2020-21 Report: Rainforest Action Network
2021 donation: $40,000
Donations to date: $90,000
Our donations allow the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) to challenge the multinational corporations that use unethically sourced resources and protect the Leuser Ecosystem of Sumatra, Indonesia, from deforestation caused by the illegal expansion of pulpwood and palm oil plantations.
To do this, RAN works with community partners and local authorities to document illegal deforestation, the clearing and burning of peatlands, labor abuses, and other human rights violations. Then, by publishing reports and using high-profile local and international media coverage, RAN focuses public scrutiny on the multinational corporations that benefit from this behavior.
Last year, RAN published Keep Borneo’s Forests Standing: Evaluating the Forest Footprint of Brands Driving Deforestation in the Indonesian Provinces of North and East Kalimantan, Borneo, and called out the ten target corporations in their Keep Forests Standing (KFS) campaign — Colgate-Palmolive, Ferrero, Kao, Mars, Mondelēz, Nestlé, Nissin Foods, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever — for failing to disclose their impact on Indonesia’s last remaining forests and their related communities. And in their 12th annual report on finance and fossil fuels, Banking on Climate Chaos, they called out the continuing disconnect between government action on climate change and the world’s largest financial institutions by noting that the world’s 60 largest banks have poured $3.8 trillion into fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement.
Going forward, RAN will leverage their reports to encourage companies — like Unilever, Nestlé, and Colgate-Palmolive — to release complete global accounting of the forests and communities they impact, and explain how growth plans will impact the future. In addition, they will continue to publicly campaign for corporations to implement policies to protect forests and human rights; partner with local governments to document illegal activities; and attempt to stop plantations from encroaching on the 80,000-hectare Rawa Singkil Wildlife Reserve and the 1,750,000 hectares of lowland rainforests that surround it (which are home to the largest density of Sumatran Orangutans on the planet, as well as breeding populations of the Sumatran rhinoceros, tiger, and elephant).