By adopting a regenerative stance, Stora Enso is shifting its sustainability goals from minimising negative environmental impact to becoming a net positive1 contributor within the defined focus areas of climate, circularity and biodiversity by 2050.
Being regenerative means providing renewable and fully circular products and solutions that help reduce climate impact and support biodiversity restoration.
Annica Bresky, Stora Enso’s President and CEO said, “As a renewable materials company, our core business is about offering solutions to sustainability challenges. To balance staying within planetary boundaries and securing economic and social progress, the world needs a transformation away from fossil dependency and a linear economy. With this commitment Stora Enso aims to be a leading actor in driving the transformation towards a bio-based circular economy. We will be transparent with our progress, taking a science-based approach, to offer regenerative solutions that not only mitigate environmental impact, but restore and rebuild.”
Stora Enso’s new sustainability targets
With its updated science-based targets, Stora Enso has commited to reduce absolute scope 1 and 22 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from operations by 50% by 2030 from the 2019 base-year, aligned with the 1.5-degree scenario. Stora Enso also commits to an ambitious target to reduce scope 32 GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 from the 2019 base-year. The science-based targets have been approved by the Science Based Targets initiative, a partnership between CDP, the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
As part of its new ambition, Stora Enso has commited to achieve a net-positive impact on biodiversity in its own forests and plantations by 2050 through active biodiversity management. A set of actions towards 2030 has been developed and initiated to improve biodiversity on species, habitat and landscape levels.
Jari Suominen, Executive Vice President, Forest Division of Stora Enso said, “Stora Enso uses its own forest in Sweden as a development platform for enhancing biodiversity. We will, for example, increase the share of broad-leaved trees and the amount of dead wood. Continuous cover forestry will be tested to evaluate its impact on biodiversity and forest growth in areas suitable for this method. Furthermore, Stora Enso will unify and expand performance evaluations that assess the quality of our work in Finland, Sweden, Russia and the Baltics in order to enhance biodiversity.”