Dive Brief:
- A global coalition — composed of some of the world’s biggest corporations, financial institutions, environmental groups, cities and regions — is pressing governments around the world to ramp up their climate action strategies ahead of a February 2025 deadline to submit their climate mitigation plans to the United Nations.
- Launched Monday, the “Mission 25” group is backed by Ikea, Unilever, Octopus EV, the Carbon Disclosure Project, and associations such as the We Mean Business Coalition — a climate nonprofit — and C40 Cities — a global climate network representing over 100 mayors, among others.
- The group said setting more robust climate targets and accelerating their implementation could “unlock trillions in private investment.” This funding can then be used to protect nature, “scale cheap renewable energy, support industries to compete in a low carbon economy, and safeguard living standards equitably” for people around the world, per the release.
Dive Insight:
The push for more ambitious climate goals comes less than a year before nearly 200 countries are due to present enhanced emissions reduction plans — or Nationally Determined Contributions — to the UN for the period of 2025-2035, and nearly a decade after the Paris Agreement was introduced.
Mission 25 pointed to research from the Net Zero Tracker, which found over two-thirds of annual revenues across the world’s largest companies, amounting to $31 trillion, are now aligned with net-zero targets, representing a rise of 45% in only two years.
The coalition also quoted an analysis from the Energy Transitions Commission that said the price tag associated with clean tech had continued to fall over time. The lowered costs, paired with the incorporation of other decarbonization and sustainable solutions, means countries can “collectively almost triple ambition — and bring the world on a 2°C pathway,” according to the group.
“The launch of Mission 2025 today is a clear rebuttal to everyone claiming that moving faster on tackling the climate crisis is too difficult, too unpopular or too expensive,” Christiana Figueres, Global Optimism’s co-founder — who also oversaw the Paris Agreement in 2015 — said in a press release.
Karen Pflug, chief sustainability officer at Ingka Group — Ikea’s largest franchisee holding company — said governments need to set ambitious climate targets that are “backed by clear plans” in order for businesses to accelerate their transition to net-zero.
“With only five years left to reach the Paris Agreement, we need governments to drive ambitious action in their climate plans and enable businesses to accelerate action,” Pflug said in the release.
Mission 25 is organized under Groundswell, a collaborative climate impact project established in 2023 by nonprofits Global Optimism, Systems Change Lab and the Bezos Earth Fund.
