Agriculture is a major driver of climate change and the biggest cause of nature loss around the world, including in the UK, which is in the bottom ten per cent of countries globally for the abundance of nature. That’s why transforming our food and farming system is at the heart of WWF’s mission to bring our world back to life.
We’re working with the John Lewis Partnership, which operates the John Lewis department stores and Waitrose supermarkets, to protect and restore nature in two areas where a number of their suppliers are based.
In Norfolk, a key sourcing region for Waitrose, we will demonstrate that the benefits of regenerative agriculture, nature restoration and carbon sequestration are possible even in one of the most intensively farmed areas of the UK, creating and restoring wildlife-rich habitats across Norfolk's terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments.
In India, we will address water scarcity and water quality in the Noyyal & Bhavani river basins, which have a critical impact on water security in the region. As well as being home to unique wildlife upstream, the rivers also enable much of the agricultural and industrial activity downstream. Through this project we will develop pollution interventions by supporting local farmers to adopt different management practices, as well as developing wetland conservation and invasive species management programmes. This part of India is a key sourcing region for John Lewis for a number of different cotton products.
We will be sharing the results and findings of these projects to encourage collaboration and lasting change.
Waitrose commitment
In 2021 Waitrose signed WWF’s Retailers’ Commitment for Nature alongside four other UK supermarkets, with a pledge to halve the environmental footprint of the average UK shopping basket by 2030.
The signatories have committed to report their performance annually to WWF against metrics linked to climate, deforestation, nature, packaging, food waste and more, and publicly report on the actions being taken to reduce their impacts.