World Wildlife Fund Sustainability Works

A new UN report warns the world that as climate change heats up the oceans and ice sheets and glaciers melt, one billion people who live in low-lying coastal areas will be at risk rapid sea-level rise. But there is something we can do—spend money on saving mangroves. And it’s a smart investment.

A recent report by the Global Commission on Adaptation calculates mangroves yield $1 trillion in net benefit for climate adaptation, which would be gained by 2030 if we began investing in conservation soon.

Mangroves are natural providers for people

Mangrove trees serve as the interface between land and sea, providing a variety of benefits to both nature and people.

Mangrove forests provide more than $80 billion per year in avoided losses from coastal flooding, and they also protect 18 million people. In addition to other non-market benefits associated with fisheries, forestry, and recreation, the flood protection benefits from mangrove preservation and restoration are worth up to 10 times the costs.

Building natural resilience

Another benefit is that mangroves act as a nature-based solution for disaster risk reduction. There are a number of case studies around the globe showcasing how mangroves can attenuate storm surge, stabilize shorelines from erosion, buffer rising sea levels, and contribute to general flood control. As a model of ‘green’ infrastructure, mangroves can stand alone as a form of defense or be integrated with traditional, or ‘grey’ infrastructure, depending on local context and factors. Regardless, in many cases mangroves are essential for reducing the vulnerability of coastal communities to the impacts of climate change and increasingly intense and frequent extreme weather events.

Vulnerability to climate change 

It is imperative to invest in mangrove protection now, because while these forests can help mitigate the impacts of climate change, they themselves are vulnerable to its effects.

Mangroves are directly affected by rising sea levels, increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, warmer air and water temperatures, changing ocean currents, and the increasing variability and intensity of rainfall. How and whether mangroves survive in a future of increasing climatic change will be determined by whether they can migrate inland, where and how mangroves are situated, continued supplies of sediment, and whether migration inland can outpace the rate of sea-level rise.

The implications of the combined impacts of sea-level rise, changing salinity, extreme weather events, economic development, and infrastructure development should be understood to best determine how mangroves might contribute to risk reduction for people in long-term disaster risk reduction planning. At the same time, urgent action must be taken to reduce threats to existing mangroves and to enable mangroves to migrate inland and to new areas as sea levels rise.

Investing in bringing solutions to scale

No one community, government or organization can realize the $1 trillion return of saving mangroves on its own. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment.

WWF has helped found the Global Mangrove Alliance, which aims to increase mangrove coverage 20% by 2030. The Alliance brings together technical experts, civil society organizations, governments, local communities, businesses, funding agencies and foundations to accelerate a comprehensive, coordinated, global approach to mangrove conservation and restoration at a scale that matters.

The tide is turning on how we view our natural resources, especially in the face of a shifting climate, from a source of exploitation or removal to one of need for natural resilience. Mangrove forests could be considered the flagship habitat for this shift in thinking. It’s time to go all-in and put our collective investment in this natural climate solution.

In the leadup to Climate Week, WWF and its partners recognize that the world urgently needs to be made more resilient to climate change. The myriad challenges that climate change poses to agriculture, ecosystems, and communities demands action from a broad set of stakeholders, including the private sector. But many conservation and sustainability approaches are simply not enough today because they were designed for a climate that no longer exists. Achieving the conservation goals of the future requires a new approach where we are constantly adapting and building resilience—the inherent and continued ability to recover from shocks and stressors—in a future of constant change.

Collaboration with companies is essential to achieving these goals. They require a holistic approach where landscapes are the foundation for assessing risks and piloting solutions, and best practices are shared and scaled through global action. Companies that adopt a local-to-global, holistic approach can help deliver on their sustainability and shareholder commitments, safeguard their investments, and help countries meet their commitments for the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Agreement.

To that end, WWF has developed three guiding principles that we encourage the private sector to follow when developing, supporting, and implementing resilience strategies:

1. Avoid harming nature

“Do no harm” is a basic but critical factor that must be front-and-center. All companies must reduce future harm to ecosystems and thoroughly analyze the impacts and trade-offs of their initiatives.

