"Forest FootPrint"

Deforestation and conversion of natural ecosystems are the major causes of biodiversity loss according to IUCN. Deforestation is also responsible for 11% to 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Forests provide many environmental services to people around the world. However, deforestation continues to be more important, especially in tropical areas mainly due to commercial agriculture for export. This is imported deforestation.

To fight against this issue, our organization has created since 2013 a tool to evaluate the forest footprint of different food products. This tool helps

citizens and organizations to know in an educational, public and shared way the Forest Footprint of the food products they buy or sell. Our tool educates them to better choose their consumer products in order to reduce their impact on forests and biodiversity when they see the indicator the deforestation area created by a product on our website or in mobile applications.

Deforestation and conversion of natural ecosystems are the major causes of biodiversity loss according to IUCN. Deforestation is also responsible for 11% to 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Deforestation continues to be more important, especially in tropical areas mainly due to commercial agriculture for export.

Our solution is fighting against this imported deforestation. It gives more transparency for consumers who want to know what they buy and making better choice to promote ecologic patterns. Our solution can also gives more information to the private sectors like the agri-food sectors for example about the forest impact of their supply chain. They have to improve their practices to make a food product and to be more sustainable in front of their consumers.

Our solution " Forest Footprint" can reduce many negative effects on the biodiversity loss and climate change. As you know, forests are home to 75% of the biodiversity on Earth. 90% is living in the tropical forests and 25% only in the Amazon rain forest. They are also a good carbon sink to reduce the effect of the global warming. Moreover, our solution is making more fair exchanges between South and North countries.

Our solution measures the indicator Forest Footprint of a food product in the market. It's for consumers and organizations who want to reduce their impact on forests. The indicator "Forest Footprint" corresponds to the area taken over the forests to provide the consumption needs and lifestyle of a person. The methodology is based on the crossing of two data: the area needed to produce the quantity of product consumed, and the associated deforestation risk on this product. This takes into account performance production of the raw material per hectare (including losses in the transformation process) and the risk of deforestation of the raw material according different criteria (rates of deforestation, level of dependency, alternative presence sector, etc.). This indicator is presented like a quiz in our website. We are also making partnership with organizations which create mobile applications. With these mobile applications, consumers can scan each label to know different sustainable criteria of a food product in a store market. The Open Food Facts association, the largest platform of food data, is a partner of our NGO, in order to help us to develop our " Forest Footprint" for each food product presents in their database (website and mobile application).

The first beneficiaries are the citizens. They can change their consumption habits by using the Open Food Facts application and its website (1 million users having downloaded the applications, and 9 million total users visiting the Open Food Facts website each year for example in France) and also by using our online quiz " Forests Footprint". With theses online ways, the citizens can take aware about their Forest Footprint when they go to a market to buy their food products.

The second beneficiaries are companies of the agri-food businesses and the retail sector. Through our solution, they can improve the transparency of their value chain and practices. These tools will help them to implement their strategy to reduce their impact on the forests.

Many indirect beneficiaries will be affected by the changes in purchasing policy of private and public economic actors. For instance, we can quote the communities that live in the forests who are directly impacted by the deforestation.

Our solution "Forest Footprint" relates to the "Sustainable Food Systems" because  the commercial agriculture is the major cause of deforestation in the tropical and subtropical countries, followed by subsistence agriculture.
According to Forest Trends, 49% of the deforestation in tropical countries is due to illegal conversion of land to commercial farms. In one case out of two, production is intended to meet the demand of the major industrialized countries (the United States, the European Union but also China and
India. 25% of illegal deforestation is due to the exportation of food.

Our solution addresses the subject of the forest footprint of consumers, which is little known to the general public compared to the topic of impacts of pesticides or our food production in terms of GHG emissions for example. The forest footprint of consumers, that is to say the impact of their food production on forests, is an innovative approach that renews our focus on food and environmental conservation issues. The solution is also innovative on the outreach format that will leverage digital and big data innovations by making data available through a popular web application of our partner "Open Food Facts". There are another initiatives to measure biodiversity impact, but we are the only ones to assess the impact of our food consumption on forests. Moreover, the results will be highlighted through a mobile, innovative and dynamic animation space: "The Super Bosquet". This shop replica will allow visitors to practice the recognition of the most virtuous foods for forests and to test the application of scan products. The goal is influencing the public awareness and to promote our tool. Our solution "Forest Footprint" will be presented at the next World Congress for Nature organized by the IUCN in Marseille in France.

Led by Envol Vert in partnership with the Open Food Fact association, the project aims to give citizens all the keys to make conscious purchases and for organizations to identify the risk on their supply chain, to demand bests practices to their suppliers or to change their recipe in order to reduce their impact on deforestation. Our solution will calculate the Forest Footprint of many food products, like meat, eggs etc. These results will be disseminated via the Open Food Facts application to scan food products for nutritional values, which will be supplemented by a rating of the environmental quality of the product on the forests. When a consumer will scan a food product, he can see on his mobile screen, the indicator "Forest FootPrint" expressed in m² of deforestation. Moreover, these news data will also integrated in the website of Open Food Facts and in our Forest Footprint online quiz.

