World Wildlife Fund Sustainability Works

Just about any production process causes greenhouse gas emissions, and the production of food is no different. As a whole, the food system creates about a third of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The great bulk of those occur on the farm – from deforestation that converts wild habitats to farmland; from land-based agricultural practices, like fertilizer use and livestock production; and from farming practices themselves, including fossil fuel emissions from tractors and other farm equipment.

Because of already tight profit margins, farms have little leeway to invest in processes that cut those on-farm emissions. That’s where incentives come in. By offering incentives to elements of their supply chain, companies can begin to shift behavior at various steps in food’s journey from farm to consumer, mitigating GHG emissions. Incentives can range from rewards to penalties, financial or otherwise. In a new report, the Markets Institute at WWF has focused on the rewards end of the spectrum, which companies have begun to discover is the more fruitful way to engage their supply chains.

Last week, the Renewable Thermal Collaborative (RTC) briefed Capitol Hill stakeholders on key insights of its Renewable Thermal Vision Report and the role federal policymakers can play in unlocking critical pathways to decarbonize industry and cut emissions to reach net zero by 2050.

The industrial sector produces 30% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., and industry’s use of thermal energy (heating and cooling) to create many of the products we use in our everyday lives accounts for nearly half of that number.

With the impacts of climate change becoming ever more dangerous, we must address every source of emissions that causes climate change, and one of the ways we can make real progress is by prioritizing the conversion of low and medium heat processes in the industrial sector to renewable energy. Though ambitious, undertaking the actions this would require stands to have tremendous impact–potentially reducing thermal emissions by nearly 80%.

There’s a growing awareness of the critical role nature plays in fighting the climate crisis. Nature captures and stores over 50% of man-made carbon emissions from the atmosphere; which slows the rate of global warming. Nature can also help reduce the impact of extreme weather events like storms, heatwaves, and drought. We call the intentional deployment of nature to address societal challenges like climate change “nature-based solutions.”

It is fitting then, on World Mangrove Day, that WWF is launching ManglarIA (Spanish for “AI for Mangroves”), a new initiative supported by Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, that will help us use advanced technology, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), to understand how mangrove ecosystems and their contributions to communities are affected by climate change and its impacts. The project was selected from among hundreds of submissions to receive a $5 million grant from Google.org’s Impact Challenge on Climate Innovation. This project is representative of a growing movement to bolster nature-based solutions with advances in technology - creating more effective and measurable outcomes for climate solutions rooted in nature and enabled by technology.

The world has never been closer to reaching a global solution towards addressing the plastic pollution crisis. And with the Global Treaty on Plastic Pollution coming into view, the policy landscape around the world is advancing quickly – and it’s critical that the United States is keeping at pace.

In March 2023, World Wildlife Fund hosted its first-ever Plastic Policy Summit to help forge this path forward in the US by bringing together voices across the spectrum of plastic waste stakeholders and rights holders under one roof. Over the course of two days, speakers and participants—including federal agency representatives, state and local policymakers, nonprofit and corporate leaders, and members of Congress—took part in discussions to help inform how we, as a country, can advance policies and collective action toward a shared outcome of ending plastic pollution in the U.S.

Have you ever thought that life was passing you by? Increasingly it seems to me that that is what is happening with climate change. The impacts are more extreme, more variable, and more omnipresent than we thought possible. And we all struggle — individuals, NGOs, companies, and governments alike — to find responses to these impacts.

This is perhaps most apparent in the global food system, where climate change is wreaking havoc via floods, droughts, heat domes and crop failures. Two years ago, the United Nations convened a Food Systems Summit to review and transform “the entire spectrum of food,” including its production, shipping, consumption, and disposal.

As a biennial Food Systems Stocktaking Moment begins Monday in Rome, we wanted to understand how some of the most advanced food companies we work with are coping with the current environment. The results are evident in this report, issued jointly by World Wildlife Fund and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Grasslands have a PR problem.

