Cattle – in high demand globally as a source of beef and leather – is a primary driver of land conversion, particularly in Brazil (where it accounts for 72% of the country’s forest loss). Brazil accounted for 48% of this, followed by Paraguay (9%) and Colombia (5%). Globally, around 40% of deforestation can be attributed to livestock grazing (and this figure does not consider the additional land converted to soy plantations driven by demand for soy-based livestock feed).  

Oil palm is a popular crop owing to its 25-30-year economic lifespan, relatively low labour requirements, and comparatively high income-generating abilities compared to subsistence food crops. While the oil palm is an efficient crop which can produce high quantities of oil over small areas of land, the sheer scale of demand for palm oil – found in nearly 50% of all packaged products in supermarkets – means that it presents a significant deforestation risk. In Southeast Asia in particular, land is cleared to make way for plantations that include both oil palm crops and processing mills, and some studies indicate that half of new palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia replace forests. Furthermore, this deforestation is very much market-driven, with annual peaks in forest loss due to the establishment of palm oil plantations corresponding with palm oil price peaks.

Soy-based products – from beans to oil to lecithin – are used widely across the world. While most commonly associated with foods such as tofu and soy sauce, soy beans are also used extensively for agricultural production, particularly in South America. Indeed, almost all (approximately 97%) land converted for soy production is in this region (predominantly across Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay). Today, global production is over 13 times higher than in the early 1960s and has doubled since the year 2000, currently standing at around 350 million tonnes per year.

Around 77% of this is used as livestock feed, for poultry, pigs and aquaculture. Research also suggests that as soy production expands into former pastureland, it displaces livestock grazing into forested areas, contributing to further deforestation. As a result, some forest areas converted to cattle pasture may not reflect direct demand for beef or dairy, but rather indirect displacement caused by soy cultivation. At the same time, soy expansion is itself driven by the demand for livestock feed, highlighting a cyclical relationship between the two.

Cocoa bean production has risen steadily over the last century, particularly as global incomes have risen, increasing widespread access to cocoa-based goods such as chocolate. In 1961, the world produced around 1.2 million tonnes of cocoa beans; by 2023, this had increased nearly five-fold to 5.6 million tonnes.
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Although cocoa is produced in 62 countries across the world, the majority (65%) is from Africa. followed by Indonesia (17%). Research suggests that cocoa cultivation is an underlying driver of over 37% of forest loss in protected areas in Côte d’Ivoire and up to 40% in Ghana. Cocoa-driven deforestation in West Africa is exacerbated because the associated agricultural activity damages the soil, so farmers may expand to new areas, freshly converting land in the hope of greater productivity and yields.

Rubber is an elastic, resilient material that can be used in various contexts. Natural rubber (rather than synthetically produced from petroleum byproducts) is derived from the rubber tree, which is now predominantly grown in Southeast Asia, which accounts for over 90% of global production (although native to Brazil and the Guianas, South American rubber trees often suffer from a fungal leaf blight). The remainder comes from South and Central America and Central Africa.

Traditionally, coffee beans were grown in the shades of taller trees. However, the huge increase in demand for coffee has transformed more and more production from shade to sun grown coffee, meaning trees are cut down to make way for coffee plantations. With the world consuming over 10 million tonnes of coffee a year, the coffee industry is contributing significantly to deforestation.

Forest loss and land conversion from coffee production occurs predominantly in Indonesia, Brazil, Madagascar, Peru, Colombia, and Vietnam. Coffee plants become less productive as they age, producing fewer berries (the seeds of which are the ‘beans’), which further incentivises farmers to convert more land for the purpose of planting new, more productive trees.

The timber sector covers trees harvested to produce, among other things, sawn-wood, plywood, particleboard, furniture, fuelwood, pulp, and paper. Existing forest can be cleared to make way for monoculture plantations, or trees can be felled and sold for timber and associated products (like wood pellets, derived from forests in West Africa and used to heat low-carbon boilers in homes across Europe). Globally, there has been a shift in the sector over the past couple of decades away from wood being felled from natural forests towards land clearing for the purpose of cultivating monoculture plantations. Although paper consumption in North America and Europe has decreased since the early 1990s, given the rise in digital communication, demand across Asian market continues to rise.   

