If there’s a silver lining to the backlash against sustainability, it’s this: You’re not alone in what you’re seeing and feeling.

New findings from a survey conducted by Trellis data partner GlobeScan, in conjunction with the ERM Sustainability Institute and Volans, reveal a sharp rise in global sustainability professionals’ concern about the backlash against the sustainability agenda and ESG. Globally, seven in 10 experts now say there’s a significant backlash in their country, up 13 percentage points from last year.

This shift is especially pronounced in North America, where more than 90 percent of experts report experiencing significant resistance. In contrast, nearly two-thirds of experts in Asia-Pacific say there is little to no backlash, underscoring the uneven and regionally fragmented nature of the pushback. In Europe, seven in 10 experts believe there is a backlash, while Latin America and the Caribbean (60 percent) and Africa and the Middle East (61 percent) fall in between, reflecting a globally uneven but broadly felt sense of resistance.

What this means

The surge in backlash — particularly in North America and Europe — reflects growing polarization around sustainability. In these more resistant markets, progress will require careful messaging, stronger coalitions and reframing sustainability in ways that resonate with local priorities and issues.

In less-polarized regions, particularly in Asia-Pacific, there are ample opportunities to accelerate impact, scale innovation and demonstrate the value of sustainability as a driver of economic and social resilience.

Based on a survey of 844 sustainability practitioners across 72 countries globally conducted April-May 2025.

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The first commercial-scale trial of an innovative technology for onboard capture of carbon dioxide emissions from shipping vessels has been slated for later this year.

Seabound, a U.K. startup, will install a unit around the size of a shipping container on the deck of the UBC Cork, a 5,700-metric-ton vessel that carries cement from Heidelberg Materials, one of the world’s largest producers of the building material. The vessel’s exhaust will be routed over CO2-absorbing material in the container, safely locking away a portion of the vessel’s emissions.

The trial comes at a time of mounting pressure on the maritime shipping industry, which generates around a billion tons of CO2 annually, or roughly 3 percent of the global total. The International Maritime Organization, the United Nations agency that regulates the sector, recently announced plans for emissions-intensity rules that would force large vessels to cut emissions by up to 43 percent by 2035.

Additional advantage

Onboard carbon capture appeals because existing vessels can be retrofitted relatively quickly and cheaply, said Lars Erik Marcussen, logistics project manager at Heidelberg Materials Northern Europe. In the coming tests, the system will capture 25 percent of the CO2 emitted by the vessel, but the technology can achieve up to 95 percent capture, according to Seabound.

Onboard capture has an additional advantage for Heidelberg: the process involves reacting pebbles of calcium hydroxide, commonly known as lime, with CO2 to produce calcium carbonate, or limestone, which is an input into cement production.

“We can take the limestone pebbles and put them straight into our cement kilns,” said Marcussen.

The UBC Cork is one of nine vessels that Marcussen oversees. If the trial is successful, he hopes to install the carbon capture technology on an additional vessel every year. The work complements capture technology that Heidelberg has installed at its cement plant in Brevik, Norway, which now captures 400,000 tons of CO2 annually.

Energy expenses

One challenge to be surmounted before the technology scales is the production of low-carbon lime. The issue is serious enough to give some experts doubts about Seabound’s approach.

“There are systems that regenerate limestone back into calcium oxide [a precursor of calcium hydroxide], but this is a very energy-intensive process that incurs significant costs, even with 100 percent green electricity,” said Felix Klann, maritime transport policy officer at Transport & Environment, a nonprofit that works across Europe. “Shipping companies should focus instead on avoiding their emissions altogether by investing in green e-fuels, electrification and designing efficient ships.”

The technology is not yet cost-competitive, but Alisha Fredriksson, Seabound’s co-founder and CEO, expects costs to come down to around $150 per metric ton of CO2 capture as the technology scales. She added that once the cost of complying with the IMO rules and the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme are factored in the process will produce savings that pay back upfront costs within one to five years.

Seabound also needs to identify sources of low-carbon lime. At present, the emissions associated with producing and transporting the lime more than outweigh the benefits of capturing CO2 from the ship’s exhaust.

“We’re working with lime companies to ensure that there is a supply of green lime for our full-scale deployments,” said Fredriksson. “We want to team up with lime companies to develop dedicated kilns as close to the port as possible, so we can reuse the material over and over and then either sequester or sell that pure CO2.”

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Like many of its competitors in retail, Sweden’s Ingka Group — the IKEA brand’s primary retailer — faces a daunting Scope 3 challenge: Value-chain emissions made up 98 percent of the 30 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) the company emitted in 2016, the baseline year for its net-zero target.

Special Series

Chasing Net Zero

Intro: A case-by-case look at corporate progress on 2030 climate goals

Profile 1: Nestlé is on track for a 50 percent cut in emissions. Here’s how (holes and all)

Methodology: How we assess a company’s progress on net zero

Yet Ingka is unlike its peers in that it has made remarkable progress toward its targets, which call for a 50 percent reduction by 2030 and reaching net zero by mid-century. In 2024, the company emitted 21 million tCO2e, putting it roughly on track for its end-of-decade goal. 