As a publicist and promoter of grasslands, it is my job to convince you—the reader—that these ancient, expansive ecosystems are important. I hope to compel you to regard not only the Northern Great Plains, where I live and work, as irreplaceable, but grasslands-at-large. I want you to understand that these ecosystems are more than just an empty stage suited only for growing crops, development, or resource extraction. WWF understands this, which is why in 2021 we launched a partnership with Air Wick® in 2021 called “One Square Foot” with the goal of reseeding 1 billion square feet of previously plowed grasslands and wildflower habitats across the Northern Great Plains.

The Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment (PCFWC) recently released a report detailing the initiative’s progress in 2022, demonstrating remarkable strides towards its goal of halving food waste by 2030. Particularly noteworthy is the PCFWC's groundbreaking dataset—developed using measurement and reporting tools provided by ReFED—that allows year-over-year comparison of food waste at the retail level. This dataset constitutes an unprecedented resource in food waste research that will provide much-needed guidance for the retail industry as well as other sectors.

The iconic Rio Grande, or “Great River,” is at risk of losing its greatness. Water overuse and climate change have heavily depleted the once-mighty flow of the river, creating desperate conditions for the farming communities and natural ecosystems that depend on it. We can restore the Rio Grande to some semblance of its former glory, but doing so will require a transformational shift in the way political leaders, farmers and communities perceive the river, their culture, and their livelihoods.

Just how far has the mighty river fallen? Consider this: whereas the river once rose forcefully in springtime in response to melting snows in Colorado, its ‘spring pulse’ has now dwindled to less than a third of its former volume. As a result, water storage reservoirs essential to farming have dried up, leaving farmers without water to grow food and fiber. At the end of last year’s growing season, New Mexico’s largest reservoir, Elephant Butte Reservoir, was less than 10% full.

This past winter, 196 countries signed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to take urgent action to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and to protect 30% of land and sea area by 2030. All actors will need to do their part to realize these global targets. A new “Nature” paper by Rockström et al. provides scientific evidence that “Seven of eight globally quantified safe and just (Earth system boundaries) and at least two regional safe and just (Earth system boundaries) in over half of global land area are already exceeded.”

The private sector has a critical role in contributing to a safe and just future that is nature positive. To do so, companies must recognize their location-specific, material impacts on nature and how they depend on it. Understanding the environmental impacts and considering trade-offs at the local and global levels are critical to achieving any sort of nature-related goal. This is a daunting task when you consider the tangled web of global supply chains. But for the sake of your business and all life on this planet, it’s worth doing. And there is help.

Tracking, vaccinating, and returning a black-footed ferret to its burrow in complete darkness is no easy task. But for WWF’s Black-footed Ferret Restoration Manager Kristy Bly, it’s all in a night’s work. For over 20 years, Kristy has teamed up with numerous federal, Tribal, state, and private entities to recover and protect black-footed ferrets.

Black-footed ferrets – one of North America’s most endangered mammals – can only survive within the Great Plains’ prairie dog colonies. Currently there are about 390 ferrets in the wild, but they face mounting danger from habitat loss and sylvatic plague, a non-native disease that affects both ferrets and prairie dogs, their main source of prey. Ferrets not only rely on prairie dogs for food, but also use their burrows for shelter and raising young. Sylvatic plague, a fast-spreading bacterial disease, is threatening both species, making the need for vaccination and protection programs imperative.

Monitoring and protecting ferrets from plague is complex, tedious work. Because ferrets are elusive and nocturnal, scientists use high-intensity spotlights mounted to field trucks and advanced surveillance equipment like thermal cameras to locate them. Much of the field equipment requires battery power from field trucks that must remain noisily idling to charge the equipment, which often disrupts ferret behavior. The vet trailer, where ferrets receive sylvatic plague vaccinations, also runs on propane gas and loud gas-powered generators.