Disrupting the Global Commodity Business

The cascade of corporate commitments to zero-deforestation procurement is a disruptive innovation that has begun to transform the agricultural commodity business. Underlying this innovation is a growing recognition of the previously hidden costs of the old model of commodity expansion – including loss of the world’s natural forests and the biodiversity they contain, human rights violations and the loss of livelihoods of indigenous peoples and local communities who inhabit these forests, and increases in the carbon emissions that drive climate change.

To help tell the story of the potential for transformation in this trillion-dollar global business and to focus attention on how different sectors, including governments and local communities, can work together to achieve this reform, the Climate and Land Use Alliance prepared this white paper, “Disrupting the Global Commodity Business: How Strange Bedfellows are Transforming a Trillion-Dollar Industry to Protect Forests, Benefit Local Communities, and Slow Global Warming.” “Strange bedfellows” refers to the emerging group of indigenous, NGO, corporate, and government leaders who increasingly share this common goal.