Draft:Cutoff date

A cutoff date is a concept in sustainable supply-chain accounting that defines when clearing of natural habitats is permissible or not. Clearing of habitats after the cutoff date is impermissible, thus a cutoff date acts as a definition of protected habitat under a particular policy; in other words, "a cutoff date indicates that the commodity covered by the commitment may not be produced on land subject to deforestation or conversion since that date." Cutoff dates may be defined by regulation (e.g., EU deforestation regulation defines a cutoff date of 31 Dec 2020 ), by individual corporate sourcing policies, by groups of companies (e.g., the voluntary Agricultural Sector 1.5C Roadmap set a maximum cutoff date for individual signatories ), or by standard / certification bodies (e.g., the Science Based Targets Network for land use cutoff dates to define when land was cleared out-of-compliance with a commitment). Some sources may specify "historical" or "immediate" cutoff dates to describe when in time the cutoff occurs. . Different municipalities, sectoral agreements, certifications, etc. employ different cutoff dates; for example, Fairtrade Cocoa uses a 31 Dec. 2018 cutoff date, while Colombia's Zero Deforestation Agreements used 1 Jan. 2010.

A closely related, and sometimes confused, concept is the reference date. A reference date "is defined as the date from which deforestation or conversion associated with a given area or supply chain is measured and/or managed." While a company may assess their progress with respect to a reference date, there is no compliance element to a reference date.

The Amazon Soy Moratorium is an example of a sustainability policy which had the cutoff date as a critical point of agreement. It is a corporate agreement that employed a cutoff date to protect the Amazon rainforest from conversion into soy cropland; companies pledged not to purchase soy on land cleared after 2008. It has been characterized in the academcic literature as one of the "great conservation successes" of the past century, potentially preventing over 18,000 square km of deforestation over a decade.