Is the Power of Brand-Focused Activism Rising? The Case of Tropical Deforestation

Influence and Effectiveness of Activism

Activists tend to wield more influence over the discourses, programs, and published policies of corporations when they are able to cultivate allies within a particular corporation, such as a company division, a group of CSR managers, or a CEO (Bloomfield, 2017; Chrun, Dolšak, & Prakash 2016; Prakash, 2000; Thauer, 2014; van der Ven, 2014). Activists also tend to have greater success when their demands are specific and feasible, when the cost of meeting their demands is low for the company (Dauvergne & Lister, 2013), and especially when the reputational cost of a campaign outweighs the cost of capitulation (Bloomfield, 2014, 2017). Relatedly, activists tend as well to gain more concessions from corporations when the campaign involves large numbers of NGOs and consumers (e.g., through social media) and when resistance to reforms—say, from unions or community leaders fearing job losses—is relatively weak. Activists also tend to wield greater influence when suggested reforms offer a company potential competitive advantages, such as enhancing brand value, retaining or gaining consumer trust, or opening new markets (e.g., for eco-products, fair trade products, or cobranded products; Cashore, Auld, & Newsom, 2004; Richey & Ponte, 2011). Finally, activists tend to gain more influence over corporate policies and programs, and do so more quickly, after lead firms initiate reforms and a campaign gains momentum, thus enhancing the reputational risks and potential business disadvantages for firms not following suit—which explains why activists so often begin campaigns by targeting a high-profile company with a global brand (Bloomfield, 2017; Dauvergne & Lister, 2013).

Many factors, however, can limit the eventual effectiveness of corporate responses to activist campaigns. For one, more often than not, corporations respond to campaigns by trying to appease critics in the short term rather than protect ecosystems in the long term. Second, in almost every case, the same corporations that are pledging sustainability are simultaneously lobbying for weak regulations, disseminating misinformation, and funding scientific uncertainty (Higgs, 2014; Oreskes & Conway, 2010; Parr, 2012). Third, in just about every case, these same corporations are also continuing to pursue sales, profits, and growth with a ferocity that tends to swamp any gains from corporate sustainability initiatives (Dauvergne, 2016; Wright & Nyberg, 2015). Fourth, the long, complex supply chains of the world’s leading MNCs hide environmental and social costs in hundreds of thousands of locations all around the world, making it exceedingly hard for activists to expose a company’s true consequences and exceedingly easy for a supplier to conceal illegalities and destructive practices (LeBaron & Lister, 2015). Fifth, getting one company to change a sourcing policy, eject a supplier, or buy offsets and ecolabels may do little to alleviate commercial pressures on a particular ecosystem as other firms rush to fill the gap and as sales shift to nonenvironmental and illegal markets. Finally, in direct contrast to corporate claims of the efficiency and effectiveness of self-regulation and corporate governance, at least for forest management in developing countries, rarely do ecological conditions ever improve without stringent and well-enforced government regulations (Bartley, 2014; Pichler, 2013; Purnomo et al., 2017; Schleifer, 2016a, 2016b).

Activists, of course, are well aware of the difficulty of translating corporate sustainability promises into better on-the-ground management. This has not stopped, however, the number of brand-focused campaigns from growing rapidly over the past few decades.

The Rise of Brand-Focused Activism

Campaigns to pressure clothing and shoe brands into improving labor conditions in overseas factories began to take off in the 1990s. Nike was a primary target, although activists put many other companies in their sights, too, including Adidas, Reebok, and Puma (Bartley & Child, 2014; Harrison & Scorse, 2010). Since the mid-2000s, brand-focused activism has been gaining in frequency and range, partly as activists see, and learn from, the wins of past campaigns, such as Nike’s decision to overhaul its global subcontracting system following activism against overseas sweatshops (Garwood, 2011). Often, small groups of activists have been able to raise the stakes for brand companies by following up social media campaigns with public protests. Unlike “antibrand activism,” the majority of these brand-focused campaigns have not aimed to destroy a brand: to reduce sales permanently or bankrupt a company. Typical of antibrand activism are the websites and Twitter accounts against Starbucks, McDonald’s, and Walmart, which condemn the companies as “appalling,” “immoral,” and “gross.” In contrast, brand-focused activism is critiquing particular practices of brand corporations (e.g., the sourcing of wood from tropical rainforests), then offering to engage them in dialogue and reform processes, leveraging the incentive to protect the financial value of global brands to promote further reforms through global supply chains (Hollenbeck & Zinkhan, 2006, 2010; Krishnamurthy & Kucuk, 2009).

