While the prevention of deforestation should take priority, there may be cases where an enterprise, though its exercise of due diligence or other means, has identified actual deforestation but has failed to prevent or mitigate it entirely. In such a case the enterprise should identify why, and take remedial action in relation to any adverse impacts which have resulted.
The enterprise should identify why its due diligence procedures failed to prevent or mitigate the adverse impacts and take corrective action to ensure that the problem does not recur; engagement with local stakeholders, including local communities and Indigenous Peoples, civil society and government, will be essential in establishing suitable mechanisms.
When an enterprise identifies that it has caused or contributed to actual adverse impacts, a number of measures can be taken:
Where possible, the enterprise should seek to restore the affected person or persons to the situation they would be in had the adverse impact not occurred. This may include, where possible, the restitution of land to dispossessed Indigenous Peoples or local communities.
Where possible, the enterprise should seek to restore the affected environment to the state it would be in had the adverse impact not occurred, e.g. by restoring degraded forests or deforested land, and ensuring long-term support for the restored area.
Where this is not possible (in many cases of deforestation it may not be), the enterprise can: (1) provide appropriate levels of compensation in a form mutually agreed by affected communities (this may not always be monetary; a community could identify support for education or health services, for example, as more appropriate); and/or (2) provide appropriate compensation for environmental impacts, in particular greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss.
Where appropriate, the enterprise can provide for or cooperate with legitimate remediation mechanisms through which impacted stakeholders and rights-holders can raise complaints and seek to have them addressed with the enterprise (see also section on grievance mechanisms in Step 1 of the OECD-FAO Guidance).
