New Commodity Models to Support Deforestation-free Supply Chains
As the mission of the Forest Data Partnership (FDaP) is to develop an open geospatial data ecosystem that benefits all supply chain stakeholders, Google has released community models and probability maps of forest-risk commodities that support deforestation risk assessment, such as what is needed under the European Union’s deforestation regulation (EUDR).
These openly licensed models and data products provide probability that land is growing palm oil, cocoa and rubber around the world. The coffee model will be released in 2025.
What makes these models unique is the iterative community approach that combines data from multiple validated sources, which means the accuracy of the model improves over time as more data is contributed. You can read more about them in this blog and learn more about how the method was employed for palm.
While these new commodity maps from the community models will provide new insight into where deforestation-driving commodities are being grown, there is still the challenge of applying this information to the risk that a plot comes from a deforested area. A critical challenge for decision makers is filtering this data to extract actionable, trusted insights. This is where the convergence of evidence approach can help increase confidence in information drawn from multiple data sources, rather than relying on a single product or data set. This method ensures a more robust, integrated view of land use patterns and commodity sourcing impacts.
An innovative example of how this convergence of evidence approach has been implemented is Whisp, developed by FDaP and the AIM4Forests program. Whisp, which stands for “What is in that plot?”, is an open-source API that produces geospatial analysis extracting statistics, based on various data sets, to provide insights on what is contained in any given plot of land as of the EUDR cut-off date.
In addition, there is a lack of open and transparent data available for stakeholders to use. Many commodity maps may simply not be accessible; for example, they are behind commercial paywalls. As they are not open to scrutiny, this could raise concerns about the lack of rigor or transparency in methodology. This demonstrates the importance of open, peer-reviewed methodologies in allowing for independent verification and replicability of results to build greater trust in the information being reported.
These community models present an opportunity for organizations to navigate data and compliance challenges through a collaborative approach and collectively innovate open solutions that the industry urgently needs. Public availability of these models and data products can benefit all actors along the supply chain and prevent the proliferation of competing products.
FDaP is inviting participation by any organization that wants to collectively address the challenge of improving land use data and help create unified and sustainable solutions. For organizations that want to learn more about our data releases and would like to contribute data, please go here.