2. Use nature to help people

Resilience strategies should consider the critical benefits that nature can provide for people – protection from coastal flooding, ground water recharge, soil retention, pollination, and more -- and take steps to ensure stakeholders are invested in successful outcomes.

3. Help nature adapt

Companies must design strategies that allow nature to adapt to the growing changes around us. They should take an active role in ensuring the continued prosperity and stability of natural resources, wildlife, and ecosystems for all people.

WWF and our corporate partners are working together to show what this can look like in action. For example, The Coca-Cola Company is working with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures to assess risks of climate change to their business, with Business for Social Responsibility to establish industry strategy to address the risks, and with WWF to work on the ground and realize large-scale resilience-building. With WWF’s Resilience Principles at the forefront, WWF is working with The Coca-Cola Company to identify processes and interventions in the MesoAmerican Reef that can build landscape resilience to negative impacts of climate change. These impacts include crop loss, encroachment on and shrinking protected areas, water scarcity, and increased social conflict in Guatemala.

WWF works to help our partners:

• Develop a deep understanding of current climate change impacts and future risks to people, agriculture, and nature at the landscape scale, including the critical benefits nature provides to support resilience for local communities – ecosystem services like water provision, flood risk reduction, soil fertility.

• Take a participatory, multi-stakeholder-based approach to prioritize, design, and test adaptation and resilience innovations.

• Disseminate and scale lessons learned from this process across the company’s global reach and industry, and make social-ecological resilience approaches mainstream practice

Major companies have the opportunity to lead with their own resilience strategies, but to be successful they cannot operate in a vacuum. Companies must collaborate with environmental organizations, governments, financial institutions and – perhaps most importantly – other companies. We need to share best practices, pool funds, coordinate, and collaborate. Only together can we act at a scale equal to the problems we face.

The climate crisis is the defining environmental issue of our time – and the greatest threat to WWF’s global conservation efforts.

It’s been three years since the landmark Paris Agreement. We are now facing the true test of whether countries take action to ensure global emissions peak by 2020 and commit to setting science-based climate commitments every five years after that to slow and adapt to climate change.

While there’s been some progress - U.S. emissions trended downwards in recent years in part due to state, city, and business actions and more companies than ever are setting Science Based Targets - it’s clear that more must be done. The climate has already increased by 1 degree from pre-industrial levels and we need to pick up the pace of change to achieve a 2 degree future, let alone the 1.5 degree pathway needed to avoid the extreme impacts of climate change.

Every September, heads of state, activists and business executives meet in New York for the annual UN General Assembly meetings and Climate Week to share ideas and champion progress. This year, the world is coming together at the UN Secretary General’s Climate Action Summit to spur ambitious climate action by all parts of society.

WWF will be leading the charge in advocating for a 1.5 C degree future - a zero carbon inclusive economy that provides wellbeing for all, is powered by renewable energy and is sustained by nature.

We’re mobilizing our activists as part of the Climate March, advocating for climate policies with government leaders, and co-chairing the Ambition Advisory Group, a working group that is actively shaping Summit workstreams to ensure the event collectively raises global action at a necessary scale.

WWF will also spend the week engaging business in a dialogue around how to set commitments into action. As part of these efforts, WWF is hosting events on climate resilience, grasslands and other nature-based solutions, deforestation-free supply chains, and more. To learn more about WWF events and to register, please go to WWFEventsDuringUNGA.eventbrite.com.

Throughout the week, we will share our insights about this important gathering. This moment requires a transformational movement, with everyone at the table, and we hope you will join us.

On September 27, tourism organizations, businesses, and NGOs will gather for the third annual World Tourism Day Forum in Washington, DC, hosted by the Center for Responsible Travel (CREST) and the Organization of American States. Impact Tourism: Giving Time, Talent, and Treasure, being held at the United States Institute of Peace, will focus on successful travel giving programs for a wide range of business and destination types, sharing best practices and inspiring stories of impact. Recognizing that “doing good” does not always mean “doing right,” the forum will also examine the downsides of inappropriately implemented travel giving and voluntourism programs.

