Photo: GreenpeaceBritish shoemaker Clarks has joined the league of shoe makers who have agreed not to source leather products that cause Amazon deforestation. Earlier, Adidas, Nike and Timberland had agreed to stop sourcing products from areas of deforestation in the Amazon. These companies are now demanding stringent traceability standards from the big cattle companies and have committed to avoiding leather from ranches implicated in Amazon destruction in a Greenpeace report, Slaughtering the Amazon.
The report, the result of a three-year investigation into Brazil’s booming cattle industry, accused some of the leading shoe brands of causing widespread deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. The investigation also uncovered how the Brazilian government is bankrolling the destruction and is undermining its own efforts to tackle the global climate crisis.
The investigation further found that the Brazilian government has a vested interest in the further expansion of the cattle industry, because it part-owns three of the country’s cattle giants, Bertin, JBS and Marfrig, responsible for fuelling the destruction of huge tracts of the Amazon. The report found that cattle ranching, both legal and illegal, meant to produce beef and leather is the biggest driver of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, making it responsible for more forest loss than the total deforestation in any country outside Brazil except Indonesia.
According to satellite imagery, about a fifth of the Amazon forest's area has been lost since 1970. Brazil is home to one-third of the world's rainforest and half of the Amazon.
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