All forests, and tropical forests in particular, play a vital role in maintaining the ecosystem services upon which global food, water, energy and climate security depend. This is ‘natural capital’ whose value is still largely unrecognised. © Global Canopy Programme.
Expansion of cattle-ranching is the key driver of deforestation in the Amazon. Over the past decade more than 10 million hectares of forest in the Brazilian Amazon have been cleared for ranching. © Global Canopy Programme.
In 2010/11, The Rufford Foundation provided a grant of £50,000 to the Global Canopy Programme (GCP).
Ten years ago, The Rufford Foundation helped to establish the GCP. Since then, The Rufford Foundation has been a key supporter allowing us to become an organisation which today has global reach and an internationally respected profile.
The 2010/11 funding was towards GCP’s core costs. This has been crucial to supporting all our key programmes with some of the most significant achievements outlined below.
Science
GCP assembled a world-leading team of social scientist researchers, environmental economists and community development experts to work on a project which will provide the evidence base for policymaking to maintain the Amazon rainforest and reduce poverty and vulnerability in the region.
Policy
GCP built significantly on our REDD Desk project, a knowledge platform established to respond to the stakeholders in the REDD+ process who have overwhelmingly expressed the need for a central clearinghouse of information to capture and catalogue resources, share best practices and facilitate global stakeholder collaboration. The REDD Desk platform now has multiple offerings with the REDD Library fully functioning and the REDD Countries Database soon to be launched.
Business
GCP also made substantial progress in our Forest Footprint Disclosure Project increasing the number of endorsing investors from 34 to 58 (Assets Under Management $3.5-5.6 trillion), the number of companies written to from 217 to 285, and the company response rate from 16 to 31%.