Giving back to the environment will be a key focus at this year’s World Tourism Day Forum, with businesses and organizations like Intrepid Travel, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and others sharing how their travel programs can positively impact our planet’s finite resources. But what about environmental impacts of the event itself? Is it possible to share these important lessons while also mitigating the waste and carbon generated when you bring a global audience of 200 people into one room?

The World Tourism Day Forum’s hosts believe it is critical to reduce the environmental impacts of conferences. “If we’re going to come together to talk about these issues, we have to be ‘walking the walk’ at the event itself,” said Samantha Bray, CREST’s Managing Director.

From housing the forum at a LEED Gold-certified building to using 100% recycled and recyclable programs, every step of this year’s planning process was undertaken with sustainability in mind.

Here are three major sustainability strategies being used at the 2019 World Tourism Day Forum:

• Food waste reduction: WWF’s Food Waste team worked with the hosts to make the forum a reduced waste event, with a focus on landfill diversion (composting), food recovery, and food waste prevention. The event will be catered by Seasons Culinary Services, which works to minimize plastic, reduce waste, and use organic and local products for all events.
• Carbon offsetting: CREST and the OAS worked with sponsor CarbonFund.org to calculate the carbon footprint from event operations and participant travel, making this a carbon-neutral event. The offset will go towards the New Bedford Landfill Gas-to-Energy Project in Massachusetts, supporting the production of clean electricity while also reducing the amount of methane released into our atmosphere.
• Locally-owned businesses: The World Tourism Day Forum features two small, locally-owned beer and wine sponsors. Bethel Height Vineyard was one of the first vineyards in Oregon to be certified “Salmon Safe” and was one of the founders of Oregon’s LIVE Certified Sustainable program. 3 Stars Brewing Company is located in the Takoma neighborhood of Washington, DC, and was started by two home brewers who strive to collaborate with friends to source local ingredients. The transport of the beer and wine was also included in the carbon offset calculation.

There are still a few days to register for the September 27 event in Washington, DC. In-person and live-stream tickets are available here through September 23.

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The views expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect those of WWF.

New opportunities in Mexican Electricity Market

Until recently, to most companies, buying electricity in Mexico meant plugging in and paying their bill. The market maintained a vertically integrated state monopoly, with very limited private generation. However, the Energy Reform of 2014 has transformed the Mexican electricity market entirely. This unprecedented reform created a liberalized wholesale market that allows commercial and industrial users to choose their own electricity supply at a competitive price.

With this new-found freedom of choice comes an urgent need for knowledge and market intelligence. Electricity buyers need transactional and technical support to help them navigate the new options in a complex marketplace.

The WWF team in Mexico sees this reform beyond cost-competitive electricity as it unlocks the conditions for more renewable energy with a stronger than ever business case for corporate buyers. 

Building upon the foundation of early buyers’ engagement, with the strong technical support of market experts, and ultimately made possible by the partnership among corporate buyers, renewable energy project developers, service providers, NGO partners and other key stakeholders, WWF has launched the Ren mx platform. Here, corporate buyers can find guidance to develop and execute a renewable energy purchasing strategy in only eight steps: from analyzing their energy demand to choosing a supplier and monitoring the performance of their deal, to everything in between.

The goal of Ren mx is to increase the competitiveness of businesses in Mexico by providing access to affordable and secure renewable energy, while helping companies to decarbonize their operations and ramp up the penetration of renewable energy in the Mexican grid.

Renewable energy: the new frontier for competitiveness 

More than 1,500 companies in Mexico have purchased renewable energy through Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) in the last 20 years. Mining, industrial and financial sectors are leading the way. The new market offers even more renewable energy supply alternatives and cost-competitive options with flexible terms that can be tailored to different business needs. These options offer a suite of benefits including price stability and transparency, cost saving, risk mitigation, and the opportunity to improve sustainability performance and demonstrate leadership. Renewable energy procurement is the new frontier for competitiveness in Mexico. While the market already saw the pioneering companies’ success, many more fall short due to the high transaction cost and complexity of large-scale renewable energy deals. Ren mx is here to provide capacity building to get the next 1,500 companies to source renewable energy.

