How to have a positive impact in a risky world

Over recent years there has been an increasing focus on understanding and addressing the social and environmental risk of sourcing agricultural commodities. This has been a really important step in the transition to delivering more positive outcomes, but it is also becoming clear that we need to be more thoughtful in our understanding about what creates risk and how we should respond to it. Two key aspects increasingly inform our thinking in our work at Proforest: 

• Action versus inaction: Taking action brings risk, but inaction also has risks that should have an equal weighting when considering next steps. 

• Risk aware versus risk averse: It is important to be risk aware and manage risk, but this is not the same as being risk averse. Walking away from everything high risk rarely contributes to positive change and can be an excuse to avoid responsibility. 

First, there is always risk associated with change, so taking action brings risk, but inaction also has risks. We tend to see and evaluate the risks of taking action more actively than the risks associated with doing nothing and many project planning frameworks explicitly focus only on the risks of the proposed action.  

For example, where restoration or regenerative agriculture projects may have implications for changing involvement of different farmer groups, donors and companies are rightly concerned about the risk of creating or exacerbating issues for the more vulnerable or marginalised among these groups. But there is often much less focus on the potential benefits foregone if the project does not go ahead, or the longer-term risks of inaction, particularly as the impacts of climate change accelerate. Sometimes active engagement may be the best and most ethical way to move forward even when there will be some negative outcomes. 

Which leads to the second aspect of risk: being risk conscious without being risk averse. Based on Proforest’s three principles for action – supporting sectoral transformation, ensuring a just transition, and efficient use of resources – we don’t recommend walking away from high risk landscapes, or focusing only on the most severe human rights issues, while leaving the remaining problems unaddressed, for someone else to solve.  

A very topical example of this is ending commodity-driven deforestation, where we see companies being consistently advised to disinvest from countries or producers with a high risk of deforestation and switch supply chains to low deforestation risk areas, in order to meet their deforestation-free and climate targets. Yet this does little or nothing to address the risk or reduce the GHG emissions from deforestation. It just makes their own supply chains cleaner while nothing changes on the ground. Worse, the switch in supply chains is often at the cost of disproportionately excluding poorer and smaller producers and leaves responsibility for addressing the deforestation risk to others.   

Proforest believes we have to focus on delivering positive impacts across sectors, through an inclusive and just transition. We should carefully balance the risk of action and the risk of inaction, and we should be risk conscious, but not risk averse.   

What does this mean for our work? First, we need to be aware of the social and environmental risks of what we support companies and governments to do. We need to be explicitly risk conscious – understand, accept and manage risk; rather than risk averse, which means perceiving the risk and walking away.  

Second, we should be explicit about risks of negative impacts of sourcing in ‘high risk landscapes’, but also about the risk of not engaging and taking action. What are the positive outcomes that will be lost by inaction? How can companies and governments really engage with the drivers of those high risks to bring about change at scale? 

Finally, there are rarely only win–win outcomes in the tussle for land access and management. Being explicitly risk conscious, but not risk averse, can help us actively address these trade-offs, through pragmatic responsible sourcing and production approaches.  

In 2025, we’re seeing increasing levels of risk, from climate change as well as geo-political and economic uncertainty. We’ll continue to support companies and governments to think consciously about the risks they take and the ones they haven’t considered. Through a better understanding of – and crucially a better response to - risks, I believe we can create greater positive outcomes for people, nature and climate.

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Proforest Insights are drawn from our 25 years of practical experience in responsible sourcing and production of agricultural and forest commodities. This Insight is part of a series by Proforest’s senior leadership. The full series is available here.