Does your portfolio have mutual funds that own fast-food or chain-restaurant stocks? How about paper products? Or food or snack companies? If it’s a broad-based stock index fund, the answer is almost certainly “yes.” And that means your portfolio includes companies potentially responsible in one way or another for one of the most pressing environmental calamities: deforestation.
In 2020, the World Wildlife Fund reported that the world lost 53% of forest wildlife between 1970 and 2018. Last year, while attention was focused on the coronavirus pandemic, the world lost 12% more primary forest than it had the year before, according to the World Resources Institute. And the IPCC’s 2018 Special Report on Climate Change and Land points out that agriculture, forestry, and other types of land use account for 23% of human greenhouse gas emissions--a primary catalyst for climate change.