Scientists tell us the world’s natural resources are at the point of crisis1.
As the global population increases, forests, agricultural landscapes, and oceans that sustain our food and other resource systems are under greater stress to meet the growing demand. This drives degradation and fragmentation of our ecosystems and critical landscapes, loss of biodiversity, and the acceleration of climate change.
With more than half of the world’s total GDP reliant on nature and its services, the risk to business is high2.
- Forests provide vital benefits to people and the planet: a home for millions of people, critical habitat for a vast number of species, an important natural purifier of air and water, vital storage for carbon, and climate regulation.
- Oceans hold a great portion of the world's biodiversity and natural resources. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 3.3 billion people rely on seafood as one of their primary sources of protein. Yet in June 2022, the FAO estimated that over 35 percent of global fisheries are already overfished, in large part due to illegal and destructive fishing.
- Grasslands and other land used for agricultural production rely on a small amount of topsoil to provide much of the food humanity consumes. Unfortunately, topsoil is being lost to erosion and degradation by agricultural practices that maximize short-term yield at the expense of long-term natural productivity.
Without action, the degradation of natural resources could make products too expensive to produce or altogether unavailable.
That is why Walmart and the Walmart Foundation established a goal to help protect, restore, or more sustainably manage 50 million acres of land and 1 million square miles of ocean by 2030. To help achieve this goal, Walmart is engaging suppliers through Project Gigaton™ to:
- Protect the world’s most important natural landscapes,
- Restore degraded natural areas, and to
- Sustainably manage the lands and oceans that are used for production of goods and services.
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What Walmart is Doing
In response to the growing climate crisis and to help combat the cascading loss of nature, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation are committed to helping protect, restore, or more sustainably manage at least 50 million acres of land and one million square miles of ocean by 2030.
How Suppliers Can Take Action
Threats to nature, such as the unprecedented loss of species and the conversion of nearly half of the world’s forests, impact all of us.
1 For information from the World Wildlife Fund about the state of nature, read the Living Planet report.
2 The World Business Council on Sustainable Development has further information about why nature matters to business: https://www.wbcsd.org/Programs/Food-and-Nature/Nature/Nature-Positive/Resources/What-does-nature-positive-mean-for-business.