Ren mx: a platform by buyers, for buyers

Inspired by Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance in US, Ren mx is born of consultation with corporate buyers and strives to serve buyers' needs. The platform provides timely and simplified market intelligence, training and tools for renewable energy buyers, and helps to connect buyers with suppliers. No more trying to figure it out on your own - Ren mx offers a standardized step-by-step guide and a community of learning and sharing.

As mentioned earlier, the Procurement Strategy Planner (Estrategia de compra) walks a new energy buyer through an eight-step process to determine a renewable energy sourcing strategy. It entails detailed tools and guides to perform an analysis of energy consumption, criteria to evaluate suppliers and design an RFP, to structure and negotiate a contract, and for comparing offers and understanding the legal implication of your deal. “The Procurement Strategy has made the renewable energy PPA so much easier,” said a corporate buyer in Mexico, “It shows the team behind this tool truly understand the challenges and demand of corporate buyers.”

Join Ren mx now and become a part of the transition towards a more competitive and renewable Mexico.

To learn more about Ren mx, visit www.ren.mx, or contact Luli Pesqueira Fernandez

Turtles entangled in plastic bags; whales dead and filled with plastic; sea lions trapped in six-pack rings: when images like these go viral, we’re motivated to do whatever we can to help ocean wildlife. Companies that produce and use plastic have opportunities to make and keep commitments to eliminate plastics in nature, but what if you’re not in the plastics business?

Plastics makers and commercial plastics buyers aren’t the only businesses that can save marine life. In fact, there is one sector that can have an even larger impact—seafood.

Plastics aren’t killing as much wildlife as unsustainable fishing
What we eat from the ocean impacts the marine world more than the single-use plastics that accompany our food.

Unsustainable fishing remains the single largest driver of declines in ocean wildlife. Currently, one third of the world’s assessed fish stocks have been pushed past their limits and are overfished or depleted. The rest most likely can’t afford the added pressure that would come with increasing catches. Irresponsible fishing has also led to declines in vulnerable populations of shark, turtles, and whales.

Sadly, this isn’t breaking news. But the problem is harder to visualize, so it doesn’t make headlines and garner consumers’ attention as often as plastics do. While there has been a coordinated effort to do something, the sustainable fishing movement needs more champions. Businesses that buy, sell, and trade in seafood can leverage their market power and step up and become leaders, achieving important conservation goals while simultaneously helping their businesses.

Sustainable fishing is a pathway to environmental and economic security
Fishing is a foundation of security for hundreds of millions of people in coastal communities. When effectively managed, fish stocks support livelihoods, provide food, and help maintain balance in critical coastal ecosystems. When ocean life flourishes, communities flourish.

Companies that buy and sell seafood can protect vulnerable marine populations while supporting local communities. They do this by prioritizing purchases from fisheries that are actively working to improve practices, which can be benchmarked against requirements of independent third-party assessment schemes like the Marine Stewardship Council.

Fishery improvement projects can address how fishing is managed, limit the bycatch of vulnerable marine species by modifying fishing gear and practices, and enhance the collection of data on fishing. These improvements can be made at the appropriate scale, whether that is local, regional, or international. Support from the marketplace can incentivize progress on an accelerated timeline.

Improving how the world fishes the ocean is critical but without a transparent supply chain there will never be the accountability necessary to stop unsustainable fishing practices altogether.

Commitments are only as useful as they are transparent
The fishing industry and governments are already using technology to track vessels and trade, ensure legality, and enforce compliance with rules. While there is a lot of information being collected, and some of it is being put to use, we’re not maximizing the potential of this data to curb unsustainable fishing.

The latest frontier of ocean conservation is creating uniformity of data throughout the supply chain, including how it is collected and shared. Industry is leading the design of standards through the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability, which includes participation from seven of the world’s 10 largest seafood production companies with combined seafood sales of well over $35 billion per year.

The dialogue is set to deliver its voluntary standards early next year to enable interoperability, lower costs, and improve the reliability of traceability systems, while substantially raising demand for transparent supply chains.

