UN Climate Change News, 28 November 2019 – At the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP25 in Madrid (2-13 December), the home furnishing brand IKEA will showcase strategies and practices it is adopting to become a “climate positive” business by 2030, thereby reducing more greenhouse gas emissions than the IKEA value chain emits.

As a partner of UN Climate Change at COP25, IKEA has signed up to science-based emission reduction targets and committed to the UN Global Compact 1.5 degree pledge, which invites leading businesses to comply with the most ambitious temperature goal of the Paris Climate Change Agreement. The company intends to share its approach to sustainability in several events throughout the conference to inspire other actors to follow suit.

“To address the climate change emergency and limit global temperature rise to 1.5C, it is vital that governments and businesses—indeed, all segments of society—urgently scale up their efforts to reduce emissions,” said Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change. “We therefore welcome IKEA’s commitment to science-based emissions targets through the UN Global Compact 1.5 Degree pledge and encourage all companies to immediately develop implementable, scalable and replicable business solutions that will support the systemic transformation we need.”

“Becoming climate positive and a fully sustainable business means a transformational change for IKEA. It means rethinking every aspect of how we do business. We have a positive and solution-oriented approach, and we are optimistic about the future”, said Torbjörn Lööf, CEO at Inter IKEA Group.

Climate Positive and Full Value Chain Approach

On 10 December, IKEA is hosting an event with WWF as a facilitator and inviting companies, policymakers, NGOs and other stakeholders to join a discussion about what a global definition of climate positive is. 

The term climate positive has been circulating more and more among companies. To ensure that this term is in line with the best available science, notably by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), WWF is facilitating a process to develop a universally shared definition of climate positive. IKEA will highlight the importance of absolute reductions and engaging the full value chain, from raw materials to the end of the life of a product.

IKEA announced this week it is investing 200 million euros to speed up the adoption of renewable energy by its suppliers and to remove carbon from the atmosphere through reforestation and restoration of degraded forests, as well as better forest management practices.

Healthy and Sustainable Living

On 11 December, IKEA will participate in the UN Climate Change special event “Making Food Compatible with the Paris Agreement”, sharing experiences from its initiatives to make sustainable food affordable, accessible and inspiring. 

IKEA is in the process of creating plant-based versions of its three most popular and iconic products: hotdogs, ice cream and meatballs. The company also signed the Cool Food Pledge to diminish food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2030 and works extensively with food waste reduction in its value chain. 

Business Transformation and Land Use 

On 12 December, IKEA will host another key event in the EU pavilion titled “Accelerating Industry Transformation” using the IKEA business transformation as an example. The event is part of the EU climate technologies day and will engage a wide range of stakeholders in discussing the role businesses play in speeding up technological innovations to address climate change. IKEA is together with partners driving technological shifts in materials, food, transport, stores and energy consumption in households. 

On 5 December, together with the United Nations Development Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization, IKEA will also co-host an event titled “Climate Change and Land Use - Opportunities and Risk”, exploring questions related to what governments and businesses can do to improve land use management with a special focus on forestry and agriculture. The IKEA approach to responsible and sustainable sourcing of wood will be used as an example. 

The UN Climate Change pavilion at the conference was designed and furnished with sustainable items provided by IKEA, including products made from waste, renewable or recycled materials and sustainably-sourced wood.

About partnerships between UN Climate Change and non-Party stakeholders

The partnership with Ikea is part of a series of partnerships between UN Climate Change and relevant stakeholders to support climate action. The partnerships for COP25 with non-Party stakeholders are foreseen in the Marrakesh Partnership for Global Climate Action (MPGCA).

The MPGCA was launched at COP22 by the Conference of the Parties, explicitly welcoming climate action of all non-Party stakeholders, including the private sector, to help implement the Paris Climate Change Agreement. All entities of society and business are strongly encouraged to scale up their efforts and support actions to reduce emissions, as well as to build resilience and decrease vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.

More information on partnerships at COP25 is available here.

For further information on UN Climate Change Partnerships, please contact:

Claribelle Poujol, Head of Resource Mobilization and Partnerships: +49 1520 9059820, cpoujol@unfccc.int.

About IKEA 

IKEA offers well-designed, functional and affordable, high-quality home furnishing, produced with care for people and the environment. There are several companies with different owners, working under the IKEA Brand, all sharing the same vision: to create a better everyday life for the many people. IKEA was founded in Sweden in 1943.

Inter IKEA Group consists of three core businesses: Franchise, Range & Supply and Industry. Within the Franchise business, Inter IKEA Systems B.V. is the owner of the IKEA Concept and the worldwide IKEA franchisor. It develops and offers the IKEA Concept to IKEA franchisees worldwide, enabling the long-term fulfilment of the IKEA business idea. In the Range & Supply business, IKEA of Sweden AB is responsible for developing, designing and producing home furnishing solutions to address the everyday needs of the many people. In addition, IKEA Supply AG is the wholesale company that supplies the IKEA franchisees with IKEA products. Lastly, the Industry business is a manufacturer of wood-based IKEA Products.