Brand-focused activism aims to push corporate executives into “voluntarily” agreeing to reforms. A common compromise is for brands to agree to source more inputs and products certified by third-party organizations, such as the Forest Stewardship Council (founded 1993), the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC, founded 1996), and the RSPO (founded 2004; Auld, 2014; Cashore et al., 2004; Gulbrandsen, 2010). Brand activists are not afraid to threaten the image and reputation—and thus the financial value—of corporate brands. Unlike antibrand activists, however, they are also quick to compliment (and sometimes partner with) first movers, helping to revalue, and sometimes even strengthen, a brand by bestowing the title of “sustainability leader.” This tactic is part of a broader strategy to play brands off each other, labeling some as supporters and some as opponents of sustainability (Bloomfield, 2014, 2017; den Hond & de Bakker, 2007; and Sasser et al., 2006).

Over the past decade, social media interfaces such as Facebook (since 2004), YouTube (since 2005), Twitter (since 2006), Tumblr (since 2007), Instagram (since 2010), and Snapchat (since 2011) have increasingly allowed activists to quickly and cheaply reach hundreds of millions of shareholders, employees, reporters, state officials, investors, and consumers. Activists have done this through messaging, trending, photos, blogging, and online petitions. Especially effective, however, have been humorous images and video clips that mock or ridicule iconic brands, which through the Internet can reach more potential customers than old-style corporate advertising. Brand manufacturers and retailers in particular have found it hard to counter a popular social media campaign without at least seeming to compromise with the demands of activists.

The sheer financial value of global brands partly explains their vulnerability to social media activism. Top brands are worth billions of dollars. For 2016, the consulting company Interbrand (www.interbrand.com) put the value of Apple’s brand at US$178 billion, Google at US$133 billion, Coca-Cola at US$73 billion, Amazon at US$50 billion, McDonald’s at US$39 billion, and Nike at US$25 billion. The increasing embrace of sustainability as a business strategy—what Dauvergne and Lister (2013) call “eco-business”—is an equally, if not more important, reason for the vulnerability of global brands to social media activism. Increasingly, since 2005 multinational manufacturers and retailers—from Coca-Cola to Procter & Gamble to Walmart—have been deploying a discourse of sustainability to partner with environmental NGOs, shape business-friendly certification, and gain the trust of green consumers (Dauvergne & Lister, 2013; Humes, 2011). This strategy has proved increasingly valuable for global brands as demand for eco-products rises and as more consumers band together over the Internet to call for reforms (Boström & Klintman, 2008; Stolle & Micheletti, 2015). At the same time that eco-consumerism has been spreading, global brands have been turning to sustainability programming—such as codes of conduct, reporting mechanisms, waste reduction and energy efficiency policies, and supply chain audits—to gain competitive business advantages to find cost savings, enhance profits, expand sales, and gain more control over worldwide networks of suppliers. This strategy, however, has left global brands more vulnerable to criticism of poor sustainability practices, both within their own operations as well as their supply chains (Dauvergne & Lister, 2013, pp. 29–134; Laszlo & Zhexembayeva, 2011; LeBaron & Lister, 2015; Marcus, 2015).

