New York state must commit to deforestation-free buying
By any measure, two of the greatest threats facing humanity — the global climate crisis and the global extinction crisis — are getting worse by the day. We see the effects all around us: megadroughts, massive migrations, increasing global conflicts, superstorms, wildfires, polar vortexes, with billions of dollars in property damage, trillions in mitigation and adaptation costs, and a growing death toll, including right here in New York.
Yet there is still time to act – if we act fast and act smart. There is a bill in the Legislature, the New York Deforestationfree Procurement Act, that would stop our state procurement dollars from driving deforestation and forest degradation across critical tropical and boreal forests. Passing this bill would position New York as a leader in the fight to save global forests and help to usher in the kinds of transformative changes essential to aligning our markets with a safe and livable future.
Deforestation and forest degradation lie squarely in the center of the climate crisis and global biodiversity loss. Forests, from the tropics to the boreal, provide invaluable and irreplaceable ecosystem services. They cool our planet and filter our water. As natural carbon sinks and storehouses, forests play a crucial role in the battle against climate change. Forests provide critical habitat for countless at-risk species. And they are home to many of the world’s Indigenous peoples, who have lived on and stewarded the land for millennia.
Yet we are destroying these majestic, priceless ecosystems at a rate equal to 40 football fields every minute. Unsustainable
industrial practices used to
meet consumer demands for products like palm oil, soy, cattle, lumber, and paper are converting lush tropical forests into agricultural and cattle lands and clearcutting carbon-rich boreal forests. This destruction is also tied to other harms, from violence when unscrupulous companies stop at nothing to get access to lushly forested lands, to forced migration and human trafficking – including at the southern U.S. border – when peasant farmers lose their land.
The Deforestation-free Procurement Act, if it becomes law, would curb deforestation, forest degradation, and human rights violations embedded in products containing “forest-risk commodities,” and disentangle New York state from these harmful supply chains.
Thousands of companies have already spoken out to support deforestation-free regulation or adopted voluntary policies to eliminate deforestation and forest degradation from their supply chains. Yet they know, as we do, that voluntary efforts aren’t enough, that we do not have the luxury of time to respond to mass extinctions and halt the climate crisis. Real, strong laws are needed, with enforcement to match. If we pass this bill, New Yorkers can be proud that we are stepping up to incentivize much-needed transparency, curb forest destruction, and protect Indigenous peoples.
In the age of big data, it is relatively easy for companies to trace their supply chains to see if their products were produced at the expense of tropical or boreal forests. The Deforestation-free Procurement Act can catalyze a sea change, positioning the companies that supply New York state government to lead in a marketplace that increasingly demands rigorous sustainability standards.
When our children and grandchildren ask what we did to save humanity’s greatest natural resource, the very “lungs of the Earth,” we must be able to tell them that New York led the way. It is time to act.