Given the global concerns about deforestation, what, in your opinion, are the most pressing issues that need immediate attention?
To make a shift in supply chains from producing commodities in monocultures to producing commodities in forest or regenerative agroforestry systems. The main driver behind deforestation is the ever-growing push from companies to create more products that use ingredients that are produced in unsustainable ways. In my opinion, we should instead push products that are produced in such a way that they have no negative effect on the environment, but actually the other way around, in a way that could enrich the soil and increase biodiversity. It could help if companies were stimulated to produce products in this way by government regulations.
For example, the new EU Deforestation Regulation for commodities such as palm oil, cocoa butter, and rubber is providing an opportunity for us as our flagship product, illipe butter, is a cocoa butter equivalent (CBE). Our illipe butter is fully traceable and deforestation-free, therefore, our illipe butter can provide a solution for companies that want to replace their untraceable cocoa butter with our illipe butter.
Could you elaborate on the types of raw materials ForestWise focuses on and how the sourcing process ensures sustainability and minimal environmental impact?
We derive our raw materials directly from the rainforest. The products are naturally growing there. Therefore, the rainforest can stay intact and preserved instead of being replaced by plantations. To make sure we don't take away too much and disturb the balance, sustainable collection rates are set by independent auditing bodies.
Another advantage of working with existing ecosystems is that there is no investment needed from the farmers to prepare the land, purchasing planting materials and inputs, etc., and there is no time needed to wait for the crops to grow as the products are already growing there. We just need to facilitate market access, making the rainforest and the communities part of the supply chain, against fair compensation. To support our argument in this last part, our products are Fair for Life certified. At Forestwise, we call this approach creating Rainforestvalue.
In the sourcing and production of rainforest products, how does ForestWise address and minimize the environmental footprint associated with these materials?
Our ingredients are made from wild-harvested raw materials that are readily available in the rainforest. We do not use any synthetic chemicals throughout the production process. Our products and production processes are organically certified. To sustainably produce illipe butter, we have introduced a system of sun drying to replace the unhealthy practice of smoke drying that was used before.
Therefore, there are no emissions from burning wood for the drying of the nuts. The smoke also poses a risk to the farmer by allowing harmful polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) to enter the illipe nuts and eventually find their way into the end product, illipe butter. PAHs are widely referred to as carcinogens, mutagens, and teratogens and thus pose a significant danger to human health and the well-being of humans. Skin, lung, pancreas, esophagus, bladder, colon, and female breast are numerous organs prone to tumor development due to long-term PAH exposure. With sun drying, this is not the case, so we are also making a much safer product.
Another advantage is that the farmer does not need to invest time and resources into building an oven for smoke drying and investing in fuel wood. They can simply use the rattan mats that they normally use for drying rice.
Are there specific technological innovations that ForestWise utilizes or explores to enhance the sustainability of raw material sourcing and production processes?
The illipe nut season does not occur every year, but every 2-3 years. To overcome the challenge this presents for planning production, we have put an innovative storage system in place to safely store the illipe nuts and the illipe butter. That way, we can guarantee supply at any time, even in years when there has been no harvest.
For the upcoming season, we are also introducing a mobile application that will be used by the nut collectors, our field teams, and our production team to improve the traceability of the supply chain. This will give full transparency and visibility on the journey of the material, from the rainforest to the final product.
How does ForestWise address biodiversity conservation in the areas where raw materials are sourced, and what measures are taken to protect and enhance local flora and fauna?
Illipe nuts used to be an important source of income for indigenous communities in West Kalimantan until the prices for the crop dropped dramatically for several seasons, and communities switched to selling high-quality timber from these trees instead. That caused the tree (Shorea Stenoptera) to be listed on the IUCN Red List as "Near Threathened". Through our intervention, we were able to make agreements with six villages, with a combined forest area of 36,000 hectares, to protect these trees as long as we were purchasing the illipe nuts from them.
It may sound contradictory that we can protect a species by purchasing its seeds, but by buying the seeds, the tree itself becomes an income source, and therefore it is more valuable to protect it than to cut it down. Therefore, we see that communities are planting these trees again in villages where we are purchasing the illipe nuts. In villages where we are not yet buying illipe nuts, the trees are cut down to sell the timber instead.
To make sure we do not harvest too many nuts and seeds and leave enough trees for regeneration, we have to take into account the sustainable collection rate, meaning we have to leave behind sufficient seeds. In most cases, this is 20-30%. In reality, the percentage of nuts left behind is at least 50%. In addition, we also have a program to plant illipe trees in areas where the trees used to be but cannot be found any more at the moment.
The next step for Forestwise will be to measure and monitor the positive impact we have on biodiversity conservation.
What are the achievements you are personally most proud of with ForestWise?
We have successfully re-introduced this new source of income to several communities in West Kalimantan. The fact that the communities are planting these trees again for us is proof of their success.
For example, we have seen cases where farmers are provided with free seedlings, but if there is no proven market for that crop in their village, the trees will likely not be planted. To see the farmers actively planting illipe trees is a proof that the illipe nuts are now again seen as a valuable crop. In one village where the impact of the illipe nut business was measured, the income of the village in the harvest year was increased by 145%.
We are also proud of the fact that since we started five years ago, we have provided jobs for all our employees, most of whom were unemployed and did not have the chance to enjoy secondary or higher education. It is very rewarding to see the impact our business has on the lives of our employees and our raw material suppliers.
Do you think practices such as ForestWise can be multiplied and scaled up to become a new norm?
Absolutely. A lot of the rainforest around the world has disappeared or is at risk of being deforested, but we have proven that through the Forestwise approach of increasing Rainforestvalue, we can protect the rainforest and at the same time provide sustainable livelihoods for the people who live near the rainforest and who, in most cases, depend on the rainforest for their survival.
Rainforests and other forest systems around the world are producing an abundance of valuable, high-quality raw materials that could be sustainably harvested to make valuable and healthy products. Right now, there is a market for producing ingredients on large-scale, exploitative monoculture plantations because we keep using those ingredients for our products. In our opinion, we should switch to using forest-based ingredients so that we can push the protection of remaining forests and the creation of new forests instead of converting even more forests into plantations.
We are ready to scale our model and collaborate with companies around the world to supply them with traceable, deforestation-free ingredients.