Mining is currently considered to be the fourth largest driver of deforestation worldwide, and an accelerating contributor: more than 35% of all mining-related deforestation in tropical forests from the past two decades has occurred in the last five years. In some areas, like Suriname and Guyana, hard commodities like minerals have overtaken soft commodities like cattle and agriculture as the leading cause of deforestation.
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While demand for minerals essential to green technologies – such as electric vehicles and renewable energy infrastructure – is rising, 71% of global direct mining-related deforestation can still be traced to just two mineral commodities: coal and gold. Other key commodities linked to forest loss include aluminium (from bauxite ore), iron, copper, cobalt, nickel, and the rare earth metals. For instance, copper extraction has led to forest loss in countries including Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Subsaharan Africa. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, cobalt mining – often occurring alongside other extractive activities – has contributed to significant deforestation across the Congo Basin. Rare earth mining, notably in Myanmar, has rapidly expanded into forested areas, with thousands of new sites developed in recent years. Meanwhile, nickel mining in Indonesia, especially on the island of Sulawesi, has resulted in the clearance of vast forest areas to access shallow but widespread deposits – a trend expected to accelerate with rising global demand.

Copper is a key mineral used in renewable energy systems across the world to generate power from ‘clean’ sources of energy like solar, hydro, thermal, and wind energy and to help the world transition away from fossil fuels. With indications that not enough copper is currently being mined to meet the requirements of the transition to low-carbon energy sources, burgeoning demand and prices is incentivising illegal as well as legal miners. Indeed, illegal copper mining has risen in the Amazon as illicit gold miners diversify their income streams, and across Zambia’s Copperbelt, where organised crime groups’ involvement is common.

The 17 metallic elements which power magnets used in wind turbines and electric vehicles have been associated with human rights abuses in many jurisdictions, particularly in southeast Asia. For example, a six-month-long investigation by Global Witness of satellite imagery and local community interviews revealed that the number of rare earth mines in Myanmar’s Kachin state had expanded from just a handful in 2016 to over 2,700 spanning almost 300 separate locations by March 2022. While the rare earth elements are, in reality, fairly abundant, they are generally difficult to extract and refine, requiring environmentally damaging processes that often leave behind toxic waste in mining communities.

Used in lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles, global demand for nickel has surged in the past decade. However, nickel mining has also been linked to serious issues of environmental pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, labour rights violations, and Indigenous land rights violations. In the Philippines, for example, reports have revealed failings to adequately consult local communities and obtain consent from Indigenous Peoples about nickel mining projects which have left deforestation, metal contamination and health problems in the provinces of Zambales and Palawan, raising supply chain concerns for global companies sourcing nickel from this region.

While gold has been a desirable commodity for centuries, its steady price rise combined with relatively low barriers to entry means that gold mining is attracting growing interest from both legal and illegal actors all over the world. Over a fifth of the world’s supply of gold is produced by the artisanal and small-scale sector, providing vital income for over 20 million workers worldwide. However, the gold supply chain is complex (involving many participants), opaque, often informal, and can easily stray into illegality. Indeed, the gold mining industry – from small to large scale – is rife with allegations of child and forced labour, sexual harassment and abuse, environmental destruction, money laundering, and drugs and weapons trafficking, with the Amazon and West Africa particularly notable hotspots for illegal gold mining.

As a crucial ingredient in modern technological devices such as mobile phones, laptops, and cars, the coltan (short for columbite-tantalum) industry is growing steadily. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, due to a combination of the state’s inability to access and supervise all deposit sites and the high price of coltan on foreign markets, there is also extensive illegal coltan mining. Consequently, armed and criminal groups can extract coltan deposits outside of state control, utilising corrupt middlemen to trade in and profit from the legitimate commodity market. In other parts of the world, such as in the Amazon, there are also growing reports of illegal extraction. However, coltan mining has been associated with rampant environmental degradation and human rights abuses, most notably in the DRC.