By contrast, at least half of the world’s biggest retailers don’t have a formal net-zero target at all. For example, Walmart, the world’s largest retailer — known as a pioneer in supply chain decarbonization — is struggling to deliver on its own short-term commitments.

Ingka’s secret weapon? The company’s commitment to investing in climate projects is significant: the more than $5 billion it’s spent on solar and wind projects since 2009 have accrued enough assets for Ingka to be classified as a midsize energy company. 

But this second profile in the Chasing Net Zero series — our company-by-company look at progress toward 2030 climate goals — reveals that just as important might be Ingka’s close ties with Inter IKEA, which supplies it with everything from bookshelves to Swedish meatballs. Few other retailers are as dependent on one supplier. While Ingka buys from 1,500 suppliers, 81 percent of its climate footprint comes from IKEA foods and products, according to data published by both companies. By comparison, Walmart has at least 100,000 purchasing relationships.

Ingka and IKEA are separate, privately held entities with individual net-zero targets, but their goals were developed in close collaboration and validated last year by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). Senior staff from both organizations participate in the Inter IKEA Strategic Sustainability Council, which meets twice a year. 

“This is not just a sustainability transition to the sustainability team, it’s about the whole of IKEA and the whole of the business,” said Simon Henzell-Thomas, climate and nature manager at Ingka.   

This relationship provides granular insights into supplier emissions that create an advantage few others in the sector enjoy. “As a retailer, it is a huge lift to get at this data because you are the last point on a very long supply chain,” said Honor Cowen, global head of retail and apparel at consulting firm Anthesis Group.

Largest liability: Materials

Ingka manages 574 locations in 31 countries and generated $47 billion in fiscal 2024 — 90 percent of IKEA’s total sales. The retailer’s top emissions source by a wide margin is purchased goods, which made up 36 percent of its Scope 3 total in its 2016 baseline year. 

The Scope 3 emissions come from operations as diverse as cattle ranches and data centers, but the highest impact within the category, at almost 10 million tCO2e, is from raw materials. Ingka is aiming to squeeze that down to 5.5 million metric tons by 2030, according to its first net-zero transition plan, published in February. 

To reduce those numbers, Ingka will need Inter IKEA to change how its goods are designed, produced and transported. “Moving toward more renewable materials, more sustainable materials, that is going to be a huge part of reducing our footprint,” said Henzell-Thomas. 

Clues about the potential for Ingka’s progress are found in Inter IKEA’s 2024 climate report. Here are plans for three of the five materials that contribute most to Ingka’s and IKEA’s emissions:

• Metals. Reducing the steps required to manufacture products can cut emissions. IKEA is using stronger grades of steel for some products, such as its Mittzon desks, to reduce the amount of the material required. It’s also boosting use of recycled metals: The company uses a minimum of 70 percent recycled aluminum in widely available products including cabinet doors and mirrors.
• Wood. IKEA plans to switch to recycled wood for one-third of its wood products by 2030, up from 16 percent now. One sticking point is the lack of recycling infrastructure for fiberboard and particle board. The company has set up its own recycling line in Poland to produce pegboards and better understand what’s needed to scale this work. It’s also investigating bio-based glues, which help cut emissions from board production. The downside is that bio-based glues could make it harder to disassemble certain products, hindering IKEA’s and Ingka’s recycling goals.
• Textiles. IKEA is switching to lower-carbon sources for the fabrics, foam and stuffing used in bed linens, curtains, rugs, towels, sofas and mattresses. Promising developments in 2024 included curtains made of waste polyester and a sofa stuffed with felt made of fabric waste rather than polyurethane foam.

These changes will require technologies that are still emerging, along with policy changes and infrastructure investments. “We have a plan, but we also have gaps there that we’re going to close,” Henzell-Thomas said. 

Bright spot: Product use at home 

Ingka’s second biggest Scope 3 liability, at 24 percent of its 2016 total, comes from emissions generated by its customers’ use of the ovens, stoves, refrigerators, lighting and other products it sells. This is a bright spot for the company: It has met its high-level goal of cutting the impact in half by reducing emissions to 3 million tCO2e tons in 2024. The push now is to slice an additional 2 million tCO2e off the category by 2030. 

Product-level changes are a big part of this success. IKEA improved the efficiency of its entire lighting line by 90 percent simply by phasing out sales of incandescent bulbs, for example, decreasing related emissions by 57 percent from its 2016 baseline. Now the focus is on reducing the electricity used by appliances such as refrigerators and ovens. 

Ingka’s clean energy services, which help customers install solar panels or heat pumps at home, are another key driver of reductions in this category. And Ingka’s investment arm plans to spend $3 billion more before 2030 on more renewable energy installations and other key technologies for the clean energy transition, such as alternative fuels and grid-scale batteries.

