Standard Chartered has signed up to the ‘soft commodities compact’ which ensures their palm oil, soy and timber clients’ activities are consistent with ‘zero net deforestation’ by 2020. Many global food manufacturers have signed up to anti-deforestation initiatives in recent years and now pressure is being put on banks to do the same. Nine other banks have already signed this agreement, including RBS, UBS and Santander.

Brazilian municipalities are turning to drones as they prepare to implement the new Forest Code which requires farmers in the Amazon to preserve up to 80 per cent of the forest on their land. The country’s biggest municipality in the Amazonian state of Pará has already purchased a drone at a cost of more than R$100,000 (over £25,000). The drones can fly for five hours at a time and photograph in detail 20,000-30,000 hectares per flight. The company manufacturing the drones said that demand has experienced a sharp increase in the past year, much of this coming from hydropower companies looking to monitor their vast properties in the Amazon against invasions by illegal settlers, deforestation and other problems.

A report from the UK- and US-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has said that up to 80% of the hardwood harvested in the Russian far east is logged illegally. The EIA say the demand for this material comes from Chinese sawmills and subsequently their western customers. The material that is of most concern is illegally logged Russian oak. US wood flooring retailer, Lumber Liquidators, was named in the report as being heavily reliant on Chinese suppliers who allegedly mainly sell illegally logged material. The EIA say the US and EU regulations on illegal logging are important pressure points where they now have the ability to intervene – before now, and without this pressure, illegal logging in Siberia has seen rapid expansion. Despite industry incentives from the Russian government, incredible demand from China has led to Chinese sawmills establishing just over the China-Russia border. EIA’s investigations suggest that most of these mills rely on a supply of illegally logged timber.

A Brazilian company which designs technology to track and trace expensive goods has created a device which can be placed inside felled trees found in protected areas. When the felled trees are then transported to sawmills by illegal loggers, location updates are sent to a central server. Law enforcement agencies closed one sawmill and made several arrests during a pilot last year of 20 of the devices and the company hopes this will convince the government to roll out the technology.