At least to some extent the spread of social media activism and the increasing vulnerability of global brands to consumer demands for “real” sustainability would seem to be enhancing the power of brand-focused activism. Still, such activism does come with considerable challenges. As the analysis of palm oil campaigns highlights next, relying on social media tends to produce chaotic campaigns—diffuse, messy, with differing agendas at play and differing influences across languages and jurisdictions. Activist groups tend to surface across the Internet as campaigns gain traction, frequently jumbling messages and causing confusion. At the same time, scammers may pose as campaigners, public relations firms may pose as activists to discredit campaigns, and hackers may cause havoc just for fun. Legitimate campaigners also frequently cause confusion by posting outdated information. It is common, for instance, for one activist group to continue to demand reforms long after others have declared “victory.” ¹ Despite the limits and downsides, however, as the next section underscores, targeting brands over social media has many advantages for activists. It requires relatively little financing. It involves little personal risk for campaigners, at least compared with facing down walls of police in military-style body armor. And, most important, it allows activists to sidestep the profit and legal filters of the mainstream media, allowing more hard-hitting messages and images to reach potential brand customers.

The Power of Palm Oil Activism

Consumption of palm oil has gone up fourfold since the mid-1990s. Over the past few years, palm oil has composed about one third of world production in vegetable oils and fats, and production of palm oil is continuing to rise steadily (Potts et al., 2014, p. 235). Highly versatile, palm oil is used for cooking and deep frying (especially in Asia and Africa), as a lubricant for cosmetics and personal care products, as a cholesterol-free and semi solid oil for processed food and baking (it is naturally high in saturated fat), and as a biofuel. Palm oil accounts for around two thirds of the world trade in vegetable oils (WWF, 2016, p. 8). It is in margarine, cooking oil, and shortening. It is in peanut butter and chocolate. It is in bread, cereals, and instant noodles. And it is in candles, shampoos, soaps, detergents, lipstick, toothpaste, and shaving foam, to name just a few products. The clearing of land for oil palm plantations is now the leading cause of deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia. In these countries, loggers have long bulldozed through old-growth rainforests to extract valuable timber, tearing open the canopy and littering the forest floor with branches (Colchester & Chao, 2011; Dauvergne, 2001; Varkkey, 2016). A cheap, easy way to clear these degraded (and drier than normal) forests—as well as to fertilize the nutrient-poor tropical soil—is to burn them down. Although clearing for oil palm plantations is not the only cause, on average, Malaysia lost around 430,000 and Indonesia 1.5 million hectares of forest each year from 2004 to 2013, with the burning trees, coal seams, and drained peatlands spewing a choking haze of soot and greenhouse gases. ²

For decades now, NGOs such as the Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace, Global Witness, Rainforest Alliance, and the World Wide Fund for Nature/World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have been campaigning to end the growing of oil palm on deforested and misappropriated land. Many other NGOs have long expressed concerns too, including the U.S. National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth International, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council. WWF has taken a fairly conciliatory and practical approach, working, for instance, with the British-Dutch firm Unilever (the world’s biggest single buyer of palm oil) and the Malaysian Palm Oil Association to help establish the RSPO as a nonprofit organization to develop, verify, and certify environmental and social standards for global palm oil production.

To push for more far-reaching change, Greenpeace decided to target brand manufacturers and retailers connected to the palm oil industry. Greenpeace International (2007) published a report on the role of cosmetic, food, and consumer good companies in purchasing unsustainable palm oil, the following year singling out Unilever’s Dove soap (Greenpeace International, 2008a). The campaign only lasted a few months. Shortly after Greenpeace activists (dressed as orangutans) stormed Unilever’s European headquarters, the company pledged to only source “sustainable” palm oil by 2015. Emboldened, activists trained their sights on other global brands. Now praising Unilever for taking a “bold step to support our call for a moratorium on cutting down trees in Indonesia for palm oil plantations,” Greenpeace singled out Nestlé, Kraft, and Procter & Gamble for not making a similar commitment (Greenpeace International, 2008c, 2008b).

Greenpeace followed up in 2010 with a social media campaign targeting Nestlé’s Kit Kat chocolate bar. Greenpeace posted on YouTube a mock commercial of an office worker “taking a break” to eat a Nestlé Kit Kat, blood spewing forth after a piece turns into the finger of an orangutan. “Ask Nestlé to give rainforests a break,” Greenpeace pleaded. ³ Claiming copyright infringements, Nestlé did manage to strong-arm YouTube into removing the video. Yet, the video still went viral, with more than a million views. Emails inundated Nestlé. Supporters took to Facebook and Twitter. And protestors, dressed as orangutans, disrupted Nestlé’s Annual General Meeting. Within weeks Nestlé folded, reiterating its promise to only purchase palm oil certified as sustainable by 2015, and announcing a new policy to trace fully its palm oil supply chain. Nestlé also did a U-turn on its approach with campaigners. Activists are now the company’s “eyes and ears on the ground,” Nestlé’s Chris Hogg would say without irony in 2014. “And if they find something, we take it seriously and look into it” (Gies, 2014).

