Interview with Sam Lawson, member of Earthsight
"We make connections between everyday products consumed in the West and the impact these products have on the developing world, including the impact on Indigenous peoples and local communities."
Sam Lawson is the founder of Earthsight, a British research and advocacy organization that analyzes the connections between Western consumption and deforestation, land rights abuses, and violations of Indigenous peoples' rights. Founded ten years ago, the organization works at the intersection of supply chain accountability and forest protection, and its investigations have implicated major European and US companies in deforestation and rights abuses in Paraguay, Indonesia, Ukraine, and other countries. Sam spoke with Ambika Samarthya-Howard about the theory of change underpinning Earthsight's research model, the current state of the European Deforestation Regulation, and what it really takes to curb large-scale illegal deforestation.
On what’s working
Exposing the supply chain connection between Western consumption and forest destruction is the most powerful lever available, but only if it leads to legislation.
Earthsight's approach is investigative research aimed not at individual consumer behavior but at the policy decisions of governments in consumer countries. Voluntary corporate action has failed despite 40 years of effort; brand pressure, consumer labeling, and reputational campaigns have produced piecemeal results at best. Earthsight’s strategy runs through legislation: European Deforestation Regulations, generic supply-chain ethics laws, and human-rights due-diligence frameworks that require companies to trace products back to their origin and verify that no deforestation or rights violations occurred along the way. For example, Earthsight’s “Grand Theft Chaco” report, which traced Paraguayan leather from illegally deforested Ayoreo territory to Italian tanneries to European car seats, was cited directly in European parliamentary debates on the European Deforestation Regulation.
Calling out the biggest brand names leads to bigger stories.
Earthsight deliberately targets the largest, most recognizable brands — supermarket chains, car companies, fast food giants, furniture retailers — because “the more dramatic the story is, the more attention it gets in the press, and the more attention it gets in the press, the more politicians will pay attention.” A dry technical report does not move legislators. A story connecting a BMW car seat to the destruction of Ayoreo territory does.
On what's working
A single well-designed law can achieve what decades of voluntary commitments have not.
A government response applies across the board and, when implemented effectively, has the potential to force change at a systems level. Sam describes the European Deforestation Regulation as the most important law in the field precisely because it applies to everyone, not just the companies willing to act. That universality is also what makes it a target: its implementation has been delayed by industry lobbying and the growing influence of right-wing politicians following recent European elections, and the Italian leather industry, which is directly implicated by the “Grand Theft Chaco” findings, is actively working to have leather excluded from its scope.
On adaptive advocacy
When political conditions close one door, effective advocacy finds another.
With the US Forest Act effectively shelved under the current administration, Earthsight has shifted its strategy in that context toward shareholder activism, targeting the three companies that produce 90% of recreational vehicles in the US, whose products use timber linked to illegal Indonesian deforestation. Voluntary corporate action is not Earthsight’s preferred lever, but it is the one available.
On the intersection of climate and PIACI rights
Protecting Indigenous land is one of the most direct climate interventions available.
Sam draws a direct line between Indigenous land rights and climate outcomes: between 12 and 15 percent of all global climate emissions come from deforestation, and the evidence consistently shows that stronger Indigenous land rights result in less deforestation. The commodities driving that deforestation, such as beef, palm oil, soy, and timber, are consumed in Western markets. Addressing that demand is, in his framing, simultaneously a climate intervention, a rights intervention, and a deforestation intervention.
