Nestle''s stated ambition to offset 13 MT CO2e a year of emissions with "nature-based solutions" would require zoning off or planting trees on at least 4.4 million hectares of lands every year. 30 The Italian energy company Eni says it will need nearly twice this amount per year by 2030, and is already advancing with plans to establish tree plantations on over 8.1 million hectares in Africa. 31 Same goes with the oil major Shell, whose new net zero scenario commits the company to more fossil fuel extraction and a massive scaling-up in "nature-based solutions" to offset its resulting emissions. Shell's offsets will require at least 8.5 million hectares of land per year by 2035. 32 Just these three companies will need about 20 million hectares per year for their collective offset needs-- an area roughly the size of all the forested lands in Malaysia, every year!
All of this for what? There is no way to truly get to a point of net zero emissions, where the amount of GHG being emitted into the atmosphere is no more than the amount being drawn out of the atmosphere, if the emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and other major sources of GHGs are not reduced to near zero. For all of the damage that the coming offset land grabs will inflict on communities in the global South, nothing will be done to stop global warming. As stated in a newly released report by La Via Campesina and a coalition of other NGOs and social movements, the corporate net zero plans and pledges that are coming fast and furiously these days make it crystal clear that "there is no desire or ambition on the part of the largest and richest in the world to actually reduce emissions. 'Greenwashing' hardly suffices as a term to describe these efforts to obscure continued growth in fossil emissions - 'ecocide' and 'genocide' more accurately capture the impacts the world will face."33
FOLU: Yara and Unilever's new clothes
One of today's most sophisticated and covert lobbies for the food and agribusiness corporations is the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU). It was initiated by the Norwegian fertiliser company Yara and the Anglo-Dutch processed-food giant Unilever-- two of the worst climate polluters within the food and agriculture sector. 34 With backing from the Norwegian government, also one of the world's worst climate polluters, they engaged a private company run by ex-McKinsey executives to bring together a coalition of the usual suspects of corporate-funded NGOs and business associations. 35 Today FOLU, and the individuals and groups that inhabit it, are ubiquitous in international fora dealing with climate and food. 36
FOLU describes itself as a "community of organisations and individuals" but its agenda is firmly anchored in the interests of its two founding corporations. Unilever, the world's largest buyer of palm oil, has for years been promoting certification schemes, notably the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, to provide itself a "sustainable" source for a fundamentally unsustainable agricultural commodity. Yara, as the world's largest producer of nitrogen fertiliser, a product that alone accounts for one in every 50 tonnes of global GHG emissions produced by humans per year, has led a campaign to recast its fertilisers as climate saviours. Yara says its fertilisers have enabled people to produce more food on less land, thereby saving forests and cooling the planet. 37
Not surprisingly, then, FOLU calls for voluntary certification schemes and more efficient, fossil-fuel-based agricultural production as the main solutions to the food sector's climate emissions. It also puts the focus on reducing tropical deforestation, not eliminating fossil fuels from the food system, and expects this to be paid for by corporations in need of offsets for their net zero commitments. 38
Both Yara and Unilever have long been united in their desire to maintain and expand the industrial production of agricultural commodities. Prior to FOLU, they initiated the Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture-- launched in 2014 by then US Secretary of State John Kerry and then special adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General David Nabarro at the United Nations Summit on Climate Change in New York. 39 That alliance, which had a similar membership to FOLU, was a failure in terms of climate action, but that was never its intention. The alliance was conceived to block efforts to push real solutions like agroecology and food sovereignty in the international fora dealing with food, agriculture and climate. 40
The climate revolution will not be financed
We should not be surprised by this new wave of corporate greenwashing. A recent study by a business consultancy came to the embarrassing conclusion that the past two decades of corporate "sustainability" programmes have a 98% failure rate. 41 Corporations are simply not going to take actions that impede their profits, and they will fight against any actors, be they governments or frontline communities, that stand in their way. They will only change when forced to.
While it is tempting to celebrate the recent spate of corporate pledges to address the climate crisis as a victory for social movements, it is more important that we take stock of how these pledges are really just smokescreens designed to maintain business-as-usual. The reality is that corporations will not and cannot be part of the solution.
This is particularly important to keep in mind with the financial industry. 42 Financial corporations like BlackRock and even the corporations that manage pension funds are built to finance corporations. If money is left in their hands, it will always flow to corporations. Corporations may have to make net zero pledges to access that money, but this is not going to drive down emissions and will take a huge toll on communities that have done nothing to contribute to the climate crisis. There is no victory for people or the climate if a financial company is shamed into shifting its holdings from Exxon to Nestle'. This is not to dismiss the significance of divestment campaigns, which can have important impacts on a range of issues. But there's a difference between demanding financial companies divest and calling on them to invest in solutions.
Solutions must be developed and defined by people not corporations. When it comes to food and agriculture, peasants and other small-scale food producers have already articulated a vision for food sovereignty and solutions to the climate crisis that excludes these huge corporations altogether. 43 There is no place in this vision for Nestle''s Roadmap, Unilever's "nature-based solutions" or BlackRock's empty environmental promises.
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