CDP - Global Forest Report, 2023

The Global Forests Report 2023 is a comprehensive report that highlights the importance of forests in climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience, and the risks and opportunities they present to businesses and financial institutions. The report emphasizes that forests are fundamental to businesses and impact many biodiversity, climate, and nature-related risks and goals. It also notes that a resilient economy cannot be accomplished without progress on deforestation. The report discusses new business and finance commitments made at COP26 to manage deforestation, including the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forests and Land Use, which aims to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. The report also discusses the new Global Biodiversity Framework agreed at CBD COP15, which aims to address the key drivers of biodiversity loss, including deforestation. The framework includes a requirement for governments to ensure companies and financial institutions assess and disclose their impacts and dependencies on biodiversity. The report also discusses the Forest Declaration Assessment, which tracks progress on commitments to global forest goals and published its first report in 2022, finding that we are not on track to meet our goals. Finally, the report discusses regulations on forest impacts, particularly in the EU, where companies will have to demonstrate their activities are not contributing to deforestation from 2024. The report concludes that urgent action is needed to address deforestation and protect forests, and that businesses and financial institutions have a critical role to play in this effort.