WWF’s climate strategy

The science is clear: Humanity’s window of opportunity to keep warming below the critical 1.5°C threshold is rapidly closing. As a science-driven organization, WWF is responding with urgency, innovation, and collaboration. Within their broad portfolio of work, our climate team has added a new multipronged strategy focused on four priority areas in which WWF is well positioned to deliver meaningful results for people and nature.

WWF is spearheading the use of innovative financing mechanisms for large-scale, long-term conservation solutions that benefit people and climate. Project Finance for Permanence (PFP) is a game-changing approach that secures the policy changes and funding necessary for sustainable conservation success and binds them together in a single agreement. WWF’s first PFP, Amazon Region Protected Areas for Life, reduced deforestation in Brazilian protected areas by 21% between 2008 and 2020, reducing CO₂ emissions by an amount equivalent to shutting off 27 coal-fired power plants for a year. A more recent PFP, Heritage Colombia (HECO), secured US$245 million in public and private financing to permanently protect over 123,000 sq. mi. of landscapes and seascapes and strengthen the rights and livelihoods of communities across the country. Conservation actions supported by HECO will reduce emissions by as much as taking nearly 10 million cars off the road for a year.

The cost of climate adaptation—the process of adjusting to the changing climate and its cascading impacts—can be a heavy burden for many countries, and for developing nations most of all. In fact, the scale of financing needed to achieve global climate goals requires systemic changes to the international financial system, and political support is emerging to drive that transformation. For example, the Bridgetown Initiative, an effort championed by Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados, proposes mechanisms to reform institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in order to set greater climate finance targets, improve transparency, and allow for billions more dollars in grants and loans to countries for climate projects.

When it comes to decarbonizing the US economy, much of the focus has been on shifting away from combusting fossil fuels for energy production. WWF and partners founded the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) in 2015 with 35 companies aligning their climate targets with climate science. Today, over 5,000 companies have committed to set science-based targets, including deep cuts in fossil fuel-based energy, to align their climate actions with 1.5 degree futures. And it’s working. Analysis reflects that companies participating in the SBTi are decreasing emissions at a rate of 8.2% per year, exceeding the 4.2% required to align with net-zero pathways.

Roughly 13% of US emissions come from a source few people think about: thermal energy, the heat used in a wide range of industrial processes, from forging steel to creating the chemicals used in everyday products. In 2017, WWF and partners founded the Renewable Thermal Collaborative (RTC)—a global coalition of companies, institutions, and governments—to address this neglected but critical wedge of emissions. The vision of the RTC’s 70 corporate members is to slash US industrial thermal emissions by 30% by 2030. Reaching this goal requires a 150% increase in renewable thermal energy use—a goal we can only achieve through collaboration. RTC leverages energy buyers’ collective efforts and voices to accelerate the renewable thermal energy market, educate policy-makers, and lower technology costs for critical renewable thermal energy technologies.

Nature-based solutions leverage the power of healthy ecosystems to deliver tangible benefits to people, climate, and nature. To leave out any part of this triad is to fail in addressing the intertwined crises of nature loss and climate change. Through the Nature-based Solutions Origination Platform, WWF seeks to demonstrate what a high-integrity offering with equal benefits for humans, wildlife, and the planet looks like.

We have identified a handful of priority forest and mangrove landscapes and are taking a holistic approach to addressing the systemic, interconnected drivers of deforestation and degradation through responses such as improved forest management and forest landscape restoration. Our teams will identify appropriate interventions that aim to produce lasting, large-scale results for communities and the ecosystems that sustain them. We will also create financing solutions that bring together different sources of funding—including significant leadership from the private sector—and ensure these projects are fully supported and have the best chance of success over the long term.

Even as we work to limit warming to 1.5°C, the truth is that the most vulnerable communities are already experiencing the impacts of climate change. WWF’s Mangroves for Community and Climate project improves the resilience of coastal communities in a variety of ways, from maintaining more reliable water supplies by harvesting rainwater to reducing people’s reliance on a single source of income. The project also seeks to help nature itself adapt to climate change by planting the most resilient mangrove species to ensure recovery following tropical storms, promoting sustainable livelihoods that reduce pressure on ecosystems, and more.

Do Your Part

Much of WWF’s work is about catalyzing the systemic changes needed to address climate change at a global scale. But we also need individual commitment to climate action. In this all-hands-on-deck moment, you too can fight climate change by making just a few changes in how you do things, both at home and in your workplace.