Plastics may pull at the heartstrings, but it’s not the only problem leading to declines in marine populations. Businesses in the seafood sector have an opportunity to lead on ocean conservation simply by spending wisely—transforming your supply chain in a way that prioritizes sustainable fishing is a response to declining populations of marine life that is well within your control.

And do cut back on single-use plastics in your office and home, too. Every little bit helps.

Monarch butterflies embark on a marvelous migratory journey. Annually, they travel nearly 3,000 miles from the United States and Canada to their hibernation grounds in Mexico. These travelers arrive at the beginning of November and stay for five months at the Oyamel Fir forest of central Mexico before they migrate back North. Sadly, each year fewer monarchs make that journey as their population has drastically decreased due to climate change and depletion of milkweed along their migratory route, which is the only plant where monarch butterflies lay their eggs. 

WWF and our partners on the ground in Mexico are working to reverse this trend. Together, we are committed to protecting vital monarch butterfly habitat by countering illegal logging efforts, working with local communities and authorities on sustainable forest management, providing training for sustainable tourism, and leading sustainable projects such as tree nurseries that help restore butterfly forest and mushroom production. These measures have also helped to provide additional income to local communities that share the forest with the monarch butterflies.

As part of our efforts to save the monarch butterfly, WWF and world-renowned chef José Andrés are joining forces for the third year in a row to raise awareness and funds for these butterflies. During June 10-16, José Andrés’ DC-based restaurant, Oyamel, will feature special dishes inspired by the region in Mexico where migratory monarch butterflies overwinter. As part of the initiative, Oyamel will donate a portion of proceeds from a special Monarch Week menu to support WWF's work to protect the monarch butterflies.

In addition to Monarch Week at Oyamel, Chef Andrés acts as WWF’s Monarch Squad Champion by raising awareness about this species and encouraging fans to do their part to protect this migratory miracle. In the US, WWF has set a bold goal of getting one million supporters to join the Monarch Squad, to help save the monarch habitat by reducing habitat conversion and the use of herbicides along its migratory route in the US. Join José Andrés and learn more about WWF’s Monarch Squad here. 

For the last century, the vast majority (80 percent) of the softwood lumber produced in Canada has been imported to the United States. These forest products are used to build homes and make paper products. The demand for wood products is increasing rapidly around the world—and could triple by 2050.

This week—after seven years of rigorous debate, deliberation, consultation and trials—the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in Canada rolled out a new national forest management standard that sets a high bar for forestry practices around the world.

This new standard holds the opportunity to show the world how 21st century forestry can provide meaningful solutions for collaborative, equitable and sustainable management of our forests.

The new FSC-Canada standard features three key elements:

• Woodland caribou: Caribou are both an indicator and an umbrella species, meaning they signify the health of the forest and support other plant and animal wildlife. Caribou are also an essential resource for indigenous peoples. Numbers have dropped for many herds and actions to improve conditions for caribou must be prioritized. FSC now includes requirements to directly support caribou habitat and avoid harvest in breeding or migration areas.
• Free, Prior, and Informed Consent: Over 1.6 million indigenous Canadians live in or near forests. The new FSC Canada standard introduces formal requirements to pro-actively design policies that recognize the rights of indigenous peoples to protect their culture, livelihood and lands, including language that is consistent with the legal definition under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
• Landscape-level management: The impacts of large-scale land use exist beyond a concession’s immediate boundaries. Landscape-level management is needed to maintain, enhance and restore ecosystem services. The new standard includes requirements to minimize and avoid landscape disturbance, like aligning forestry activities with other industrial activities and protection of waterways.

What’s at stake for Canada’s boreal forest

Canada’s boreal forest—a broad swath of northern forest stretching from the Pacific to Atlantic oceans—is home to more than 2.5 million people and over 600 indigenous communities. It, too, is a key driver of the Canadian economy, contributing up to 200,000 jobs. Timber from the boreal forest is a primary export to the United States and around the world.

