World Wildlife Fund Sustainability Works

Every year the Markets Institute identifies and publishes a list of global issues, trends, and tools we think will most affect food and soft commodities in the coming year. We have just released the list for 2021. These emerging developments may not yet be apparent. Thus, this list is intended to create awareness and shift our thinking and actions.

This year the process has been complicated by COVID-19 which could have dominated the list (we predicted the increased likelihood of zoonotic diseases in our 2017 list). The pandemic has disrupted lives, food systems, and much more, and its long-term impacts remain to be seen. We have tried to look beyond the pandemic to lasting changes and influences on our global food system. We are also interested in the extent to which the pandemic experience is a trial run for our responses to climate change.

Over the past year, it is estimated that 10 million metric tons of plastic waste have entered the world’s oceans. Our traditional linear economy—where we use, consume and throw away plastics at an alarming rate—has created a world where plastic is found in almost every habitat; from neighborhoods to forests to waterways, and even the deepest point in the ocean. The time to end plastic pollution is now. We have made encouraging progress over the past year, with more than 750,000 activists calling on governments around the world to solve the plastic crisis. WWF is proud to share the progress we have made in 2020 and look forward to a future free of plastic waste.

Advancing National Policy

In 2020, the call to curb plastic pollution was heard on Capitol Hill. The Save Our Seas 2.0 Act builds on the success of existing legislation to better understand the impact of plastic on our environment, to establish U.S. leadership in combating waste leakage and development of materials recycling, and to combat marine debris by investing in new technology. The Save Our Seas 2.0 Act will set the stage for new national action to combat marine debris and advance effective waste management.

The introduction of the Break Free From Plastic Act has advanced national conversations around our domestic reliance on virgin plastic. We cannot fix our linear economy by focusing only on the management of plastic waste. We must reevaluate the ways in which we use and rely on plastic. Extended Producer Responsibility mechanisms, like those in the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, have the potential to reduce consumers’ reliance on virgin materials while simultaneously allowing for new investment in our recycling systems and ensuring that plastic producers are responsible for the waste they create. WWF supports a domestic Extended Producer Responsibility system where consumers, corporations and governments can work toward a truly circular economy. In 2021, we are looking forward to advancing this national movement.

Understanding Impact

Reflecting on the past year, WWF has made incredible progress in understanding the impact of plastic on our natural world and how we can work with partners in the private sector to advance our vision for a circular economy. In June, we released Transparent 2020, the first report of our ReSource: Plastic Footprint Tracker pilot effort. We tracked the footprint of five major companies and found they accounted for 4.2 million metric tons of plastic waste, 70% of which is either landfilled or mismanaged. By understanding the footprint of large corporations, we can better understand and provide recommendations for what interventions need to be taken to reduce those footprints, including suggestions for redesign of packaging to eliminate unnecessary plastic, or by shifting to sustainable inputs.

Recognizing the impact that our commercial fishing practices have on the health of our oceans, we released the comprehensive report “Stop Ghost Gear: The most deadly form of plastic debris” in October. The report spotlights the problem of abandoned, lost, and discarded fishing gear (ghost gear), which makes up 10% of the ocean’s plastic waste and impacts 66% of marine mammals, 50% of seabirds, and every species of sea turtle. We laid out a series of actions that governments, fishing gear producers and designers, fishers, and the general public can take to tackle it.

Building Coalitions

We have also worked to transform international conversations around plastic waste and waste management practices. A United Nations Treaty on plastic pollution has been endorsed by almost 2 million global activists and more than two-thirds of UN member states. With the release of “The Business Case for a UN Treaty on Plastic Pollution” in October, we found that plastic pollution causes $13 billion in damage to marine ecosystems every year. Together, 31 large corporations have supported the call for an international treaty.

We also launched the U.S. Plastics Pact alongside our partners at The Recycling Partnership and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. The Pact focuses on four main goals to remove problematic packaging from our system and work toward an economy that prioritizes the use of recycled content. With more than 80 members spanning industry groups, corporations, state and municipal agencies, national environmental organizations and members of academia, the Pact will release a roadmap to circularity in early 2021, with national footprint tracking and policy recommendations to follow.

