Regenerating nature

Our ambition

It takes around 4 million hectares of land to grow the raw materials for Unilever products, which are used by 3.4 billion people every day. We want to make sustainable living commonplace – and we simply can’t do that unless we protect and regenerate the natural world.

We believe nature holds the key to solving the climate crisis too – by capturing and storing carbon in land and ocean ecosystems. It’s estimated that by protecting and restoring forests around the world, humanity can achieve around one-fifth of the emissions cuts needed by 2030 to prevent catastrophic climate change.

The current level of nature loss and climate change is already resulting in real and significant risks to economies, businesses and communities.

The only option now is systemic change – transforming the way we use land everywhere. This crisis calls for a paradigm shift in everything about the way we approach our relationship with nature and the way we design our agricultural systems. It’s time to regenerate agricultural systems that have been overworked, overused and depleted.

At a farm level, this means adopting regenerative agriculture techniques – which is why we’ve developed a new set of Regenerative Agriculture Principles designed to enhance our existing Sustainable Agriculture Code.

It also means being more ambitious than ever before by looking outside of the farm boundary and aiming to protect and regenerate natural spaces, both in our supply chain and beyond it.

Our approach to regenerating nature

A healthy natural ecosystem is essential for the resilience of our supply chain and our business. Our approach to nature encompasses regeneration and restoration – enabled by partnerships, transparency and technology.

The Unilever Sustainable Agriculture Code (SAC) has been one of the major tools in our sustainable sourcing programme since 2010. Through it, we have reached hundreds of suppliers and hundreds of thousands of farmers, helping them implement the principles of sustainable agriculture.

However, we see this has not yet reached the level where the overall decline in soil health and biodiversity has been stopped or reversed, farming has become more profitable, water quality has been improved, or where farming has become truly climate resilient.

So, we need to acknowledge that the compliance-oriented approach has not been effective enough and introduce a new way of working. We need to urgently scale up the use of technologies and agriculture practices that can protect soils, increase water efficiency, manage on-farm vegetation and crop diversity, and reduce emissions while maintaining yields.

To do this, we’re working with a wide variety of stakeholders on targeted programmes to implement regenerative farming practices and protect, conserve and restore natural ecosystems. A big part of this is engaging and supporting the farmers and smallholders who are vital to the maintenance of these environments. This means working not just within the boundaries of the field or the farm where our raw materials are grown but also looking more broadly on the impact that farming can have on nature.

Introducing our Regenerative Agriculture Principles

We have created a set of Regenerative Agriculture Principles (PDF 8.34 MB), which now sit alongside our existing Sustainable Agriculture Code (PDF 7.88 MB).

The Unilever Regenerative Agriculture Principles are agricultural practices focused on delivering positive outcomes in terms of nourishing the soil, increasing farm biodiversity, improving water quality and climate resilience, capturing carbon, and restoring and regenerating the land.

Regenerating nature in practice

We’re setting up a number of Lighthouse Programmes to test the implementation of the Regenerative Agriculture Principles in practice. We use the word ‘Lighthouse’ because they signal the way to a positive future.

These programmes will help us understand the kind of support suppliers and their farmers need to start using regenerative practices. Together with a network of soil and farming experts, we’re helping suppliers to identify which practices will deliver the most positive impact overall, and supporting them to develop tracking and measurement systems. As we do this, we’ll continue to use our Sustainable Agriculture Code (PDF 7.88 MB) as the basis for our sustainable sourcing programme.

Regenerating nature beyond the farm

The farms in our supply chain are a key focus for our nature regeneration work. But to do all we can to protect and regenerate nature, we must look beyond the farm and consider the wider impact of agricultural and industrial practices. Where we see an opportunity, we will work with suppliers and farmers to apply regenerative principles to restore natural ecosystems too.

Here the opportunity is in working with local governments, technical organisations, NGOs, suppliers and peer companies to educate farmers and build capability and capacity for the protection of natural ecosystems.

For example, thanks to a joint project with WWF Malaysia, we are supporting the RSPO-certification of 60,000 hectares of oil palm plantations in Sabah, East Malaysia, home of critically endangered species like the Bornean orangutan and the Bornean elephant. The project involves replanting two wildlife corridors to restore wildlife forest habitats and improve the connectivity between fragmented forest blocks. This allows for wildlife movement, to ensure healthy breeding populations which are better able to adapt to climate change impacts.

Regenerating nature requires a whole systems approach, and we are continuing to look closely at our role in the system, and the different places where we can play our part.