Long-term forest conservation and restoration

We are taking action to help keep forests standing and restore degraded forests and natural ecosystems, while respecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

Through our Global Reforestation Program (pdf, 500Kb) we implement reforestation projects in our supply chain and sourcing landscapes.
 

Our progress

Promoting forest conservation and restoration

We buy our key ingredients from farmers and suppliers, encouraging and promoting the uptake of long-term forest conservation and restoration

We work to:

• Obtain commitments from suppliers to identify and conserve standing forests
• Recognize and respect the land rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities
• Use satellite data to map our forest footprint and future risk areas
• Invest in forest conservation and restoration projects connected to our supply chains and sourcing landscapes    
• Support farmers' and communities' livelihoods, by purchasing goods at a premium, buying a greater proportion of goods from suppliers engaged in conservation and restoration     
• Co-invest in regenerative agriculture practices like agroforestry and intercropping
• Partner with industry-wide coalitions to help conserve high-value ecosystems

Proactively helping to prevent deforestation

We are encouraging farmers and suppliers to adopt regenerative agriculture practices, methods of farming which work in harmony with forest conservation. We anticipate where we need to focus efforts on conservation, rather than react to issues, by identifying future risks to forests, peatlands and customary land rights near our supply chains. We then engage our direct suppliers to take preventative actions where needed.

Respecting land rights

Recognizing and respecting the land rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IP&LCs) is one of Nestlé's 10 salient human rights issues. IP&LCs are central to managing forest conservation. Therefore, it is critical that our approach puts IP&LCs rights front and center.

We are working to find ways to integrate further protection for tenure-based land rights into our approach. In 2023, we published our IP&LCs' land rights action plan.

Improving livelihoods

Poverty is one of the key drivers of deforestation, so supporting ways to improve livelihoods is central to our efforts.

To help preserve forests, smallholder farmers and their communities need to be incentivized and empowered to improve agricultural practices and to contribute to conservation and restoration.

These farmers sometimes face specific challenges, such as low yields or aging trees, and may clear forests to grow more crops, feed their family or earn more. The world's future challenge is to produce more food on less land, so it is critical these farmers are included in, and can benefit from, regenerative agriculture practices.

We promote training in good agricultural practices as this can make a big difference in helping these farmers improve their yields, resulting in increased income. We are also helping farmers by co-investing in equipment, providing access to finance, helping to reduce the costs of production, and exploring ways of helping them to diversify their revenue streams.

Accelerating incomes 

We have launched an income accelerator program in Côte d'Ivoire, through the Nestlé Cocoa Plan. The program aims to tackle child labor risks by incentivizing and supporting change in cocoa farming households and helping them toward a living income. It does this through a cash incentive, directly paid to the cocoa-farming family through mobile money. The program includes an incentive for undertaking agroforestry activities and planting forest and fruit trees. Read more in our latest progress report (pdf, 800Kb).

Our Global Reforestation Program

We manage our reforestation activities through our Global Reforestation Program (pdf, 500Kb). Since 2021, we have been working with our partners to develop and implement large-scale carbon removal projects across different geographical zones including Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe and Oceania. During these projects' lifecycle of minimum 20 years, they aim to plant and grow tens of millions of trees within Nestlé's supply chains and sourcing landscapes, to sequester millions of tons of CO₂e.  

Projects within this program include growing trees to help restore natural forest landscapes, introducing agroforestry systems for suitable crops (such as cocoa and coffee) and supporting other natural ecosystem restoration activities.

In addition to the carbon removal benefits, these projects aim to create co-benefits such as helping to improve soil health and water conservation, restoring degraded lands, contributing to biodiversity, mitigating climate change and supporting local livelihoods and the rights of IP&LCs.

To try to make sure planted trees survive and thrive, we follow a 20-year or longer project cycle for every project, which includes country- and project-level assessments and stakeholder engagement. This ensures each project and location is carefully selected, and that long-term impact monitoring is in place. For each project, verification or certification processes ensure that a robust set of carbon best practice principles (pdf, 1Mb) are implemented and respected.

We are partnering with global tree-planting experts such as One Tree Planted and PUR Projet, as well as carbon accounting partners, including NatureCO and South Pole. The Nestlé Scope 3 and Sourcing Landscape Removals Framework I (pdf, 1Mb) allows us to identify which natural climate solutions to invest in and to implement in collaboration with our partners and suppliers along our value chain.