As of January 2019, The Forest Trust has become Earthworm Foundation.

Fire is one of the causes of deforestation and has always impacted every aspect of nature and the environment, community and the economy. While we do investigate and verify fire-related grievances regarding our members and their concessions, we do not tolerate any systematic and/or intentional deforestation (by fire or otherwise) by, or on behalf of, our members, who we support in implementing their No Deforestation commitments, throughout their supply chains.

The history of peat drainage in Indonesia creates an environment where fires started in one location can spread for many miles underground. As such, we, along with our members, are also committed to ‘No expansion on Peat’ as part of the No Deforestation policies and actions, and support our members in implementing this commitment.

Through learning from past experience and in consultation with relevant stakeholders, we have been assisting members in taking measures to strengthen their internal systems to tackle the issues surrounding forest fire. These include early detection, forest threat mapping, procedures, training, monitoring-evaluation and the hiring of forest fire experts. Those systems will continually be reviewed and improved overtime. To ensure these measures remain effective, ongoing work must seek to strategically collaborate with a wider group of stakeholders.

However, we are also clear that we will re-evaluate partnerships and, if necessary, disengage with members who are proven through thorough investigation to have intentionally caused deforestation by land burning. We will be transparent about this work and provide regular updates via our existing members dashboards and also the TFT ‘Transparency Hub ‘ which we plan to launch.