WWF and IKEA Conservation Partnership

A Global Partnership

In 2002, WWF and IKEA began a three-year co-operation to jointly promote responsible forestry in priority regions around the world. The 5 years of technical co-operation has seen the two organizations worked together on a series of forest, cotton and climate projects in many countries e.g. China, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, India, Pakistan and Poland.

The first phase (2002-2005) of the partnership included forest projects that are important steps in implementing IKEA's forest action plan and in achieving WWF's conservation targets. The projects produced many exciting results. Read more in the summary (PDF).
 
While celebrating the achievements, both organizations acknowledged that many challenges remain and making real change happen will require persistence. That's why in 2005, WWF and IKEA began a second phase of work (PDF).

So in 2005 the co-operation was extended with projects regarding reducing the environmental and social impacts of conventional cotton production in India and Pakistan and in 2007 climate change projects started. The climate change projects will be implemented in Poland, China, UK and Sweden.

Why are WWF and IKEA working together?

As a leading multi-national company, IKEA has established a strong internal programme to address social and environmental issues associated with its business wherever this takes place.

IKEA and WWF share common interests and responsibilities, particularly in seeing the considerate, efficient and long-term economically sound use of natural resources. The Partnership is founded on each partner's unique competencies.

Conservation results

So far, achievements have included the development of forest conservation toolkits which are being used widely and leading to significant forest conservation results such as several forest areas with high conservation values identified and protected; and helping responsible forest owners obtain FSC certification. Support to forestry projects in various countries have also led to millions of hectares of FSC-certified forests (in China, Russia, Romania and Latvia); timber producers and companies adopting responsible forestry (China, Russia, Bulgaria and Estonia); and raising awareness of problems and solutions relating to illegal logging in Russia. The Partnership has also provided capacity-building and awareness raising materials aimed at forest sector employees and policy makers in all countries where it is active.

The joint cotton projects only started operations in 2006 and so only preliminary results are available to date. The first results from Pakistan indicate that the farmers trained in the Farmer Field Schools in 2006 were able to increase cotton production while decreasing production expenses. By using the Best Management Practice’s guidelines, they were on average able to increase their gross margin.