In 2020, we have made great progress in understanding the impact that plastic waste has on our communities and our natural world, even amid a pandemic. We have also built on enormous ambition across our members, our private sector partners and national and international policymakers. 2020 was a momentous year for combating plastic waste and 2021 will build on this success to end plastic pollution.

Due to supply chain disruptions as a result of COVID-19, many brands are reducing the diversity of product offerings via stock keeping units, or SKUs. General Mills’ corporate communications manager explained to CNN, "If you think about our Progresso Soup portfolio, we have nearly 90 [varieties], and within those we likely have several varieties of Chicken Noodle. Right now, our consumers and our retailers likely don't need the flavor variations so we're minimizing the variety we are making.” In 2020, consumers anxiously filling their pantries led to stockouts, and it became challenging for brands to forecast available supply of complex product lines. While this reduction in diverse product offerings may mean fewer choices for consumers in the store or online, it can actually be a good thing. The more SKUs a company offers, the harder it is to respond to disruptions. In addition to preventing issues with day-to-day business operations, streamlining SKUs can enable companies to reorient their strategies to meet environmental goals, as well as save them money.

As we marked the 5-year anniversary of the Paris Agreement this past weekend, I am filled with hope -- much needed in this particularly challenging year.

The past few weeks have been an inflection point -- considering the United States election of a new administration and the landmark rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine. As we look toward 2021, we now can envision exciting progress as we regain momentum on climate action in the U.S. President-elect Biden has long been a champion of addressing climate change and the loss of nature. We anticipate the United States will rejoin the Paris Agreement in 2021 -- a critical first step to restore the health of our planet and a collaborative relationship with our global allies.

Widespread support for the bold climate action we need has grown more energetic and powerful. Youth activism has elevated climate justice across the world. From the farmlands in Nigeria to major U.S. cities, youth are demanding climate change action. Through social media, these young activists are coordinating their voices and efforts, and increasing pressure on our leaders toward positive change in our world.

The youth are not alone. When the Trump Administration announced its intent to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement back in 2017, business, local and state government, academic and other leaders in the United States came together to say “We Are Still In.” Over the past four years, nearly 4,000 local leaders across all 50 states, representing over half of the U.S. population, nearly two-thirds of its economy and more than half of the country’s emissions, have come together behind this shared commitment to uphold the Paris Agreement and lead by example.

And this past December 10th, We Are Still In stepped up once again to recommit to bold climate action, with the message that U.S. businesses, communities and many more are ready for a national mobilization on climate and recovery (www.americaisallin.com).

Efforts like these to drive decarbonization through cross-sector collaboration now exist around the world. They have developed into a global network of national coalitions, the Alliances for Climate Action. They feature leaders, many from the corporate sector, setting a strong example, building support for climate action, and engaging on national policies to accelerate decarbonization.

Every day, more companies, large and small, are proudly announcing their voluntary commitment to climate action. Indeed, this is good news. But, inconsistent corporate claims about climate action and confusion around terms such as net zero and climate neutral only add to the noise -- and raise doubts among stakeholders as to the credibility of individual companies’ climate strategies. As such, even those with the best intentions face considerable hurdles when setting climate goals, crafting climate strategies and communicating them to the public.

Companies need to focus on actions that underpin a truly effective corporate strategy for mitigating the effects of climate change and protecting nature. WWF’s new report, Beyond Science-Based Targets: A Blueprint for Corporate Action on Climate and Nature, explains how this can be accomplished. It is a tool configured for companies to craft an action plan for maximizing their climate impact. It can be used both by companies looking to create their first comprehensive climate strategy and by those hoping to upgrade their strategies to stay atop the leaderboard.

The legacy of climate inaction at the U.S. federal level has left us with a huge challenge. While national governments have an essential role to play, we need every sector of society to step up and do more to reduce emissions. We also need collaborative action across sectors to call on national governments to set the ambition and supportive policies to where they need to be, aligned with science.

2021 is primed to be a momentous year for global climate action, one filled with opportunity to decouple our recovery from GHG emissions and build back better. But to seize the opportunity, we need strong leadership from the corporate sector. We’re counting on you. Together, and strategically, we can realize significant progress for our planet.