The Canadian boreal forest is also home to woodland caribou, which is among the most iconic species of conservation concern in the country. It is one of the few large mammals with populations found across nearly every province and territory, amounting to a truly national species, as memorialized for more than 80 years on the 25-cent coin. The boreal populations of woodland caribou have also become a microcosm of debate on how conservation for at-risk species should occur in the country.

In short, the plight of woodland caribou illustrates the immense challenge of reconciling the growing demand for wood products, the tremendous importance of forests for wildlife and the important role the forests play as carbon sinks, the loss of which accelerates the climate crisis.

New standard is a global model

Canada is not alone in addressing these critically important issues, but in many ways is first in advancing practical solutions with potential to influence other high-forest cover countries, such as Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, that are grappling with similar challenges.

Credible certification standards can help ensure working forests are managed well. And among the certifications, FSC is the gold standard because of its inclusive governance model that equally weights economic, environmental, social and indigenous representation, as well as its performance-based standards that manage for natural forest conditions and preservation of ecosystem services.

Finding solutions is complex and requires leadership. Indigenous rights-holders and the stakeholders of Canada’s vast forests have shown us a new bar for how to be better stewards of our planet, support a stable climate, and ensure healthy forests for woodland caribou. Now it's up to us as forest-users to implement it, and consumers to ask for it. Sign the Pledge.

Drawing upon some 15,000 scientific studies and government reports, an international team of scientists earlier this month issued the most comprehensive assessment ever undertaken of the declining state of nature and its implications for humanity. To call the news bad would be an understatement.

The web of life that sustains us is unravelling at an increasingly alarming pace due to human activities, with upwards of 1 million species now facing extinction within the next few decades. Many of these include species we depend on for food and life-sustaining ecosystem services such as crop pollination, fresh water and the oxygen in the air we breathe.

To those of us working in conservation or following developments in the field, this news was not exactly unexpected. Indeed, WWF’s Living Planet Report has been tracking and documenting these trends for the past 20 years.

But the latest assessment by more than 300 scientists from the U.N.-backed  Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES for short)  takes an encyclopedic 1,500 page deep dive into the declining state of nature – doing for biodiversity what the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does for the atmosphere. While the full report is yet to come, an extensive summary for policy makers was released on May 4.

Among its findings:

• The abundance of native species in most terrestrial habitats has fallen by at least 20% over the past century and biodiversity – the diversity in and between species and ecosystems – “is declining faster than at any time in human history.”
• Three-fourths of the Earth’s land surface and two thirds of its oceans have been “significantly altered” by humanity’s growing weight (7.7 billion of us as of 2018). This, in turn, has placed increasing stress on natural resources. About 60 billion tons of resources (both renewable and non-renewable) are now extracted every year, but land productivity has decreased over nearly a quarter of the globe while as much as $600 billion worth of agricultural production is at risk due to the decline in pollinators – bats, birds, bees and other insects.
• Things aren’t better in the marine environment, where 93% of all fish stocks are being harvested at either maximum sustainable or unsustainable levels, coral reefs are dying from acidification and bleaching, and marine vertebrates, from sea turtles to whales, are being contaminated by plastics, industrial waste and the toxic cocktail of other pollutants we dump into our oceans.

According to the report, the main drivers of this trajectory toward global disaster are, in order of impact: 1)  changes in land and sea use (e.g., conversions of forests to agricultural use); 2) the direct exploitation of organisms -- a wonky way of lumping together things like over-fishing and the illegal trade in wild animal parts;  3) climate change; 4) pollution of the land, sea and freshwater biomes; and 5) the invasion of alien species – no, not of the extra-terrestrial kind  but of species that hitch-hike from one continent to another via globalization, upsetting the delicate balance of biodiversity in the places they end up.

The scientists say there’s still a way out of this jam, but that it will require a truly transformative effort: something on the order of what proponents of the Green New Deal propose for climate change -- but implemented on a global scale. Indeed, climate change and biodiversity loss must be tackled together, not only because each help drive the other but because both in turn are driven by a now reckless level of human consumption.

