In Partnership with Storebrand Asset Management

Funded by Scottish Enterprise

For most financial institutions, deforestation risk is assessed through policy screening. Investors review what companies say about their commitments, check disclosure scores, and cross-reference tools that offer sector-level context. This work matters. But it cannot answer the question that fiduciary duty, shareholder expectations, and incoming regulation are increasingly demanding: is this specific company, at these specific locations, linked to actual deforestation on the ground, right now?

To find out, Frontierra partnered with Storebrand Asset Management, one of Europe's leading sustainable investors managing NOK 1,500 billion in assets, to conduct a satellite-based deforestation risk assessment across 14 portfolio companies, linked to more than 3,500 individual locations, spanning 35 countries, and the findings were stark. This is what that assessment involved, what it found, and what it means for investors navigating the same challenge.

Find out how Frontierra's deforestation monitoring service works.

The Challenge: What Policy Screening Cannot Tell You

Storebrand Asset Management manages NOK 1,500 billion in assets and is a TNFD Early Adopter with a long-standing zero-deforestation commitment. As one of Europe's leading sustainability-focused institutional investors, Storebrand already uses established policy tools and sector-level screening to identify assets’ potential exposure to deforestation. What Storebrand needed was something different: location-specific evidence of deforestation exposure within its portfolio companies, independently verified by earth observation rather than company disclosure.

The challenge is significant. Deforestation is dispersed across multiple geographies, commodity types and value chain structures. Different sectors require different analytical approaches. Supply chains are opaque. Location data is inconsistently disclosed. And for many companies, the most material deforestation risk sits not within their declared operational boundaries but in the surrounding landscape.

Frontierra was engaged to demonstrate that, despite this complexity, a rigorous, standardised, scalable assessment is achievable.

The Approach: From Company Names to Satellite Evidence

Storebrand provided a list of company names. From that starting point, Frontierra built a geospatial database of their operational and sourcing footprints, then interrogated every location with satellite data. The methodology comprised five steps.

Location intelligence

Open-source data was systematically mined to identify physical locations for each company. Sources included company sustainability portals, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) mill lists, government concession databases, technical reports, annual reports, georeferenced maps, and global mining polygon databases. This step alone is a significant undertaking, and one that many organisations assume is impossible without direct company cooperation. It is not.

Satellite-based deforestation detection

Frontierra fused annual forest loss and land use change data to establish a comprehensive temporal baseline, applied across all identified locations after removing non-deforestation land use signals. Results were then verified and contextualised using multiple sources of satellite imagery.

Variable buffer analysis

Deforestation accountability varies by asset type, so customised buffer zones were applied: 1km and 5km buffers for mines; 1km buffers for forest concessions; 500m buffers for palm oil plantations; and 5km and 25km sourcing region buffers for palm oil mills. Where palm oil sourcing regions overlapped, Frontierra applied a unified footprint approach to avoid double-counting. For organisations needing to trace exposure further upstream, Frontierra's value chain mapping service extends this analysis across complex global supply chains, identifying where environmental risks are concentrated and how they flow.

Standardisation via the Deforestation Exposure Score

To enable comparison across over 3,500 locations, 14 companies, and three commodity sectors, Frontierra developed the Deforestation Exposure Score (DES). This is a composite metric that translates complex spatial data into a single, decision-useful rating of Low, Medium, High, or Critical. The DES weights each finding across four dimensions: the scale of deforestation detected, its proximity to the asset boundary, how recently it occurred, and whether the rate is accelerating. The result is a clear, auditable trigger for stewardship action.

Environmental and social context

Each location was assessed for intersection with protected areas, Indigenous areas, natural vegetation conversion, and the presence of peatlands and mangroves. These indicators extend beyond deforestation into broader nature-related risk territory. These types of indicators underpin Frontierra's nature risk and opportunity assessment, which identifies exposure and opportunities across the full spectrum of nature-related risks at the asset level.

What the Satellites Found

Across 14 companies in paper and pulp, mining, and palm oil supply chains, satellite analysis revealed material deforestation exposure that would otherwise have been missed by policy evaluation alone. The scale and nature of findings varied significantly by sector.

Paper and pulp: direct accountability at scale

Four of the five companies assessed received a Critical overall DES rating. Deforestation was detected at the vast majority of concession locations, in some cases at every single site, with total forest loss running into the hundreds of thousands of hectares across Canadian and Indonesian operations. A significant proportion of locations intersected with potential High Conservation Value areas, including peatlands and mangrove ecosystems.

Palm oil: systemic supply chain exposure

Across three companies, Frontierra identified and analysed over 3,400 individual palm oil mill and plantation locations spanning 26 countries. All three companies received a High overall DES rating. Deforestation was detected within the 25km sourcing buffer at virtually every location assessed. Deforestation as recent as 2025 was identified at roughly half of all sourcing locations. This is not historical legacy exposure. It is active, ongoing forest loss in palm oil supply chains.

Mining: localised intensity and conversion risk

The mining portfolio revealed a hub-and-spoke risk profile: most sites showed low deforestation but high rates of natural vegetation conversion, while a small number of critical sites showed extreme localised deforestation intensity. The most severe individual site showed a deforestation intensity of over 60% of its operational boundary. Several other sites showed accelerating deforestation trends within both site boundaries and buffer zones as recently as 2025.

Where There Is No Data: A Risk Signal in Itself

No location data could be sourced for eight of the 22 companies on Storebrand's list, including consumer goods companies with significant palm oil exposure and timber businesses. Where companies do not publish traceability information for their operations or supply chains, external verification is impossible, which means deforestation risk cannot be confirmed or ruled out. That uncertainty is itself a material risk and should be treated as such.

Financial institutions must seek to incorporate traceability requirements into investment agreements where possible. Non-disclosure should be considered a risk flag equivalent to, or greater than, disclosed deforestation exposure.

Why One Size Does Not Fit All

This project has made clear that there is no standard template for deforestation risk assessment. Every sector, and often every company, presents different challenges in terms of data availability, analytical complexity, and interpretation. A mine in arid Australia has almost no tree cover loss but significant natural vegetation conversion. An Indonesian palm oil concession requires a completely different buffer logic to a Canadian timber operation.

Frontierra's methodology is built sector by sector, not applied universally. That is what makes the findings defensible and decision-relevant.

What This Means for Investors

Location-specific, satellite-verified deforestation analysis is no longer a niche capability. It is becoming a baseline expectation for credible deforestation risk management. The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), and the broader regulatory direction of travel in the UK, US, and other markets, is pushing financial institutions towards evidence that stands up to scrutiny, not just policies that satisfy disclosure requirements.

The question is not whether this standard will arrive. It is whether institutions are ready for it when it does.

Frontierra's deforestation monitoring service delivers the spatial evidence, traceability, and documentation needed to meet current regulatory requirements and prepare for what follows. For ongoing monitoring and portfolio-level intelligence, Frontierra's Climate and Nature Intelligence Platform provides a scalable environment for asset-level assessment across both deforestation and broader climate and nature risks.