Smelling blood, new activist groupings joined the fray—such as the online anticorporate movement SumOfUs (founded in 2011) and the campaign Forest Heroes (launched in 2013). During this time, campaigners also targeted some of the bigger palm oil suppliers, notably Singapore’s Wilmar International, which at the time controlled 45% of the world palm oil market. On the advocacy side, Glenn Hurowitz, director of the Tropical Forest and Climate Coalition, played an important role, as did Scott Poynton, the founder and director of the Forest Trust. Together, they were able, along with others (such as Forest Heroes, Greenpeace, and oil palm investors), to convince Wilmar’s chief executive officer Kuok Khoon Hong of both the business and environmental value of agreeing to no longer purchase palm oil linked to deforestation, especially in Indonesia where for decades fires to clear forests and peatlands for palm oil estates had repeatedly caused severe air pollution in Singapore (Gunther, 2015; Johnson, 2015).

In 2013, Wilmar International (2013) committed to zero deforestation—what it called its “No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation Policy.” Activists gained even more momentum the following year as Greenpeace launched a social media campaign to inform consumers of the palm oil in Procter & Gamble’s various brands, including Olay skin cream, Gillette shaving foam, and Head & Shoulders shampoo. Many other NGOs (e.g., Rainforest Action Network and SumOfUs) were also campaigning during this time to expose the role of global brands in purchasing unsustainable palm oil (or, what some NGOs call “conflict” palm oil, defined as exploiting child and slave labor or planting on land appropriated from indigenous peoples). Like Nestlé, Procter & Gamble was quick to promise reforms to protect the value of their brands. Campaigns against Kellogg’s and General Mills met with similar success, with both companies overhauling their palm oil sourcing policies in 2014 (General Mills, 2015; Kellogg’s, 2015). Meanwhile, for companies unwilling to change, or go fast or far enough, activists were being portrayed as “laggards,” as with PepsiCo.

More success came in 2014 when P&G, Dunkin’ Brands, Mars, Cargill, L'Oréal, General Mills, Kellogg’s, and Johnston & Johnson, among many other brands, all committed to zero deforestation. The example of Forest Heroes, a Washington, DC–based organization to support forest campaigners, shows the capacity of relatively new groups of activists to influence brands. Forest Heroes was not set up as a nonprofit organization, but as a campaign run by staff paid through foundations, grants, and donations. To begin, it looked for vulnerable brands, eventually deciding to focus on the “doughnut” as a way of raising awareness of palm oil among North American consumers. The chair of Forest Heroes explains the reasoning: “When you eat a doughnut, you actually get palm oil on your fingers. That’s a very tangible connection” (Harball, 2015b; also see Harball, 2015a).

After investigating the corporate structure of Dunkin’ Brands, and seeing the company’s plans to double the number of its U.S. franchises over the next 20 years, Forest Heroes began in early 2014 to alert potential franchise buyers of its upcoming campaign to demand the immediate end to the sourcing of unsustainable palm oil. The flyer read: “Dunkin’ will soon be the focus of a highly visible campaign, unless they tell palm oil suppliers like Cargill to stop selling deforestation-based palm oil” (Harball, 2015b). A few days later, Dunkin’ executives told Forest Heroes that the company would change its palm oil sourcing policy by year’s end. Given this concession, Forest Heroes switched targets, aiming at Krispy Kreme and Tim Hortons. In June 2014, Forest Heroes officially launched its “Deforestation Donuts” campaign. Groups of protestors began showing up at the grand openings of new Krispy Kreme chains with signs telling customers that the company was killing orangutans and destroying the world’s rainforests.