“We cannot solve the threats of human-induced climate change and loss of biodiversity in isolation,” says Sir Robert Watson, the former chair of the IPCC and current chair of IPBES. “We either solve both or we solve neither.”

After 25 years of fruitless debate with industry-funded climate denialists, we must now hasten the transition from the fossil fuels that cause climate change to solar, wind and other renewable clean energies. We must also re-think how we grow our food (along with how much of it we waste after growing it); how we reform a toss-away culture that is poisoning our rivers, wetlands and oceans with plastics and other pollutants; and, as if all this were not enough, how we can help developing countries to do the same.

Will it cost a lot? Yes, but not nearly as much as losing the $125 trillion worth of ecosystem services that The Living Planet report estimates nature provides to us every year. Will it ruffle the feathers of powerful vested interests? That too. But if that is the price to be paid to leave our children a living planet, it’s a bargain.

There’s a fable in Greek mythology about the fate that befell King Erysichthon of Thessaly, who angered the goddess Demeter by clear-cutting the trees in her sacred grove to fuel the fires of his kitchen hearth. In revenge she cursed the king with an insatiable hunger that only got worse the more he ate. Consumption possessed him, driving his soldiers to plunder everything edible in the kingdom until famine gripped the land. In the end, there was but one thing left for Erysichthon to eat: himself… arm by arm and leg by leg until he was no more.

Even back then, some teller of tales seems to have had a premonition that the quest to consume more and more could, if we were not careful, end up consuming us all.  

America’s beef sector has taken an important step toward greater sustainability. After years of intense collaboration among ranchers, retailers and every other link in the supply chain, the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef released its sustainability framework—the first time stakeholders across the entire supply chain from ranchers to retailers have agreed to a uniform set of metrics to improve their environmental, social and economic performance.

Representing thousands of ranchers and hundreds of companies, the U.S. Roundtable based its sustainability framework not only on their experience and knowledge but also on a variety of public comments from a diverse range of individuals and interests outside of the sector. The final product provides producers, processors, traders, retailers, restaurants and more with indicators and metrics that they can apply in their day-to-day business to improve air quality, protect waterways from runoff and waste, bolster healthy soils and grasslands, boost wildlife and reduce carbon emissions, among other things.

This is why World Wildlife Fund co-founded the Global Roundtable on Sustainable Beef in 2010 and its U.S. counterpart five years later. We envisioned an industry that thrives economically while promoting better social and environmental outcomes, one that provides nutrition without overdrawing the planet’s natural resources. This sustainability framework is one manifestation of this vision. Across the globe, there are more than 19 similar efforts working toward producing beef more sustainably.

What’s the industry’s next step? Implementation.

Sustainability in the U.S. looks different than it does in other parts of the world. Take Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, for instance. It suffers in part from deforestation to make room for cattle pastures. In the U.S., however, cattle can help save America’s great ecosystem—the Great Plains.

More and more, Great Plains ranchers are finding that what’s good for grass is good for cattle, and vice versa. It makes sense: Grasslands evolved with large herds of grazing animals. Bison historically filled this role and now some ranchers manage cows to mimic bison as they prune the grass, strengthen its roots, aerate the ground and fertilize the soil—all while turning that inedible grass into edible protein. (Chickens and pigs can’t do that.) This action allows the soil to harness carbon, nitrogen and other elements from the atmosphere and turn them into grass. When grasses grow, insect, bird and animal life grows with them. We’re even finding benefits for wildlife on ranches where cattle are grazed with grassland health in mind.

The Roundtable’s framework also provides guidance for auction houses, feedlots, processors, retailers and other supply chain stakeholders to improve in areas such as air quality, carbon emissions, water use, water quality and animal welfare.

It’s good to see industry leaders pushing this grassroots initiative forward; players that have been slow to adopt more sustainable practices are getting left behind. Consumers are demanding food they can feel good about eating and if they can’t buy it, they just simply won’t eat it. This sustainability framework lays the foundation for businesses to act and promote better beef for consumers with a smaller environmental footprint. As the industry now moves to put this framework into action, we’ll continue to work across the supply chain to save our grasslands and support the ranchers who sustain them.