Companies are taking action on land emissions

McDonald’s Corporation is planting trees in hedgerows on French farms, with a target of 230,000 trees by 2030. Why? This is one of the activities that companies can implement to reduce agriculture and forestry greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in their supply chains and count toward meeting their climate targets. All told, McDonald’s Corporation committed to reducing its forest, land, and agriculture emissions by 72% by 2050.

Other mitigation options for companies with food, agriculture, or forestry emissions include reducing emissions by halting deforestation and degradation, improving forest management, reducing agricultural emissions, and sequestering carbon in soil.

Businesses’ supply chains depend on climate and the services provided by nature. Companies with significant land-sector emissions are even more dependent than others, so they are strengthening their climate commitments to comprehensively include land emissions through the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). Since the SBTi began validating Forestry, Land, and Agriculture (FLAG) science-based targets last year, 83 companies have set targets to reduce their FLAG emissions and increase removals.¹

More ways companies are taking action to reduce FLAG emissions include:

Action on deforestation: Managing forests and preventing deforestation are vital to mitigating climate change because forests act as carbon sinks. That makes taking action to prevent deforestation a key mitigation lever for companies in the land sector. For example:

• Having recently announced its FLAG target, The Hershey Company accelerated the end date for achieving deforestation- and conversion-free (DCF) supply chains by five years to 2025 from 2030. To achieve this commitment, Hershey is working to map 100% of farms producing Hershey’s cocoa volume in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana to ensure they are deforestation-free.
• In 2023, Unilever plc achieved 97.5% verified deforestation-free palm oil, paper and board, tea, soy, and cocoa order volumes through building deforestation monitoring and verification systems. To continue driving deforestation-free sourcing, Unilever has engaged in smallholder mapping and certification across palm oil, cocoa, and tea.

Action on regenerative agriculture: Regenerative agriculture has the potential to drive climate action, ensure more resilient supply chains, and support biodiversity. Companies are incorporating regenerative agriculture approaches in their supply chains to reduce agricultural emissions and achieve climate and nature targets. For example:

• Danone, which works with 58,000 dairy farmers worldwide, updated its milk road map to align with its FLAG target of reducing FLAG emissions by 72% by 2050, keeping with the SBTi’s required 72% long-term reduction rate for FLAG. Having identified priority countries for its regenerative agriculture program, Danone will focus on manure and herd management, reduction of the feed footprint, and cover crop development through close engagement with farmers.
• Mars Inc. has also committed to reducing FLAG GHG emissions by 72% by 2050. As part of its efforts to meet these targets, the Mars venture Andean Cacao supports the regeneration of nearly 3,000 hectares of pastureland throughout Latin America. With a goal of producing climate-smart cocoa, Andean Cacao has increased organic matter content in the soil by 14%, supporting carbon sequestration.

These are just a few of the activities companies are taking on to drive change and meet their commitments for the land sector. And we’re seeing companies across North and South America, Europe, and Asia set SBTi FLAG targets. We invite companies to add to this movement by reducing climate risk and building supply chain resiliency.

1 “To meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, a broad set of mitigation strategies will be needed to both reduce emissions and enhance sinks. Although GHG emissions from the FLAG sector need to be significantly reduced by 2050, agricultural production is expected to increase by about 50% by then to meet increased food demand (WRI, 2019). Emissions in the land sector could be reduced by stopping deforestation and land conversion, reducing peat burning and forest degradation, lowering agricultural emissions, and reducing emissions via demand shifts (e.g., addressing diet shift, food loss, and waste). Forests and soils store carbon, so these sinks (biogenic CO2 removals) need to be taken into account as well. Biogenic CO2 removals can be achieved by restoring natural ecosystems, deploying silvopasture, improving forest management practices, and enhancing soil carbon sequestration on pasture and farmland.” From FLAG Guidance Foreword

About the authors:

• Christa Anderson is the director of climate science and carbon metrics at WWF.
• Jamie Bindon is a senior program officer on the climate team at WWF.
• Martha Stevenson is the senior director, strategy & research, on WWF's forests team.