In 2016, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation announced a series of grants designed to complement its place-based nature conservation work and reduce the environmental footprint of food commodities sourced through international markets. “The need to produce food without causing severe environmental degradation,” said Aileen Lee, chief program officer for the foundation’s Environmental Conservation Program, “is essential to maintaining the productive capacity and integrity of the Earth’s ecosystems.”
Four years later, the notion that forward-thinking agriculture and seafood businesses would take further steps to clean their supply chains has been affirmed, building on momentum and companies’ recognition of the imperative for change. This progress has been reinforced through the work of Moore Foundation grantees and other partners who have helped change purchasing practices of major buyers, set and strengthen standards for production, and shift production practices on the ground.
Since the Moore Foundation’s conservation and markets funding first began, grantees have worked with companies to improve sourcing for cattle, soy, and top-traded seafood. Collectively, these groups have produced key data and science-based tools to enable better public and private actor choices, helped companies better implement their commitments to eliminate deforestation and over-fishing from commodity supplies, and ensured that companies improve the performance of their suppliers—rather than simply switching to “cleaner” suppliers elsewhere. As a result, and through sector-wide agreements rather than individual action, we have seen commodity production systems improve in regions identified as having some of the greatest conservation need.
Now, to extend this early progress, the Moore Foundation has committed an additional $173 million in grantmaking for its Conservation and Markets Initiative. That funding, from 2021-2026, will support continued work toward the same goal articulated when the funding first began in 2016: for a critical mass of market actors responsible for the production, sourcing, and financing of the highest-forest-risk commodities and top-traded seafood to delink their operations and investments from ecosystem degradation.
Foundation grantees will be able to build on these market actors’ global reach, the durable impact that changes to their business models and market norms will have, and the incentives and signals from financing made available and targeted for those with practices that embrace sustainable production and sourcing. “Through collective action,” said Sabine Miltner, Conservation and Markets Initiative Program Director, “we have seen that business practices are changing and can further improve among a critical mass of companies.” And by focusing on companies that operate internationally, the work can deliver results not only within a company’s broad supply system, but also across industries’ global reach—ultimately helping to safeguard intact ecosystems of global significance, and delivering positive outcomes for generations long into the future.
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