By In 2025, Rainforest Action Network and our allies secured a significant breakthrough with Procter & Gamble (P&G), one of the world’s most powerful consumer goods companies. After years of dragging its feet, the multibillion multinational brand finally strengthened its commitments on deforestation and human rights defenders.
This victory was not the result of corporate goodwill. It was the result of sustained global pressure. RAN’s investigators uncovered links between P&G’s supply chains and illegal palm oil operations in Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem, connected it to shadow companies driving deforestation, and tied it to violence against Indigenous forest defenders. At the same time, grassroots organizers mobilized across continents. From Cincinnati, P&G’s hometown, to the frontlines of Indonesian rainforests, people demanded change. Descendants of the company’s original founders even joined the call1.
Petitions, protests, shareholder actions, and relentless digital pressure all combined to make the issue impossible for P&G to ignore. When the public started paying attention, the company’s leadership followed.
In response, P&G announced a series of significant policy updates, including:
- Recognizing that protecting rainforests begins with protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples and frontline communities.
- Strengthening safeguards for Human Rights Defenders, committing to prevent violence, intimidation, and criminalization.
- Requiring palm oil suppliers to adopt “No Deforestation, No Peatland, and No Exploitation” (NDPE) policies.
- Suspending suppliers caught destroying forests or violating rights.
These shifts mark real progress. P&G is finally acknowledging that deforestation and human rights are inseparable issues — yet gaps in the company’s policies remain. P&G has not extended its policies across entire corporate groups, leaving “shadow companies” free to continue destructive practices. Nor has it addressed forest degradation in the Canadian boreal, a critical source of its paper products.
RAN welcomes these improvements while continuing to push for robust implementation and stronger protections.
The P&G campaign illustrates RAN’s broader theory of change: organized people, working across borders and in solidarity with frontline communities, can hold even the largest corporations accountable. These wins do not come quickly or easily, but persistence and collective action make them possible. Corporate pledges are only as strong as the pressure behind them, and RAN remains committed to ensuring that words translate into action.
While P&G has taken steps forward, other corporations remain dangerously behind. Mondelez International, the snack food giant behind Oreo, Ritz, and Cadbury, now ranks last in RAN’s Snack Food Scorecard. Unlike peers who have begun to strengthen their policies, Mondelez continues to fail at adequately addressing rainforest destruction and ensuring there is no tolerance for rights abuses in its palm oil supply chain.
As RAN shifts its focus toward Mondelez, the lesson from P&G is clear: sustained pressure works. When global people power shines a spotlight on destructive supply chains, even the most entrenched corporate actors must respond.
RAN’s work with P&G demonstrates what is possible. Our focus on Mondelez ensures that the fight for forests, frontline communities, and the climate is far from over.
- WCPO 9. Procter & Gamble Descendants Want Deforestation Addressed. YouTube, 18 July 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mneIbp744kA
