High Carbon Stock Approach

We conserve the world’s irreplaceable tropical forests and protect the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. We provide a complete, system-wide solution to grow and trade commodity goods without destroying rainforests or violating rights. The biggest cause of rainforest destruction is the global demand for commodities such as palm oil, pulp and timber, soya, beef, cocoa and rubber. The High Carbon Stock Approach eliminates deforestation from production and supply chains wherever crops are grown, manufactured and traded in the tropics. Any company can implement our approach through actions set out in the HCSA Toolkit - our blueprint to conserve forests, biodiversity and carbon sinks that embeds the rights of local people in land use decision-making. HCSA started as a collaboration between pulp and palm oil producers, local communities, conservation NGOs and forest mapping and monitoring experts. Our broad membership is a singularly powerful check on deforestation. Our members include some of the world’s largest companies, some of the smallest farming cooperatives and communities and global environmental and social justice organisations - all working together to deliver actions that are measured by experts, monitored in perpetuity - and publicly recorded HCSA members have conserved over 600,000 hectares of rainforest storing an estimated 52.5 million tonnes of carbon since our foundation in 2014. Our Tookit is endorsed by the UN Development Programme and the EU, awarded ‘Top innovator’ at COP 26 by Tropical Forest Alliance/World Economic Forum and is incorporated into global certification programmes including the RSPO. Global deforestation must end by 2030 to have any chance of delivering 1.5C. The urgency for commodity companies to break the link between deforestation and their operations never been more stark or powerful. We are a non-profit global organisation - please join us.