Oh, indubitably. I never meant to imply otherwise. It's just that as a society we currently seem to be interested in doing either.

I'm sure some of the companies making deforestation-free pledges may very well be making good on those pledges, but I unfortunately feel the number of companies exploiting plausible deniability may be much higher. Part of this is very much due to the government needing to step up and hold bad actors accountable.

I'm only partway through the article, but I already suspect that this is for the same reason that Wal-Mart and other companies' Fair labor practices don't impact how much of their product comes from sweatshops: Most times companies that make those pledges will contract a factory that they've 'vetted', and that factory will then subcontract one that doesn't conform to those standards.

The company usually knows this is going on too, but they can claim ignorance, since the first factory they hired did meet those standards.