As I reflect on the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement and the end of 2020, I believe we have reason to be optimistic about the fight against climate change. Several climate-critical countries, including China, Japan, South Africa, and South Korea, recently stepped forward with ambitious carbon neutrality targets--joining the dozens who have already made such commitments. Here in the U.S, the incoming Biden-Harris Administration has pledged to rejoin the Paris Agreement on “Day One,” and a coalition of thousands of communities, businesses and institutions have declared that “America is All In,” while calling for a net-zero trajectory for the United States.

We have more reason to be optimistic when we look to the contributions being made by businesses. Over 1000 companies globally have committed to set Science Based Targets, with nearly 500 of those already approved. Over 280 companies have signed on to RE100, committing to use 100% renewable electricity, and in the U.S., over 200 companies have joined the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance. The commitments of these leading companies, and many more across the U.S., reflect the growing consensus by business that they must cut greenhouse gas emissions in their operations and their supply chains if we are to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

The need for a Global Gateway

Despite this growing corporate ambition, companies face real barriers to translate their ambitious targets into on-the-ground actions. One particularly difficult challenge is working with supply chain partners in international markets. In many of these markets the critical role business must play in cutting emissions is not yet locked in. And, we know suppliers face tremendous capacity, market, and policy challenges even if they want to succeed.

That’s why WWF has been working to make it easier for companies and their suppliers to do more quickly. We know from working in many countries, including India, Mexico, South Korea, and Viet Nam, that success requires localized, integrated, and streamlined support platforms. In each case, WWF leverages deep local roots and strong technical expertise to identify the most effective local partners and to navigate the unique market and cultural conditions towards long-lasting solutions.

Climate Business Hub China

This month, WWF China launched one more program, the Climate Business Hub China (CBH China). CBH China will focus initially on three offerings where deep-rooted, localized support can unlock climate action for companies and their local suppliers: target-setting, renewable energy procurement, and low-carbon innovation. This work is convened and led by local experts at WWF China and includes materials, presentations and events in Chinese.

Target Setting: To make it as easy and efficient as possible for local teams and suppliers in China to engage and learn at scale, CBH China has developed a Science Based Target Training Camp to provide answers and share case studies that allow businesses to set emissions reduction targets that are both real and achievable. Initially, the training will be held two or three times a year.

Additionally, through engagement with Chinese companies, we have found that they are less inclined to set a target or make public pledges without a very clear pathway for reaching the target. Therefore, CBH China is designed to provide strong implementation support along the SBTI training, with a particular focus on renewable electricity procurement.

Renewable Electricity Procurement: CBH China has developed a suite of tools and resources for companies at different levels of maturity:

• The Renewable Energy Buyers Statement is designed to help companies communicate their commitment and demand for renewable energy to policymakers and utilities.

• The Buyers’ Evaluation Tool will guide new companies through an eight-step renewable energy procurement journey and provides targeted recommendations and resources within each step to accelerate their renewable energy procurement journey.

• The Buyers' Curriculum provides modular renewable energy procurement training for companies at different stages of their procurement journey.

• The Corporate Renewable Energy Pilot Program provides hands-on support for motivated companies to work closely with provincial policymakers, utilities and renewable energy developers to explore new and better options for renewable electricity procurement.

Low Carbon Innovation: Companies need new and innovative solutions to reduce their emissions cost-effectively. Meanwhile, small and medium enterprises who are one of the main drivers for low-carbon innovation face significant financing and marketing challenges. CBH China’s Climate Solver program awards small and medium enterprises which develop innovative low-carbon solutions annually and connects these innovators to the companies and investors who can accelerate their commercialization and growth.

The Climate Business Hub China—one more reason to be optimistic for 2021!

For more information about Climate Business Hub China, please contact Yue Wu or Daniel Riley.

If you fly, you may know that flying is likely the largest part of your personal carbon footprint. What you may not know is that if aviation were its own country, it would be a top-ten carbon polluter. Plus, scientists now know that aircraft burning fuel in the upper atmosphere more than doubles the global warming impact of the carbon dioxide emissions alone– think of the heat-trapping contrails streaking across the sky that jets form high up in the atmosphere.