In September 2014, both Dunkin’ Brands and Krispy Kreme committed to no longer purchasing any palm oil connected with deforestation by 2016. “We’re winning,” Forest Heroes was soon telling supporters, taking credit for new zero deforestation policies at Wilmar International in 2013, Kellogg’s in 2014, as well as many others. ⁴ Convincing American MNCs to commit to zero deforestation has been a central strategy of palm oil campaigners, as brand activists see this as a powerful way to pressure palm oil growers and corporate buyers in developing countries. This is why Forest Heroes went after Dunkin’ Donuts, even though Dunkin’ Brands accounts for a tiny portion of the global total. “It’s less about volume; it’s more about the global significance of their brands,” explains Scott Poynton of Forest Trust. “It’s a voice from the market, saying, ‘This is important to us’” (Harball, 2015b).

With global brands now racing each other to pledge zero deforestation, the Asia-based palm oil companies Golden Agri Resources and Asian Agri jumped aboard in 2014 and also committed to zero deforestation even though they were not a target of brand activism. The following year, the world-leading agricultural company Archer Daniels Midland (2015) made a similar commitment, as did the restaurant chain, McDonald’s (Srinivas, 2015). By the middle of 2015, the vast majority of the world’s multinational palm oil traders, brand manufacturers, and brand retailers were promising zero deforestation. These companies have differing degrees of urgency and transparency in implementing zero deforestation policies. Verification mechanisms and specific commitments vary, too, with some companies (as well as NGOs and governments) defining zero deforestation as “no clearing at all of natural forests,” while others mean “zero net deforestation,” which allows for tree clearing and land-use changes, as long as overall biodiversity, carbon storage, and forest area do not decline.

These differences do matter. Still, palm oil campaigns have clearly influenced the CSR policies of global brand companies as well as the purchasing practices within supply chains. We see this with the steady rise since 2010 in purchases of RSPO-certified palm oil, which increased from 1.3 million metric tons in 2010 to 6.2 million metric tons in 2015 (RSPO, 2017). We see this with policy shifts by brand corporations to promise zero deforestation, monitor palm oil supply chains, trace and track product inputs, audit suppliers, and eject noncompliant suppliers from supply chains. And we see this influence with the increasing number of palm oil suppliers and traders scrambling to pledge zero deforestation and source eco-certified palm oil to avoid criticism from both NGOs and brand buyers. Brand-focused activism against unsustainable palm oil can even take some credit for dozens of governments and MNCs pledging at the 2014 United Nations Climate Summit in New York City to cut the loss of natural forests in half by 2020, and “strive to end” it by 2030 (Climate Summit, 2014).

Yet, brand-focused activism is not advancing environmental management nearly as much as many activists and corporations are claiming. As the next section elaborates, at least in the case of the consequences of palm oil production for tropical deforestation, there is still a long way to go, as what many activists are celebrating as victories—more certification, more eco-labeling, more supply chain traceability, and more corporate promises of responsibility and sustainability—contain serious loopholes as well as innate ecological limits, doing little to challenge the economic, corporate, or political structures causing unsustainable extraction of natural resources across the developing world.

The Promise of Sustainable Palm Oil

Palm oil activists have justifiably found much to rejoice. Looking more deeply, however, reveals relatively little influence over forest management in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, places where politics and ecology have long entwined to drive unsustainable palm oil production (Abram et al., 2017; McCarthy, 2010, 2012; McCarthy, Gillespie, & Zen, 2012; Prabowo, Maryudi, & Imron, 2017; Pye, 2012). In these countries, the primary effect of brand-focused activism has been to increase demand for RSPO-certified palm oil. On paper, the RSPO looks reasonable, as of 2017 bringing together more than 3,000 members, including oil palm growers, processors, manufacturers, retailers, investors, and NGOs. The RSPO audits plantations and processing facilities, checking a range of compliance issues, including planting and harvesting practices, pesticide use, and greenhouse gas emissions. It offers buyers “certified sustainable palm oil” and “certified sustainable palm kernel,” which together, at the beginning of 2017, made up 17% of the world’s palm oil, comprising more than 12 million metric tons across roughly 3 million hectares of plantations. Production of certified sustainable palm oil has been rising steadily, more than doubling from 2011 to 2016, even though demand has lagged far behind (RSPO, 2017). ⁵

