Cotton and climate change

From planting trees to regenerating soils, WWF and IKEA are supporting cotton farms to reduce emissions while building resilience.

When WWF and IKEA started collaborating on cotton in 2005, nobody could have predicted how quickly things would take off. The partnership began with cotton smallholders in Pakistan testing better management practices to reduce the use of water and agrochemicals. Within a few years, other companies and NGOs came on board to promote the uptake of these practices and the global Better Cotton Initiative was born. Today, 2.4 million farmers worldwide are growing “Better Cotton”.

“What began as a small pilot project with a few farmers in Pakistan grew into a global standard for building the future sustainability of this crop,” says Asad Imran, Food and Markets Director at WWFPakistan. “After that, to further strengthen the sector we began to look to different horizons.”

Looming large on those horizons is climate change. “Cotton-growing landscapes in Pakistan are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change,” says Asad. “Farmers may not be aware of the technical terminology, but they can see something is wrong. Some seeds are not performing, new insects are emerging, harvest times are shifting.”

In response, WWF and IKEA worked with farmers and research institutes to develop new nature-based, climate-smart practices. These include identifying more drought-resistant cotton varieties and practising minimum tillage to reduce the loss of carbon from the soil, as well as building on existing better management practices around nature-based pest control, soil fertility and water conservation.

“So far, we’ve managed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions per unit of production by more than 20%, mainly through conservation tillage, replacing synthetic fertilizers and optimizing pesticide use,” says Asad. “Multiplied across the 100,000 farming families we engage with, that’s a significant impact.”

In addition, WWF and IKEA have been supporting farmers to plant trees on degraded areas of land that aren’t suitable for cotton production. The partnership has an ambitious target of planting 1 million indigenous trees, of which around 400,000 have been planted to date.

The trees have a double benefit: as well as sequestering carbon, they help to improve local resilience to the impacts of climate change. “Socioeconomic resilience is key to environmental resilience,” says Asad. “The trees include fruit trees to promote food security, and farmers can sell the wood, with the agreement that they replace any trees they harvest. Many other farmers are now adopting the same thing.”

We seek to achieve a deeper impact for cotton farmers and farming communities and to make more sustainable cotton the fibre of choice for supply chains. This will pave the way to even bigger achievements by 2030, a journey we look forward to being a part of and helping develop even further.

– ARVIND REWAL, Global Cotton Development Manager, IKEA

Restoring soils

In India too, WWF and IKEA have been supporting tree planting in cotton landscapes – and again, it’s boosting local resilience as well as climate mitigation efforts.

“Soil erosion is a big problem in the cotton landscapes where we work,” says Murli Dhar, Sustainable Agriculture Director at WWF-India “The hilltops in these areas used to have trees, but these have been chopped down over the years for fuel and timber. Now there’s highly degraded, stony ground without vegetation. When the rains come, the water rushes down the slopes where the cotton is grown into the valleys, taking the soil with it.”

Another problem for farmers is that large quantities of sand from the bare hilltops would blow onto their farms. Getting rid of this is labour intensive and expensive. And with climate change bringing more drought and more intense flooding, these issues are only getting worse.

In response, WWF and IKEA are working with local communities to plant trees on communal land on hilltops, with a target of planting 375,000 trees. This includes consulting with local community groups to identify areas for plantations and which species to use, and working closely with them in planting and maintaining the trees. As well as helping to stabilize soils and water flows, the trees will increase habitat for wildlife within cotton-producing landscapes.

The partnership is also supporting regenerative agricultural practices that can improve productivity and increase the carbon content within the soil while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“The principle is to put back what is taken out,” says Murli. “For example, the stubble that’s left over after the cotton bolls have been picked is usually burnt, but we’re showing farmers how this can be ploughed back into the soil to enhance carbon.”

Farmers are increasingly using organic compost in place of expensive and emissions-intensive synthetic fertilizer. “We’re supporting very localized solutions,” says Murli. “That includes collecting waste from farms and villages and using environmentally friendly bacteria to compost it quickly, and composting waste at agricultural market yards and distributing it locally.”

Trend-setting

Like the improved agricultural practices that have been rolled out through Better Cotton, the climate-smart techniques being trialled in Pakistan and India have the potential to be adopted widely among cotton smallholders. Tools are also being developed to measure emissions savings and the carbon captured through tree planting and soil regeneration, creating opportunities for brands and retailers like IKEA to account for nature-based solutions like these within their own climate commitments.

For Asad, this kind of innovation is the hallmark of the WWF and IKEA partnership. “We’re paving the way for mainstreaming these activities,” he says. “We’re clearing the landmines so others can march behind.”

“These interventions to boost climate mitigation and resilience create a new narrative for companies with agriculture in their supply chains,” adds Murli. “We hope that we can inspire other cotton brands and retailers to step up with these kinds of initiatives.”

Lessons learnt:
Climate-smart agriculture

Success factors:

Local benefits: While nature-based climate solutions have global benefits, it’s vital to think local: “Farmers don’t care about global tree-planting targets, but they see other benefits, so it’s a win-win,” says Murli.

No hand-outs: In both India and Pakistan, communities are expected to contribute their own resources toward projects. “If something is given for free, people don’t take care of it, but when they contribute too there’s a sense of ownership,” says Asad.

Land competition: Farmers need to make a living, and if land is suitable for agriculture they will use it – in both countries, tree planting only takes place on land that’s not suitable for cotton production.