Open Food Facts is an independent and freely reusable collaborative food information database which references more than 930 000 food products in more than 180 countries, collected by more than 20 000 contributors. It's mobile application is used by more 1 million people and 9 millions persons visit it's website. It is estimated that 100 000 people use Open Food Facts data every day (Applications + Open Food Facts website).

For the second tool, the Forest FootPrint online quiz, from the launch of the first version in 2013, this has reached more 30 000 visits in a few weeks. In 2016, it was translated into Spanish, English and now in German. Today, we record a total of 190 000 visits and 200 press hits since its conception.

 Our solution will change in the first place, the behavior of the consumers regarding to deforestation issues. With our indicator " Forest Footprint" published for each food product in the Open Food Facts application, the consumer can reduce his forest footprint to buy another product with less impact on forests during his purchase in the market store.

The change will come from bottom to top. When the consumers will change their consumption behaviors, the companies will also have to change if they want to survive. They will have to develop bests practices in their supply chain and to improve their recipes if they want to continue to sell their food products. Moreover when a big company change his practices, generally, all the sector also moves in the same direction.

Citizens are now encouraged to assume a more important role as actors of change on environmental issues. This position of actor of change is nourished by an awakening and a demand of the citizens themselves. This vigilance is all the more strong on food products that are at the crossroads of health/nutrition issues, environmental issues, and cultural identity issues related to the recovery of local production. For all of these issues, the transparency of the sectors, the traceability of food products and their composition and especially the ease of access of the resulting data are key factors for changing the behavior of the consumers. Faced with this demand for transparency and traceability on the part of consumers, many citizen applications are created to guide them in their consumption choices. They inform citizens every day about the nutritional information of the products purchased and they are very popular. More than 75 different applications and websites use the open source data of Open Food Facts association. That mean when our indicator "Forest Footprint" will be available on the Open Food Facts platform, many others applications can use it for their tool and in this way, our target population will be bigger and bigger with the time.

We hope this consumption change, will reduce the deforestation of the tropical forests all around the world.

190 000 French people have used our online quiz "Forest FootPrint" since its creation. With the Open Food Fact association, this partnership will allow us to reach the users of its application and website, that means around 9 million people for the first year. In five years, our objective will be reaching minimum 10 million people because we want to develop our tool in the countries where we are currently operating for our others projects that means in Peru, Colombia and Brazil.

It would be also interesting to make partnerships with other partners located in North countries which would like improve this issue like the United States, other countries in Europe etc

The general objective is that our Forest Footprint indicator become an awareness and decision-making tool for a wider public including consumers, businesses and public organizations in order to obtain food products without deforestation impact and be part of a zero deforestation approach.

For the next year, we would like to :

- develop a new and expanded version of the Forest Footprint with an updated calculation methodology validated by an expert committee for France

- integrate the «Forest Footprint» indicator on all referenced products of the Open Food Facts application with a specific algorithm that will take into account the information on different things (ingredients, labels, guarantees of origin, etc.).

- Raise awareness of the concept of the forest footprint through the release of a new Forest Footprint online quiz and participation to events with our dedicated stand called “the Super Bosquet”; In five year, we would like to duplicate our solution in the countries where we are currently operating for our others projects that means in Peru, Colombia and Brazil with the same action plan that means, to develop a methodology for each country with their national data and to create their own animation tools like the Forest Footprint online quiz and the Super Bosquet stand if it works in France.

To evaluate if our solution works, we will follow the saved Forest Footprint Area due to the changes of the consumption patterns and the improvement of supply chains and  products recipes of companies.

Our solution has few legal or cultural barriers because everyone uses a smartphone and websites. These tools are now part of our lives. Moreover the public awareness about forests conservation issue is raising constantly since the Amazon fires and the apparition of the Covid-19. 

 Our indicator Forest FootPrint is an estimation like the carbon footprint and we have to improve regularly the methodology in order to go more far in the estimating of the footprint on the ground of our consumption and our way of life. His improvement is delicate by the complexity of supply chains, vectors of deforestation, the diversity of actors between subjects raw and finished food products. We work generally with national data (food import / number of population in the country / Consumption rates at national level and per resident etc...When we want to develop our solution for Peru, Brazil and other countries, maybe some data could not be available.

This solution needs human’s resources and time of work. For example, the Open Food Facts platform contains more than 900 000 food products where we will have to develop our indicator Forest Footprint. That means, we need some financial grants to do this work and it's difficult because some organizations prefer to help field activities than technologies solutions. Even if it's hard, we have to continue because our solution allows to alert, to develop management systems of risks and put in place effective action plans reduction of the Footprint Forest for many stakeholders

The partnership with Open Food Fact will help us to improve our indicator "Forest Footprint" because the association has so many data that we need. For example, we will integrate the best practices like labels, certifications (ex: organic, Fair trade etc) in order to observe how these criteria can reduce the forest footprint than an usual way of consumption.

