- Bank of America, Bayer, Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Company and Unilever launch a campaign to increase private sector investment in natural climate solutions (NCS) to the tune of 1 Gigaton of CO2eper year by 2025
- Under current prices, the estimated investments are between $10-30bn
- The initiative is supported by the Natural Climate Solutions Alliance convened jointly by the World Economic Forum and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and aims to draw more investments crucial to meet the Paris Agreement climate targets.
- Natural Climate Solutions include activities across forests, agricultural and coastal lands that strengthen nature’s ability to absorb carbon and reduce emissions
- Members of the Alliance believe contributing to the ‘1Gt by 2025’ investment pool will send a demand signal to carbon markets and reassure policy makers and project developers to scale investments
Geneva, Switzerland, 06 November 2021 – Today, five corporate giants, made an announcement to join forces towards creating an investment accelerator aggregating corporate demand for 1 Gigaton of CO2e emissions from NCS reductions and removals per year by 2025. At the climate summit in Glasgow, the founding champions - Bank of America, Bayer, Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Company and Unilever- invited corporate leaders to join them as they roll out a sweeping campaign to increase investments into nature.
A demand signal is key to trigger a system change that will lead to higher trust in NCS as a credible and effective solution to reduce and remove greenhouse gases emissions.
As the investment campaign is aimed at drawing investments equivalent to slashing 1Gt of GHG emissions, the leading companies of the alliance look forward to mobilizing support from many more public and private companies, to meet the climate targets defined by the Paris Agreement.
‘This is a ground-breaking development for natural climate solutions, creating an investment accelerator will send an important demand signal to carbon markets, governments and project developers on the ground. This initiative will drive credible demand for high quality carbon credits from natural solutions as part of corporate net zero strategies. We are deeply grateful to our 5 founding champions for leading the way towards better carbon markets while increasing financing for nature.’ said Giulia Carbone, Director NCS Alliance, WBCSD.
‘Natural Climate Solutions play a critical role in addressing emissions from agriculture and forestry, as well as offering a natural carbon sink to compensate for emissions from other sectors in transition. The world needs to rapidly decarbonize today, across all sectors, but we also need to start absorbing carbon from the atmosphere if we want to limit global warming to safe levels. The NCS Investment Accelerator will take us one step closer to truly start creating a pipeline of projects that serve the climate, nature and people at the same time.’ added Teresa Hartmann, Lead for Climate and Nature, WEF.
WBCSD co-convenes the NCS Alliance with the WEF, working with corporates, NGOs, project developers, standards bodies and others to build trust and overcome key challenges in scaling up private sector investment in Natural Climate Solutions.
WBCSD also works with 25+ member companies on a dedicated Natural Climate Solutions project, growing companies’ capacity to invest in high-quality NCS at scale in addition to their decarbonization activities. On the insetting workstream, our members engage experts and share best practices on using NCS for value-chain decarbonization. Through the metrics workstream, member companies are working with our broader network to collect fundamental metrics and key considerations for robust due diligence on NCS investments. Nature has a pivotal role to play in delivering a world where 9+ billion people live well, within planetary boundaries; WBCSD’s members are working to make sure that Nature can fulfil that potential through high-integrity NCS.
