Walmart and Unilever team up in forest sustainability initiative

Walmart has been on a sustainability mission since 2005 and each year the retailer looks for ways to broaden the scope of the mission with the help of its supplier partners.

This year, Walmart and Unilever are teaming up to support restoration of wildlife habitats and help 60,000 hectares (148,263 acres) of palm oil plantations achieve sustainability certifications.

Walmart said the initiative is part of its effort to address deforestation through Project Gigaton with the help of suppliers. Project Gigaton aims to divert one billion metric tons (a gigaton) of greenhouse gases from the global value chain by 2030. Through Project Gigaton, suppliers can take their sustainability efforts to the next level through goal-setting, and get credit from Walmart for the progress they make. Since the program was introduced in 2017, hundreds of Walmart suppliers have joined the effort by committing to reduce emissions.

During the recent Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, Unilever, a supplier of roughly 400 brands such as Dove and Ben & Jerry’s, announced it will support work in Sabah, Malaysia, as part of the strategy to achieve a deforestation free supply chain and further reduce emissions.

Unilever said the program in Malaysia will be led by Forever Sabah, World Wildlife Fund Malaysia and PONGO Alliance. Sabah is pushing to certify 100% of the state’s palm oil production to Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification by 2025. According to WWF, that will help to reduce 17 million metric tons of CO2e in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Unilever said its commitment will ensure the 60,000 hectares are covered with sustainability certifications (RSPO). The company expects that will benefit between 200 and 300 palm oil farmers in Malaysia. The effort will also help restore two ecological areas of habitats connecting wildlife population.

“We pledged to support a jurisdictional approach of production and protection,” said Jeff Seabright, chief sustainability officer for Unilever. “This means we are moving our sourcing to areas that have good forest management and work in partnership to reconcile competing, social, economic and environmental objectives. Our ultimate ambition is to help drive a sustainable palm oil industry.”

Walmart’s role in the initiative is to provide a platform within Project Gigaton to link its suppliers who are sourcing commodities from regions with deforestation risk to create and support other location-based partnerships.

“Walmart commends Unilever on helping implement this model in Sabah and we invite other suppliers to join us in working to reduce deforestation through innovative sourcing strategies like jurisdictional approaches,” said Kathleen McLaughlin, chief sustainability officer for Walmart. “These multi-stakeholder initiatives in critical regions are needed to reduce forest loss and degradation, and improve the health and sustainability of the people who depend on forests.”

Walmart said it’s working with Conservation International, Environmental Defense Fund, The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund to identify jurisdictions having risks for deforestation and to connect suppliers with guidance on how to best support the multi-stakeholder efforts.

“With this partnership, Walmart and Unilever are advancing an innovative new approach to help companies meet their climate goals,” said Carter Roberts, president & CEO of World Wildlife Fund-US. “Decoupling supply chains from deforestation would deliver three important benefits — reducing greenhouse gas emissions, securing essential habitat, and restoring species like orangutans and elephants that call Sabah their home. And any success along this front could spur similar collaboration and results for key industries and regions across the world.”

The Nature Conservancy also applauded the effort between Walmart and Unilever, citing it as a win for people, and the bottom line.

“Avoiding deforestation is one of the most effective and efficient tools available to help slow the effects of climate change. But to do this at scale, we must work together. This commitment is an important step toward a climate-friendly future,” said Mark Tercek, CEO of The Nature Conservancy.

Walmart has been criticized by some environmental interest groups such as Food & Water Watch in the past, saying the retailer claims its success on the backs of its suppliers with less investment of its own. In 2009, Walmart rolled out a sustainability scorecard for its suppliers to track their sustainability efforts.

Walmart President and CEO Doug McMillon has been a strong advocate for the company’s own sustainability efforts in recent years. He said Walmart is seeking out initiatives of its own, but that is not enough because so much of the work to be done is within the retail supply chain. That is why Walmart has taken a much broader approach to sustainability.

“To become the most trusted company in a way that creates value for business and society, we not only have to transform our day-to-day operations, we have to work alongside our suppliers, NGOs, thought-leaders and elected officials to change entire systems,” McMillon noted in the company’s annual Global Responsibility Report.

Since 2005, Walmart reports within its own operations it has focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing waste and advancing water land stewardship. In 2016, Walmart announced specific goals to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions within its own operations by 18% over the next decade. That plan includes installing more energy efficient lighting its parking lots and stores, powering 50% of its operations with renewable energy by the end of 2025, improving the performance of its refrigeration systems and maximizing the sustainability of its trucking fleet.

Walmart said the work with suppliers on Project Gigaton through 2030 aims to reduce remissions that equal 211 million passenger vehicles in a year, or almost three times the size of California’s annual emissions, or the average energy use of 100 million homes over a year.

Project Gigaton aims to drive industry-wide transformation by bringing together value chain partners and other stakeholders in critical sourcing geographies such as Sabah, Malaysia; North Sumatra, Indonesia; and Mato Grosso, Brazil to achieve sustainable landscapes through the implementation of jurisdictional approaches. The new Unilever and Walmart effort to stop deforestation in Malaysia is another solid step in the Project Gigaton initiative, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.

“Simply put, we cannot solve our climate challenges without healthy forests,” said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund. “The good news: working solutions are now up and ready to go, pointing the way towards stopping deforestation on the scale of entire landscapes. EDF has long supported the idea that jurisdictional approaches are the critical next wave of corporate forest leadership. We applaud Walmart and Unilever for their leadership, and encourage other companies to join them.”