Final Evaluation of Carbon Disclosure Project’s Forest Policy workstream under Norway’s International Climate and Forests Initiative (NICFI) 2016 – 2020 Funding

CDP is a global non-profit that assists investors, companies, cities and governments to disclose and act on their environmental impacts. CDP supplies platforms and standards for environmental reporting that provide practitioners and policy makers with comprehensive datasets on corporate and city actions, assisting them to make better-informed decisions regarding how to shift capital towards a low-carbon, deforestation-free and water-secure economy. CDP‘s disclosure platform annually collected data on business operations related to climate change, water security and deforestation from over 8,400 companies. It also collected reports from over 920 cities, states and regions on mitigation and adaptation efforts. The result of this disclosure across sectors and geographies was the world’s most comprehensive collection of accessible, comparable and self-reported environmental data that could be used to drive action by public and private actors.

CDP’s work was structured around three thematic pillars: i) climate change, ii) water security and iii) forests. Acting on behalf of more than 515 investors that represented USD 106 trillion of assets and on behalf of 14 large purchasing companies, CDP Forests provided a framework of action for companies to measure and manage forest-related risks and opportunities, transparently report on progress, and commit to proactive proceedings for the restoration of forests and ecosystems. CDP Forests worked on a range of global projects that aimed to diminish the negative impacts of various commodities on forests, to halt deforestation and forest degradation, and to make corporate value chains more environmentally sustainable. The projects focused on the regions that experienced significant deforestation and that had importers who drove high demand for forest clearance through trade. Since 2016, CDP Forests had been managing a project composed of three sub-projects funded by NORAD through Norway’s International Climate and Forests Initiative (NICFI). The three sub-projects were as follows:

• The Power of Procurement (PoP) project, implemented over five years between April 2016 and February 2021.
• The South East Asian Banks (SEA Banks) project, implemented between April 2019 and February 2021.
• The Investor Research (IR) project, implemented between April 2019 and February 2021.