The oil palm industry wields great influence over RSPO programs and strategies, which generally advantage large exporters and multinational buyers (Pichler, 2013). Critics of RSPO have been especially concerned with its “GreenPalm” “book and claim” system, which allows buyers to “claim” eco-certification by purchasing certificates to “advance” sustainability efforts within the palm oil industry, without requiring the actual use of sustainable palm oil in products (Richardson, 2015; Ruysschaert & Salles, 2014; Schleifer, 2016b). What RSPO calls “mass balance” does trace and include palm oil that the RSPO certifies as sustainable, but this option allows processors to mix palm oil from certified and uncertified growers, so once again a buyer has no guarantee that the palm oil is actually grown sustainably (or at least to the standards of RSPO). Only RSPO’s so-called “segregated” palm oil guarantees that all of the palm oil is grown, processed, stored, and transported separate from noncertified supplies. Sales of segregated and mass balance palm oil have been rising since 2013, although sales of GreenPalm still exceeded these sales in 2015 (RSPO, 2017).

As a founding member, WWF has remained broadly supportive of RSPO over the years, calling on brand corporations to buy “RSPO-certified sustainable palm oil … to stop illegal and irresponsible practices” (WWF, 2016, p. 3). At the same time, WWF (2016) has been pushing brands to purchase more segregated RSPO-certified palm oil (less than one fifth of the palm oil used by major brands in 2015 met this bar) as well as develop stronger guidelines and more consistent implementation of standards and criteria of sustainability. WWF is also advocating through RSPO for “low-carbon” palm oil—by growers avoiding forestlands and peatlands and processors designing low-methane processing facilities. (The wastewater ponds of palm oil processors emit methane, and WWF (2013) wants to see measures put in place to reduce these emissions, as methane accounts for about one third of the greenhouse gas emissions from oil palm.)

On the other hand, groups such as Greenpeace, RAN, and SumOfUs have been highly critical of the RSPO. One hope of brand-focused activism has been to push MNCs to go beyond the standards of the RSPO, or at least push brands to commit to the most far-reaching of RSPO’s options (i.e., segregated palm oil). Greenpeace (2013) writes, “RSPO standards are inadequate, poorly enforced and offer palm oil consumers no guarantee that the oil they buy has been produced responsibly” (p. 3). “On the ground, we’ve seen lots of RSPO members still doing forest clearing in the area, which is an indication of weak enforcement and a weak standard,” explained Greenpeace’s Bustar Maitar in 2013. “RSPO, from my perspective, has been used for green washing by companies who want to expand their plantations into the forest” (quoted in Gies, 2014). Despite differing views, Greenpeace, WWF, RAN, and others are nevertheless cooperating on the palm oil campaign, for example, through the Palm Oil Innovation Group. Founded in 2013 by 12 groups, including WWF, Greenpeace, and RAN, Palm Oil Innovation Group is aiming to push the RSPO toward higher and more consistent standards.

Certification of palm oil still has a long way to go. RSPO-certified palm oil accounts for less than one fifth of world production. The laundering of palm oil (e.g., mixing unsustainable palm into certified batches) is also becoming an ever-greater problem as demand for certified palm oil rises. Many palm oil users, moreover, are continuing to dodge and weave higher standards, buying certificates and joining roundtables but not actually ensuring that the palm oil in their products is grown and processed in sustainable and conflict-free ways (Colchester & Chao, 2011; Greenpeace International, 2013, 2016; Rainforest Action Network, 2015; Varkkey, 2016). Certification is also producing uneven consequences for world palm oil markets. The primary influence is in the brand markets of Europe and North America, while influence across the unbranded markets has been minimal (Schleifer, 2016b). At least to some extent poor practices and illegal activities are simply shifting into the supply chains for unbranded products. The more than tripling of palm oil imports into India from 2010 to 2016 is indicative, with India now the world’s biggest importer, accounting for between one fifth and one quarter of global imports, according to estimates by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Most of this is uncertified Indonesian palm oil heading for sale as nonbranded and inexpensive cooking oil (Centre for Responsible Business, 2014; Schleifer, 2016a, 2016b). China is also a major importer of palm oil, accounting for 10% to 15% of total imports in recent years, with, as in India, the primary demand coming from nonbranded markets (although demand for branded products is rising in China).

