World Wildlife Fund Sustainability Works

The news is full of headlines about companies making commitments to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Given the alarming pace of climate change and governments’ failure to slow it, companies’ contributions are vital to both the planet and their bottom lines. Companies have a stake in mitigation efforts as climate change presents a real risk to their operations and infrastructure. However, behind all of the ambitious goalsetting and initial progress lies a secret that’s ripe for exploitation: product-level GHG accounting is so fragmented and flexible that it’s incredibly difficult to hold companies and sectors accountable for emissions reductions. What’s more, because companies can choose which methodologies to use and companies in adjacent industries may choose different methodologies (think: beef and leather), some emissions are simply not being accounted for once we get to the end products.

As fans from all over the world head to Arizona this weekend for football’s big event, thousands of sustainability professionals won’t be far behind. Greenbiz23 – an annual event for sustainability leaders – kicks off on Tuesday, February 14. Once again, WWF experts from across the organization will lead discussions, provide insights, and connect with like-minded individuals, looking to achieve sustainability solutions at a scale and speed that matters.

If you’re participating in GreenBiz23, we invite you to join an event or session featuring WWF experts and of course come say “hello” during conference networking breaks. Here’s where you can find us:

The Farm Bill is among the most critical pieces of legislation for our food system, our environment, and the health and nutrition of communities across the nation. Its name does not do justice to its broad scope: in addition to providing direct support to US farmers and safety net and nutrition assistance programs for US families and communities, it is also the nation’s largest source of federal funding for private lands conservation and is integral to rural energy and development, forest restoration and conservation, and agricultural research. The 2023 Farm Bill is a critical opportunity to strengthen these programs to better support healthy people, a healthy planet, and a healthy farm economy.

The Farm Bill presents a unique opportunity to come together around a shared vision for food system transformation spanning production, consumption, and waste reduction. The Farm Bill can provide farmers, ranchers, and forest owners with tools to voluntarily advance local and national sustainability goals, play a vital role in the livelihoods of producers and rural communities, and address nutrition, hunger, and food loss and waste.

The Farm Bill, typically renewed by Congress every five years, is up for reauthorization this year. During reauthorization, Congress can make updates and changes to the Farm Bill’s programs and policies. Advancing this shared vision for food system transformation while addressing the considerable impacts of our food and agriculture systems presents a monumental task for the 2023 Farm Bill. Globally, the food and agriculture sectors are a primary and biodiversity loss and a leading source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Here in the US, conversion from native ecosystems to row crop agriculture resulted in the loss of 1.8 million acres of grassland habitat in the Great Plains in 2020 and 10 million acres between 2016-2020 (approximately half the size of Maine). This large-scale habitat loss is a major contributor to the precipitous decline of grassland birds and other critical wildlife species including pollinators, the release of immense amounts of sequestered carbon, the loss of critical water quality and quantity benefits, and a reduction in resilience of grassland ecosystems. and biodiversity loss and a leading source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Here in the US, conversion from native ecosystems to row crop agriculture resulted in the loss of 1.8 million acres of grassland habitat in the Great Plains in 2020 and 10 million acres between 2016-2020 (approximately half the size of Maine). This large-scale habitat loss is a major contributor to the precipitous decline of grassland birds and other critical wildlife species including pollinators, the release of immense amounts of sequestered carbon, the loss of critical water quality and quantity benefits, and a reduction in resilience of grassland ecosystems.

After last December’s Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), just about every aspect of its successes and failures has been dissected and digested at length. But there are two little words from the conference that, weeks later, are still at the forefront of my mind because of the victory they represent. Those words are “inland waters.”

Finally, after years of hard work to raise the profile of inland waters or freshwaters¹ through advocacy with global governments and policymakers, 2022 saw the phrase “inland waters” prominently included in the text of the CBD’s resulting Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

The Markets Institute @ WWF identifies global issues, trends, and tools around the most pressing challenges of our time. Each year we publish what we think were the biggest surprises of the previous year and release a list of what may be key emerging developments that will affect the global food system and will be important for producers, consumers, the private sector, and governments to consider as they anticipate issues and trends and respond more effectively and at speed and scale.

The lists are identified through research, interviews, data analysis, gleanings from others, and especially through discussions with the Markets Institute’s Thought Leader Group. As always, we welcome feedback and discussion, so please get in touch. We hope you are staying safe and as healthy as you can in 2023.

— Jason Clay, Executive Director, Markets Institute @ WWF

Last month, in December 2022 global sporting eyes were riveted by the World Cup final going into overtime, but on the very same day an even more critical global conversation went past its expected final whistle as well, leading to an outcome that may well score a win for people and nature and lead to a sustainable future for our planet.

The Kunming-Montreal Agreement, reached at the UN CBD COP15 Conference in Montreal in December, commits the world to halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030, as massive and important a goal as achieving the 1.5 degree target for addressing climate change.

WWF Launches Free Resource to Support Business

Nature and the economy are inextricably linked. We know we’re losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate. We also know our economy relies on nature — more than 50% of global GDP, or approximately US$44 trillion, is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services. This means biodiversity loss is creating systemic financial risks and can directly impact companies’ profitability and future resilience, ultimately affecting financial institutions’ investment performance, financing and underwriting activities.

Your editors of Sustainability Works are once again stepping out of the shadows to deliver a few words to close out 2022.

It’s a privilege to work at WWF and be surrounded by incredible people whose work is literally changing the world for the better (you can meet a few of them in our Behind the Scenes series). In fact, there is so much work going on that you would be forgiven for missing a few great stories, projects, or research results—sometimes we have trouble keeping up with it ourselves! And so we bring you our recap blog, highlighting some stories from the past year that we want to make sure you catch.

Scroll through the gallery to see just a few examples of how sustainability worked in 2022:

As we wrap up 2022, I want to reflect on the conservation impact made during the year. The Year of the Tiger held tremendous significance, with the big cats’ numbers on the rise in some countries. Though, the Year of the Tiger also symbolizes resilience in the face of challenges, and from the 2022 Living Planet Report, we know we have a long way to go to combat climate change and biodiversity loss. Together with the corporate sector, we have the capabilities to help build a nature-positive society. And through your support this year, we’ve made unprecedented progress toward that goal.

Widespread drought conditions continue to persist in much of the Northern Great Plains (NGP) according to University of Nebraska’s National Drought Mitigation Center. The NGP is experiencing increasing temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and extreme events that are posing challenges to an already water-limited region. This region is also an integral part of the nation’s food supply, with vast tracts of land devoted to livestock grazing.

Humans and wildlife alike are forced to find ways to adapt to these increasingly common drought conditions. Through World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Ranch Systems and Viability Planning (RSVP) program, ranchers in Montana have access to an innovative cost-sharing program that can help ranchers adapt and become more resilient to drought conditions.