To integrate our indicator in more 900 000 food products we will work together to create a automation methodology.

The selected data are as recent as possible. When the national data number is not available or from a too unreliable source, we will use the data of the last year or from global sectors.

To overcome financial barriers, we want to make more partnerships with technology sector and of course to continue to increase the public awareness about the forest conservation issues and the link between the deforestation and our way of life with our different campaign actions.

We have :

- 1 employee in full time, responsible of the partnerships and projects development who is following the process of this project.

- 2 service providers : one manager project who is also the creator of our NGO and the head of the France sector.

- 2 contractors :

one to develop the next version of our Forest footprint online quiz (with these new data integrated and a new graphic presentation)

other one to create our animation stand " The Super Bosquet"

- 2 employees in our partner Open Food Facts

- Different  Envol Vert and Open Food Facts volunteers with informatics skills

Because the Envol Vert staff has developed a strong background in the forest conservation and agriculture fields for different organizations like (research, private and NGO sectors).

Our project manager : worked for 5 years at the WWF organization. His
mission was to reduce the France’s negative footprint of different products like soybean, palm oil and paper sectors on natural forests. He created the solution Forest Footprint in 2013, an online tool to measure its impact on the forest. He has worked in environmental education and has also carried out
environmental protection missions in New Zealand, Brazil and Indonesia. He supported the restoration of territories of Indian populations in Ecuador and
Peru. As a consultant he supports companies in the implementation of
their Zero Deforestation policy.

Our project officer : is graduated with master degree of Forest, Nature and International Management Society in the AgroParisTech school. He worked for the WWF to make a field survey for the construction of an ecological corridor between two national parks in Indonesia. He was an intern to help our organization to develop our Forest Footprint tool and now he is continuing his mission as a service provider.

And our organization has known to be around of different volunteers and partners with informatics skills (For instance, one of them is a web developer expert) and Open Food Facts is the leader of opensource database in the food sector.

To make this solution possible, we have making a partnership with the Open Food Facts association, the largest opensource database in the food sector.

We make a monthly meeting where we exchange about the objectives, the
distribution of the tasks and the evaluation of the progress. Our
NGO is working on the animation of the project and on the calculations
of the forest footprint. Open Food Facts is working on the integration of the data and the development of the application.

Envol Vert is a French NGO created in 2011 and its mission is to protect the forest and the biodiverity. We operate in Colombia, Peru and in France. Envol Vert seeks reconciliation of forest with agriculture/livestock, main factors of deforestation, through the implementation of systems of agroforestry, which also allows for better adaptation to climate change. Our organization supports rural populations. We act with groups of people, cooperatives or associations having the wish to preserve the environment of
their region for well-being.  

We develop alternatives economic and sustainable. New processed
products, development of service lines, that generate new sources
revenue.Working agricultural diversification for more food sovereignty and the recovery of ancestral knowledge are also activities developed by our NGO.

Its mission is also to raise the awareness of people of the deforestation problems with different advocacy campaigns and with our very famous tool the Forest footprint online quiz.

We are an NGO and our budget depends to 60% of private grants, 30% public grants and 10% private donations.

Of course, your 10 000$ grant is interesting to support our work that we are already doing but it's not our main interest. We are applying to Solve in order to win a famous prize that would help to make known our innovating solution that we are the only one to carry out. The emergency of the tropical forests situation (fires and covid-19 for example) forces us to accelerate our actions to raise awareness of the food producers countries (South) and the importers countries (North) to remove the impact of our agriculture pattern on tropical forests. We are working at the French scale at this moment but we want to develop our solution in many other countries like Colombia, Peru, Brazil but also with North countries which have the bigger impact with their no transparency supply chain like USA and others countries in Europe. Our solution can be duplicate easily for each country.  This prize will support us to identify and making relations with different partners which want to do something at their own scale and maybe they can bring some skills (national knowledge, technology skills like big data etc etc.) to increase the scop of our solution.

Our partnership goals are to :

- to make known our solution at a largest scale and collaborating with expert partners

- find more technical and financial supports

- increase the awareness of people about the negative impacts of our agriculture on tropical forests;

- to support private and public organizations to make their zero deforestation policy

We would like to make partnerships with different organizations which have :

- an interest to protect forests and to develop best practices in their supply chain

- technologies skills (big data, web development etc.) in order to use easier many different information because the deforestation is a complex issue at the global and local scales ;

- an ambition to put deforestation problem at the center of the place and raising awareness of their stakeholders. Communication, marketing skills etc would be welcome.

- an interest to finance our solution in order to use quickly our tools for their sustainable strategies.