Deforestation

At Mondelēz International, we believe that more sustainable snacking is about creating a future where people and planet thrive together. As a global snacking company, we are encouraging practices that respect land rights and investing in innovation and technology to increase transparency and measure impact at scale across our supply chain.

We strategically continue to focus on where we believe we can make an impact and where the world needs it most. Deforestation is a major environmental and social challenge that has been caused by various factors, including global consumption. Deforestation is a risk because of its contribution to global climate change as well as its impact on indigenous people and local communities and ecosystem services in affected areas. Therefore, it is important to take action to help reduce deforestation and promote more sustainable land use practices which respect human rights, including land rights, in line with our Human Rights policy.

Our goal is to seek no deforestation across our primary commodities following an approach starting with our European Business and rolling out to our other regions by 31 December 2025, in accordance with EU regulations and SBTi guidance. The cutoff date is December 31, 2020, in accordance with EU regulations and SBTi guidance. This is the date after which deforestation is counted in a company’s supply chain, meaning that products have to be produced on land that has not been subject to deforestation or forest degradation after 31 December 2020. In specific cases, e.g., where specific certification standards exist, we may apply cut-off dates set by the respective standard if those are the same or earlier in time.

• For cocoa and palm¹, two commodities we source that are considered at-risk when it comes to deforestation, we engage with our key suppliers to supply only deforestation-free cocoa and palm to Mondelēz International.
• We also call on our suppliers to take efforts to end deforestation in their supply chains.
• While focus lies on cocoa and palm we also consider, soy¹ and pulp and paper¹ in our deforestation-free approach.

For a decade we have had our cocoa sustainability program in place, Cocoa Life, which aims to holistically help address the root causes of the social, economic and environmental challenges that cocoa farming faces. We are applying farm mapping technologies to monitor deforestation for communities. Farm mapping enables us to identify problem areas and gain a deeper understanding of farming community needs and farm boundaries. After raising the issue of cocoa-based deforestation in 2015 at COP21 in Paris, in 2017 Mondelez International became a founding member of the Cocoa & Forests Initiative (CFI), alongside the governments of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, and 36 other world-leading chocolate and cocoa companies to help decrease deforestation and restore forest areas. Mondelez International is an active member of the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) which plays an integral role in collaboratively building solutions for a more sustainable cocoa sector. The experience gained through our signature program as well as our active participation in industry forums are applied when engaging with our suppliers as part of our aim to shift towards deforestation free sourcing.

In palm oil¹, we have been RSPO certified since 2013 and continue to evolve in line with further deforestation-free requirements. We publish our mill list on our corporate website and engage with our suppliers to provide traceability to the mill and to be deforestation-free for palm oil supplied to Mondelēz International.

Our Palm Oil Action Plan requires suppliers to take responsibility for eliminating deforestation and respecting human rights in their own operation and upstream supply chain by mapping and monitoring all plantations and suspending companies involved in deforestation. As part of our position on palm we are transitioning to adopt the No Deforestation, No Peatland, No Exploitation Implementation Reporting Framework (NDPE IRF) and will require our palm suppliers to submit NDPE IRF profiles annually.

While we account for a small part of the global demand for palm oil (~0.5%), it is important that all actors play a role in supporting a transition towards a more sustainable palm oil sector. That’s why we lead or are active participants in leading global organizations focused on improving the palm oil supply chain, including the Consumer Goods Forum Forest Positive Coalition (CGF FPC)², Consumer Goods Forum Human Rights Coalition (CGF HRC), Palm Oil Transparency Coalition (POTC), Palm Oil Collaboration Group (POCG), and Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

For our direct purchases of soy¹, where we have much less influence across the sector as a whole, we take a due diligence approach designed to achieve more sustainable sourcing in our supply, based on the Consumer Goods Forum’s sourcing guidelines². In addition, we also track indirect land-use change emissions from dairy, arising from raw materials, such as soy, used in cattle feed. We buy the majority of our dairy ingredients from suppliers who buy from farmers who, in turn, make individual decisions about what to feed their cows. Despite these challenges, we are engaging our suppliers with the aim of supporting moves to help achieve deforestation-free supplies of cattle feed across the dairy sector.

For pulp and paper¹, as part of our position implementation and aligned with the Consumer Goods Forum Forest Positive Coalition (CGF FPC)², we aim to leverage chain of custody certification programs to confirm that the paper-based packaging we use is free from deforestation.

No company can win the fight against deforestation alone. We support and encourage a sector-wide and holistic approach to help prevent deforestation. Action by individual companies needs to be scaled up to cover whole sectors, landscapes and countries. So, we support and encourage the sector-wide approach the Consumer Good Forum is pioneering for a forest positive future. One where suppliers adhere to consistent practices across their business models and land use is better optimized in a rights-respecting way across sectors with the support of producer governments.