Other factors also plague palm oil certification in Indonesia and Malaysia. Customs and forest officers do not implement legal rules consistently (Brad, Schaffartzik, Pichler, & Plank, 2015; Colchester & Chao, 2011; Rainforest Action Network, 2015; Varkkey, 2012, 2016). Even WWF admits that illegal palm oil remains a serious problem—WWF, for example, writes that “illegal and destructive practices remain common within the palm oil industry,” while the “palm oil trade is hampered by a lack of transparency at every turn” (WWF, 2013, p. 42). Also, certification tends to benefit large producers, as adjusting and complying with new and stricter rules is harder for smallholders (Anggraini & Grundmann, 2013; Brandi et al., 2015; Pichler, 2013; Schleifer, 2016b; Ruysschaert & Salles, 2014). Smallholder farms can easily grow oil palms, providing valuable rural income, especially given the high yields per hectare of land (as much as 10 times other vegetable oil crops, such as soybean, sunflower, and canola). Yet, one consequence of persuading buyers to only purchase certified palm oil, as WWF notes in the case of oil palm in the Tesso Nilo National Park in Sumatra, Indonesia, is to push aside smallholder palm growers who plant in national parks or do not (or cannot) meet RSPO standards (WWF, 2013, p. 14; see also, Anggraini & Grundmann, 2013; Brandi et al., 2015).

Fires across Indonesia in 2015 reveal the ongoing management failures in Indonesia. As has been happening for decades now, beginning in the second half of the year, palm oil growers once again lit fires to clear degraded forests and drained peatlands (and thus cheaply fertilize lands for new palm oil estates; Harris et al., 2015a; Tanoto, 2016; Varkkey, 2016). Fires on pulpwood plantations and swidden farms added to the year’s crisis. The worst fires were in Kalimantan and Sumatra, but fires hit most the country, with more than 125,000 in total. These fires blanketed Indonesia—and at times Malaysia, Singapore, and even parts of Thailand—in a choking haze. Analysis of satellite data by Global Forest Watch of the World Resources Institute revealed that around half of these fires were on peatlands, areas that produce especially noxious and toxic smoke (Harris et al., 2015a, 2015b).

This ended up being one of Indonesia’s foulest ever “fire seasons” with more than 2 million hectares burned (in recent times only 1997 was worse). On some days, greenhouse gas emissions exceeded those of the entire U.S. economy, and in total, Indonesia’s fires in 2015 emitted roughly the same amount of greenhouse gases as all of Brazil’s economy for that year. Palm oil plantations have long been causing widespread environmental and social problems in the tropics, with more than one third of the industrial palm oil expansion from 1990 to 2010 on land cleared of rainforests (WWF, 2013, p. 6). And oil palm remains big business in Indonesia (Pichler, 2015; Varkkey, 2016). The industry in Indonesia is already turning over around US$20 billion a year, and the Indonesian government is moving ahead with efforts to boost production by 50% by 2020 (Bovarnick, Newport, & Uno, 2015). Other tropical countries are rushing to increase production too.

The corporate promises of zero deforestation by 2020 or 2030 would seem to have little meaning given the politics of land clearing in tropical countries, the innate limits of CSR and eco-certification, and the fast-rising worldwide demand for cheap palm oil, soy, and beef. The zero deforestation pledge is doing little to stop human rights abuses and violence against indigenous and forest peoples in the tropics. It is doing little to stop tropical deforestation from remaining the leading cause of terrestrial biodiversity loss. And it is doing little to prevent tropical deforestation from contributing to around 15% of the world’s annual carbon emissions (Baccini et al., 2012). Already, the World Resources Institute estimates that just 15% of tropical rainforests are still intact enough to retain full biodiversity, yet rates of deforestation remain very high across Southeast Asia, South America, and Africa (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2016). Certainly, the campaigns to expose the palm oil purchases of global brands are nudging along reforms to the oil palm industry. Yet, even shifting the sourcing practices of these companies completely would only modestly affect the drivers of tropical deforestation: In 2015, for instance, the palm oil purchases of 137 leading retailers using palm oil only accounted for about 10% of global consumption (WWF, 2016, p. 3).

