"Deforestation poses a material risk to businesses that rely on forest-linked crops.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is heavily reliant on the production of raw materials, causing deforestation and climate change, which contribute to recurrent and prolonged drought in some parts of the country and continuous flooding and soil erosion in others.
If the emerging transparency efforts shine a light on companies that are sourcing material from high-deforestation areas, she says, they should encourage those companies to actively improve conditions rather than pull up and move elsewhere.
Among the Merina of the central Highlands, the Temanambondro (Antaisaka) people of the southeastern Manambondro region, and several other ethnic groups, deforestation rendered wood a valuable construction material only to be used by aristocrats.
Agricultural emissions include the nitrous oxide released from fertilizers and methane from livestock, as well as indirect emissions caused by deforestation and the production of raw materials.
Our greenhouse gas emissions have soared over the past half century and our over-sized consumption of material goods has contributed to deforestation, the acidification of the oceans, and the exhaustion of the world's limited inheritance of natural resources.
This cross-sector alliance brings together many of the world's largest food manufacturers and retailers, he explained, and aims to make a "material difference" in two areas: curbing deforestation and eliminating HFC-based refrigeration.
In Madagascar, UNICEF supported the design of eco-friendly school, using compressed earth as construction material to reduce the impact on deforestation.
In Rio on Monday, for instance, there was an announcement of a significant new voluntary agreement on the part of the Consumer Goods Forum to help end tropical deforestation by ensuring that none of the raw materials those companies source will contribute to further forest loss.
Instead, Schmidt and Frank propose searching for more subtle signals, such as byproducts of fossil fuel consumption, mass extinction events, plastic pollution, synthetic materials, disrupted sedimentation from agricultural development or deforestation, and radioactive isotopes potentially caused by nuclear detonations.
