As world leaders begin gathering in New York for Monday’s UN Climate Action Summit, a large group of multinational companies including Swiss Re, Danone, Ikea, Salesforce and L’Oral have pledged to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions.
With today’s announcement of 59 new signatories, the UN Global Compact now has 87 companies, with a combined market cap of $2.3tn, on board with its campaign to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees centigrade. The initiative launched earlier this year with 28 companies signing up in July, including Levi Strauss, AstraZeneca and Unilever.
Companies signing on with the UNGC pledge have agreed to set independently verified “science-based” targets and create decarbonisation plans within 24 months to start bringing their emissions down to keep warming below 1.5C. Signatories also have the option to publicly commit to reaching net-zero emissions by no later than 2050.
More than 600 companies had already pledged to do their part in limiting global warming to 2C as set out in the 2016 Paris climate accord, but their progress on actually hitting those goals has been patchy. Only 15 per cent of the world’s largest 500 companies are on track.
Nonetheless, the rapidly rising number of companies taking action on climate change is evidence of a “massive intellectual revolution” in the world of business, said Andrew Steer, a board member at the Science Based Targets Initiative — a coalition between the UNGC and various environmental research and activist groups in charge of vetting the companies signing the pledge.
“Just five or 10 years ago, the vast majority of CEOs, boards and governments believed it would be nice to do something about climate change but it would require a trade off,” Mr Steer said. “Now, their view is that smart policies on climate change encourage more resource efficiency and [the development of] new technology . . . which can lead to more, rather than less, competitiveness.”