August 2009

Success Story: Transforming Markets

WWF works with producers and businesses that use agricultural products in their supply chains to promote better practices and measurably reduce the most significant impacts of production on the planet's water, air, soil and biological diversity. We have established a market transformation strategy for key commodities like beef, cocoa, cotton, palm oil, sugar and soy.

WWF is currently assessing the world's major users of palm oil, which is found in everything from cosmetics to ice cream to chocolate bars. Certified sustainable palm oil, available since last November, provides assurance that valuable tropical forests have not been cleared and that environmental and social safeguards have been met during production. WWF helped set up the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil as an international body for the industry to develop sustainability standards. Today, however, only one percent of the sustainable palm oil available on the market has been bought. WWF's Palm Oil Buyer's Scorecard will spotlight companies and the extent to which they have supported sustainable palm oil and fulfilled their commitments to purchase it.

- Carter S. Roberts