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IKEA and WWF began a co-operation in 2002 to jointly promote responsible forestry in priority regions around the world. Together the two organizations have planned and implemented a series of projects in China, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The projects are important steps in implementing IKEA’s forest action plan and in achieving WWF’s conservation targets.

The overall goal of the co-operation efforts has been to promote legal compliance in forestry and trade, reduce unsustainable logging and strengthen multi-stakeholder based forest certification and management.

Many challenges remain, but the projects have contributed to some exciting results, for instance to increased FSC certification in Russia. FSC certification was first introduced in 2000, and the IKEA and WWF projects (started two years later) have played a key role in reaching 30 million certified hectares or about 25% of the Russia’s leased forests.

In 2005, the co-operation was extended with projects focusing on reducing the environmental and social impacts of conventional cotton production in India and Pakistan. These projects provide support; training and outreach to farmers that want to produce ‘Better Cotton’, a commodity that complies with the Better Cotton Initiative’s social and environmental criteria. Today, approximately 47,000 farmers in the two countries are involved in how to grow Better Cotton through the joint projects. In 2010, the project results showed that farmers using Better Management Practices reduced the active ingredient used in their pesticide applications by 38% in India and 47% in Pakistan; reduced their use of water by 30% in India and 38% in Pakistan, and the use of chemical fertilizers by 32% in India and 41% in Pakistan on average, when compared with conventional farmers.

IKEA and WWF have identified climate change as one of the major global challenges and started cooperating to tackle this in 2007. Today, there are six joint projects aimed at identifying barriers and developing tools and innovative solutions to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG).