How Indonesian cos. took credit for the state’s win
From ‘Zero-deforestation commitments in Indonesia’s palm oil sector achieve high compliance but no additionality’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 13, 2026:
… we evaluate the compliance and additionality of zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs) in the Indonesian palm oil sector, a major driver of tropical deforestation. We compiled a detailed dataset that integrates information about corporate ZDC implementation, supply chain linkages, and maps of palm-driven deforestation in Indonesia. We use this dataset to evaluate the causal impact of ZDCs on deforestation in oil palm concessions from 2018 to 2020 using difference-in-differences econometric methods. We find that concessions linked to companies with ZDCs had low deforestation (<1% per year from 2018 to 2020) and thus largely achieved compliance. Yet they experienced similar reductions in deforestation compared to concessions not covered by ZDCs, therefore showing no additionality. We attribute our finding of no additionality to broader changes in policy and economic conditions during the study period that may have reduced the remaining accessible forest and dampened market and regulatory incentives to clear forests for palm oil.
There’s another way to interpret the results: that ZDCs in Indonesia’s palm-oil sector have essentially been a branding exercise. Companies with ZDCs kept deforestation levels low and so did everyone else, meaning the companies met their goals but their pledges didn’t actually save more forest land that wouldn’t have been saved anyway. The study’s authors have attributed the dropping deforestation levels to the Indonesian government’s forest and peatland moratoria, restrictions on new permits, lower prices, and — let’s not forget — the dwindling availability of forests subject to the extant concessions, which means by inventing the ZDC, private capital came in possession of a specialised instrument for progress it wasn’t ever responsible for.
When the price of crude palm oil drops, making it less profitable to expand into new land, a company that doesn’t expand isn’t being ‘sustainable’; it’s just standing still. Yet the corporate sector managed to apply a pall of achievement over the objectively bare minimum it could do. Of course, this is nothing new: exponents of neoliberal environmental governance have frequently recast public problems as being the result of voluntary corporate responsibility, giving the impression that the invisible hand of the market can turn green if they and their big businesses are allowed to police themselves. But as the study found, the state solved this problem, not the market. Ultimately, the study offers yet more proof that if we’re to actually protect the world’s remaining tropical forests, market-based, voluntary solutions will only be a red herring. Instead, the forests, like the climate, are collective goods that should be governed collectively.
Granted, there’s no proof here that the corporations involved had acted in bad faith, but it’s also a good opportunity to ask how much of contemporary corporate sustainability programmes consist of claiming credit for changes brought about by public action rather than corporate initiative.