Aviation’s social license to operate depends on its ability to get on a flight path to net zero climate impact by 2050.

That’s a tall order, for two reasons.

Climate change is amplifying and creating new risks for companies. As storms, droughts, and heat waves become more frequent and severe, natural systems that provide the essential inputs to sustain production and ensure business continuity face ever-increasing threats. Companies must now ensure they are not only sustainable, but also "resilient"—that is, able to withstand, recover from, and adapt to changes in weather and climate.

Thermal energy emissions from industrial production may be the largest remaining unaddressed climate challenge you never heard of. Well, that’s about to change. Industrial thermal energy generates 11% of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—more than the entire US agricultural sector. Globally, energy used for heating and cooling is 50% of final energy use and contributes 39% of greenhouse gas emissions from energy-related sources.

Not surprisingly, for many years decarbonizing industrial energy took a back seat to the big challenges of developing and deploying renewable electricity in the power sector, as well as electric vehicles and new mobility strategies in transportation. With economic tailwinds now driving rapid commercialization and deployment in these sectors, it’s time to turn our collective attention to renewable energy solutions for industrial production, including hydrogen, biogas, biomass, electrification, and solar thermal among others.

Building on WWF’s successful efforts to mobilize large corporate electricity buyers to use their collective demand to make it easy to buy renewable electricity, WWF, the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), and David Gardiner and Associates formed the Renewable Thermal Collaborative in 2017. The RTC is a unique buyer-led coalition of major commercial and industrial energy buyers and sellers dedicated to collective action to solve the thermal energy challenge. RTC gives large thermal energy buyers "power in numbers," where they can learn from each other and collaborate with everyone needed to identify and overcome the many technological, market, financial and policy challenges to renewable energy solutions.

In the past three years, RTC members and technology providers have uncovered barriers, identified promising opportunities and are creating collective strategies for tackling those barriers. Several leading RTC members have successfully invested in renewable thermal solutions with significant emissions and cost savings. The cost of many renewable and low carbon thermal technologies is dropping, though we have a long way to go before thermal solutions match our progress on renewable electricity. That’s why RTC is convening the first annual RTC Summit from November 9-10, 2020.

The Summit offers a unique opportunity to join this growing community where you can learn from industry leaders about current and emerging technologies, connect with corporate peers and experts about barriers and opportunities in the renewable thermal market, and understand the policy landscape and what still to be done.

Over the course of the Summit, RTC members and stakeholders from across the corporate, technology, finance, innovation, and policy sectors will explore how to overcome the barriers faced by renewable thermal solutions, how to drive implementation, and develop lasting networks that will put us on the path to reducing industrial sector thermal emissions by 30% by 2030 and full sector decarbonization by 2050.

Register now and join your peer companies in this growing corporate renewable thermal movement. Please reach out to Marty Spitzer to learn more about RTC and the Summit.

Clearer public-private pathways are putting us on the right track

The end of 2020 marks a crossroads that is both deeply worrying and quite exciting. Deforestation and conversion of natural ecosystems continue unabated, with 3.8 million hectares of tropical primary forest lost in 2019—a 2.8% increase from the previous year. Wildfires rage from the Amazon to the Arctic, and the recent Living Planet Report released by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) shows an average 68% decrease in population sizes of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish in less than 50 years. Deforestation is enabling more human-animal contact and raising the chances of new pandemics spilling over to humans; it also continues to be a primary driver of climate change, creating a vicious cycle.

Concurrently, conservation and restoration of forests, and nature more broadly, have been elevated on the global agenda. Forests are included in the Paris Agreement and in the land-based carbon targets of many countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions. And, building from the experiences of REDD+, governments at the national and subnational level in many key commodity-producing regions are translating these ambitions into action by providing leadership in place-based, multistakeholder efforts to address deforestation and conversion. Increasingly, governments and the business community are engaging with each other. Ghana, for instance, has created action plans with cocoa buyers to address deforestation. In Indonesia, the National Action Plan for Sustainable Palm Oil is providing a structure around which palm oil companies can coordinate their forest protection and restoration efforts in line with government strategies.

