Forests are crucial for biodiversity
Forests cover approximately 30% of the world’s land area. These vital ecosystems with varied habitats are home to the majority of species living on land.
In the IKEA 2030 Forest Positive Agenda, we continue to lead projects and collaborate with others to enhance biodiversity globally, going beyond our own business. Special focus is given to how our biodiversity efforts can be monitored and made more efficient.
As a part of this, setting global standards that will enable businesses to assess their full value chain impact on biodiversity is a vital process. We are working together with others to develop standards and tools which can support IKEA and other businesses to include biodiversity in decision-making on, for example, material choice in product development.
Read more about the IKEA Forest Positive Agenda towards 2030
The Sow a Seed project offers important lessons in terms of carbon storage, ecosystem integrity, water quality, and much more. The most important conclusion is that it is possible to regenerate rainforests and restore biodiversity.
Restoring biodiversity beyond the IKEA supply chain
Over a period of 20 years, together with our partners we have restored around 18,500 hectares of heavily degraded rainforest in Borneo, Malaysia. This project, known as “Sow a Seed”, is one of the largest reforestation projects in the world and has now been given the highest protection status in Malaysia. IKEA has funded and actively supported the project together with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and Sabah Foundation, a Malaysian government organisation.
As a result of assisting the natural forest regeneration and replanting three million seedlings of around 80 indigenous species of trees, other species have followed to recreate a forest ecosystem which in many ways is close to the original. And most importantly – wildlife has started to return to the area, including pygmy elephants, orangutans, clouded leopards, and hornbills, as well as other rare species spotted using camera traps.
