans, rhinos, and tigers still exist together in the wild.
- The Great Bear Rainforest is the only place you will find the iconic white-furred Spirit bear, and many other endemic species.
-
The Amazon has the highest species density on Earth, providing a home to about 10% of all known species on less than 1% of the planet’s surface. On average, a new species of animal or plant is discovered in this integral ecosystem every other day.
3
SUSTAINING
CULTURE
Forests provide essential subsistence, health, livelihoods, and tremendous cultural value for hundreds of millions of Indigenous peoples and traditional communities who have stewarded these landscapes for millennia.
These communities have rich cultural and economic practices deeply connected to forests. Their ongoing stewardship has preserved these ecosystems, demonstrating the important role they play in maintaining these vital landscapes.
From the Amazon to the Boreal, the tropics to coastal temperate rainforests, forest conservation isn't just an ethical responsibility:
It's a strategic imperative for the planet and all its inhabitants.
How We Protect Forests
At Canopy, we change the deforestation equation by working with brands, producers, and innovators to transform unsustainable supply chains. By addressing the problem at the root, we stop the drivers of forest destruction and create the enabling conditions necessary to protect forests all around the world.
We need at least 50% of existing forest ecosystems to be conserved or restored to provide climate stability, fresh water, habitat for plant and animal life, and to ensure other functions that have taken 3.8 billion years to evolve. Canopy stands with the global scientific community calling for Nature Needs Half — a clarion call for half of all ecosystems to be protected and restored. We must guarantee the conservation of these special and essential landscapes because when forests are protected, so too are all the species that depend on them — humans included.
Industrial Logging
Industrial logging is the number one cause of intact forest loss, resulting in widespread forest fragmentation and landscape degradation.
Despite the importance of forests, every year, a staggering 5.1 billion trees are cut down, most from the most climate-critical, biodiversity-rich forests on the planet, to meet the demand for paper and paper packaging, and for fabrics like rayon and viscose. Primary forests took centuries to millennia to evolve and cannot simply be “replanted.”
Logging at this scale is incompatible with global targets to protect nature. Take-make-waste supply chains pose a severe threat to Ancient and Endangered Forests worldwide.
39 Million Ha
Forests Protected
With the help of supporters and conservation allies, Canopy has played a pivotal role in securing large-scale conservation gains in 39.2 million acres of Ancient and Endangered Forests in Indonesia, Canada’s Boreal Forest, and North America’s Temperate Rainforests.
1.17 Trillion USD
Market Power
Through CanopyStyle, Pack4Good, and Paper futures, more than 950 brand partners worth over 1.17 trillion USD in revenue have committed to eliminating Ancient and Endangered Forests from their supply chains, including some of the world’s largest and most recognizable companies, like H&M, Zara/Inditex, Uniqlo, Walmart, Penguin Random House, Ben & Jerry’s, Flipkart, and LVMH.
Solutions
in action
For over 25 years, Canopy has worked to leverage the power of the marketplace to save forests around the world and to build solutions that work for people and the planet.
Partner
to
Protect
Canopy works with governments and Indigenous and traditional forest community leaders who are keen to build conservation-based economies that protect forests and support local people.
Market
Influence
Led by the vision and plans that our local allies have for their lands, Canopy identifies ways that global brands, corporate decision-makers, investors, and respected conservation-economy specialists can support and assist them in advancing large-scale conservation, rainforest-compatible economies, and human well-being.
The market influence we build provides leverage to support the work Indigenous communities, local leaders, and NGO partners are doing on the ground.