Meanwhile, the business case for far more expansive action to protect nature has become obvious. Nature loss is no longer just an issue of reputational risk—it threatens the future of commodity supply and the jobs linked with raw material production. Forest loss is damaging soil quality while changing weather patterns are reducing yields of planted crops. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2020 ranked biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse among the top five threats the global economy will face in the next 10 years.

The private sector has taken notice and begun to evolve its sustainability ambitions to match the scale of the challenge confronting nature. Over the last decade, much of the business community committed to eliminate deforestation from its commodity sourcing, and the Accountability Framework initiative (AFi) and Collaboration for Forests and Agriculture (CFA) have created best-practice guidance to support implementation. More recently, leading companies have begun to align with government and other actors in producing regions on strategies that go beyond individual supply chains to address underlying drivers of nature loss. Several important platforms like the Consumer Goods Forum and Tropical Forest Alliance (TFA) are helping to mainstream expectations that the public and private sectors should collaborate through landscape and jurisdictional initiatives.

This trend is encouraging, but the overall number of companies engaging in these scaled efforts remains low. Major barriers have included uncertainty around the business case for multistakeholder collaboration and a dearth of clear examples to follow. There is also misalignment between the sort of actions civil society is asking companies to undertake and the sustainability practices for which companies are currently recognized and rewarded.

But barriers to engagement are coming down. Over the past year, a group of organizations has developed a suite of new tools and guidance to enable broader company engagement in production geographies where they are invested or exposed. Whereas AFi and CFA provide the key guidance for implementing deforestation/conversion-free commitments within supply chains, these new tools elaborate complementary guidance for addressing systemic drivers. They pull from concrete examples to help companies understand and navigate through their options to engage. And thoughtful collaborations have positioned these tools to be reasonably aligned, thus avoiding the pitfalls of conflicting guidance from civil society.

• A new paper from the United Nations Development Program, Value Beyond Value Chains, clarifies why and broadly how companies can engage in landscape and jurisdictional initiatives. It explains the business case for collaborating beyond value chains at landscape, subnational, and national levels to help create the enabling conditions for sustainable production and provides broad schemas to help companies think about how to engage in multistakeholder initiatives in producer countries.

• A complementary paper from Proforest, Engaging with Landscape Initiatives, fleshes out the how and adds guidance on where to engage. It walks through steps companies should take when thinking about how to engage in landscapes, describing elements of the engagement process like building trust, planning and implementing interventions, and monitoring of progress. And it helps companies understand their supply base, how to prioritize landscapes for engagement, and decide which initiatives they might work with.

• A resource that Walmart recently launched provides more granularity on the question of where to engage, providing maps that show the jurisdictions where companies are likeliest to source key deforestation-risk commodities and the deforestation risk of these jurisdictions.

• Building on these tools, TFA released a set of corporate guidance and a dynamic web-based tool developed by WWF and Proforest that goes the next step in describing what specific actions companies can implement to advance landscape and jurisdictional initiatives. It provides concrete interventions companies can take, offers real-world examples where companies are already doing so, and proposes guidance on how to execute.

• Each of the previous tools informs corporate action. New guidance from ISEAL Alliance on Verification of Jurisdictional Claims lays out the parameters for assuring progress at the landscape/jurisdictional scale and for making credible claims about contributions toward that progress. It walks through practical steps to ensure the integrity of landscape-level performance data and how progress is communicated, and it explores the types of claims companies can make depending on the ways they engage.

While time is running out to reverse global ecosystem loss, we’re finally at a point where governments and companies are beginning to mobilize at the scale required to meet our conservation imperatives. Thanks to this new guidance, the pathways for corporate action are clearer than ever. Now, with these tools in hand, the moment has come for public-private partners to accelerate their joint efforts—for the future of the natural world and generations to come.

WWF always leads with science when tackling the world’s most pressing environmental issues to protect both people and the planet. Often this is grounded in existing methods and tried-and-true best practices. But sometimes we come across a unique problem that requires an equally novel solution, and we rely on innovative and original research to fill that gap. The ReSource Footprint Tracker is one of the ways we’re paving the way to measure plastic pollution—and with a new report, we’re showing exactly how it works.