Conclusion

Over the past decade, activists have been increasingly portraying brand-focused activism as a powerful strategy to reform MNC policies, supply chains, purchasing practices, and ultimately environmental management in developing countries. WWF, as a founding member of the RSPO, has been the most vocal NGO advocate of RSPO-certified palm oil as a way to improve tropical forest management. More critical groups such as Greenpeace, Forest Heroes, and SumOfUs, however, have also been increasingly labeling the resulting corporate sustainability pledges, which in effect promise to buy more RSPO-certified palm oil, as wins, victories, and successes (e.g., Finkelstein, 2014; Kenyon, 2011). Campaigners have also been quick to praise sustainability pledges. After Kellogg’s announced a new palm oil sourcing policy in 2014, for instance, Forest Heroes declared Kellogg’s “a world-class leader in protecting forests by sourcing responsible palm oil,” while SumOfUs was effusive: “Saving forests is a mission that inspires millions of people. Thank you, Kellogg’s, for listening—and acting” (Finkelstein, 2014).

By shaming brands over social media and appealing to eco-consumers, as this article documented, rainforest activists have indeed managed to increase public awareness and encourage stakeholder consultations, as well as push large numbers of MNCs to rewrite codes of conduct, revise procurement policies, pledge zero deforestation, join the RSPO, and buy more RSPO-certified palm oil. As the campaign grew more diverse and chaotic, the speed of activist influence accelerated, with brand companies rushing to match each other’s commitments and promises (with many trying to avoid becoming a target of activists). Four trends in particular would seem to be extending the range and influence of brand-focused activism on corporate discourses and policies: the growing reach of social media, increasing numbers of campaigns, the rise of eco-business, and the growth of eco-consumerism.

Yet, as this article’s analysis further reveals, brand-focused activism has innate limits and weaknesses in its capacity to improve on-the-ground management, a finding consistent with the scholarship critical of the environmental effectiveness of CSR and market-based governance more generally (e.g., Bloomfield, 2012; Dauvergne, 2016; Dempsey, 2016; McAfee, 2016; Pichler, 2013; Schleifer, 2016a). Corporate pledges of zero deforestation have done little to slow the very high global rate of tropical deforestation, which by some estimates (e.g., by the World Resources Institute) has even gone up in recent years. As discussed, the devastating 2015 forest fires in Indonesia—many set to clear forests and peatlands for palm oil plantations—reveal the ongoing failure to rein in deforestation for palm oil. Three weaknesses of brand-focused activism stand out. First, the primary response of MNCs is to promise to purchase more certified products from business-friendly certifiers, a small step toward stopping the forces causing environmental degradation in tropical countries. Second, brand-focused activism produces many unintentional and unclear consequences, such as shifting exports toward nonbranded markets, stimulating demand for illicit products, and excluding small-scale producers from higher end markets. And third, brand-focused activism does little to get at the illegalities and weak state enforcement underlying environmental mismanagement common across tropical countries.

Further research is necessary to tease out variations in the influence of brand-focused activism across firms, political systems, regions, and ecosystems. Importantly, too, in no way does this article’s analysis discount the possibility that in broader “landscape” terms (Sayer et al., 2013), brand-focused campaigns might one day end up marginally improving local-scale governance. Further research to map out the consequences for land use of MNCs buying more certified products (and less uncertified products; e.g., Garrett, Carlson, Rueda, & Noojipady, 2016) would also help evaluate the longer term effectiveness of brand-focused activism. This article does suggest, however, that scholars and activists should be very wary—and far more critical—of the claim that brand-focused activism is a powerful way to protect tropical ecosystems.