Policy-dependent lever: Mobility

Ingka’s third-largest Scope 3 component contains the transport-related emissions from delivery services, as well as customer, co-worker and business travel. The retailer has reduced this footprint by just 13 percent, to 2.3 million tCO2e, since the 2016 baseline year. What’s more, emissions rose slightly between 2023 and 2024. Ingka’s transition plan calls for an additional 40 percent reduction by 2030 to 1.6 million tCO2e.

To achieve that, Ingka is investing in electric and alternative-fuel vehicles to increase the proportion of home deliveries it fulfills with zero-emissions vehicles from 40 percent to 90 percent by 2028. The retailer is also providing more pick-up locations near customers’ homes.

Ingka is prioritizing work in regions where regulatory support for a transition to zero-emissions vehicles is more favorable. In Paris, for example, Ingka uses boats on the Seine to transport goods to distribution points where they are picked up by EVs and delivered.

Circular solution: Product end of life

Ingka’s circular economy initiatives intersect with the work IKEA is doing to cut materials emissions. These efforts reduce Ingka’s emissions related to product end-of-life — which contributed 6 percent of Ingka’s overall footprint in 2016 — while providing IKEA with a source of recycled materials. 

Ingka reported 1.6 million metric tons in emissions for product end-of-life in 2024, down 15 percent from 2016. It achieved this by expanding sales of secondhand items to a majority of stores, distributing millions of free parts to encourage repairs, refurbishing the IT equipment it uses in stores and cutting food waste. The goal is now to cut 0.3 million more tons by 2030.

Sriram Rajagopal, head of climate at Inter IKEA Group, said he was confident of hitting the 2030 goal for these emissions. But he noted that Ingka and IKEA can’t solve systemic issues, such as limited recycling infrastructure, on their own. “We need collective effort where many actors contribute to a circular economy and society,” he said.

Ingka’s investment arm is also putting $1 billion into circular economy startups. The retailer estimates that those ventures have so far recycled around 1.9 million metric tons of materials, avoiding 5 million tCO2e. 

One example is RetourMatras, which recycled more than 1 million mattresses in 2024, avoiding an estimated 90,000 tCO2e. It sells that material back to customers such as IKEA for use in new production. 

Ingka’s edge: Net-zero integration

Leaders across all levels of Ingka are accountable for delivering on emissions reductions. Ingka’s chief sustainability officer, Karen Pflug, is part of the group’s management team, which meets at least eight times annually. The group is directly accountable to Ingka’s executive board, which includes the CEO, deputy CEO/CFO and group legal counsel.

This sort of deep integration is indicative of leaders in retail sector decarbonization, said Evan Sheehan, head of the retail, wholesale and distribution practice at Deloitte. The most successful companies, he noted, share a few best practices:  

• Top executives buy into the company’s sustainability strategy and provide resources to support it.
• Teams agree on clear metrics for demonstrating the return on these investments.
• Well-defined models are developed to capture and use data to drive net-zero goals.

Ingka does all three. CEO Jesper Brodin is fond of saying that “being climate smart is also resource smart, cost smart and business smart.” 

Up to 85 percent of the privately held company’s profits are also put toward business improvements, including those designed to reduce emissions. Historical analysis suggests other retailers, including Walmart, reinvest around 40 percent of profits.

That board level support is another reason Ingka says it is poised to deliver on its 2030 goal. “We’re pleased with where we are,” said Henzell-Thomas. 

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The opinions expressed here by Trellis expert contributors are their own, not those of Trellis.​

We might forget it, but it’s true: By absorbing carbon from the atmosphere, the world’s forests and oceans shield us from the consequences of our emissions.

Indigenous peoples have long known this and have managed their land for generations by protecting and restoring the world’s natural carbon sinks to mitigate the environmental crisis. 

As more companies wake up to this fact, they’re recognizing the need to develop nature-based projects and programs on ancestral lands with the input of the community. So much so that key features of inclusive nature-based projects and programs are emerging, providing pathways for companies to promote equitable engagement.

Prioritizing community engagement 

It’s estimated that 54 percent of the world’s intact forests are on Indigenous lands storing vast carbon stocks. For generations, people from these communities have used their extensive land management expertise to restore and replenish the environment. 

It’s obvious, but I think it needs saying: The best nature-based projects and programs are those which invite people with the deepest knowledge of a local environment to the decision-making table. Without their expertise, initiatives are more likely to fail. And if Indigenous peoples and traditional and local communities are excluded, projects will face social and reputational risks, too.

When these communities are properly included, the outcomes are stronger and longer-lasting. Programs can only endure if local people feel a genuine sense of ownership and see clear benefits tied to their development priorities.

For example, I recently spoke with colleagues at Silvania’s Race to Belem campaign, who are working with the Brazilian state of Tocantins to establish a state-level effort to curb deforestation. They made it clear that the involvement of Indigenous peoples, local communities and smallholder farmers was critical for success. They’ve discussed proposed revenue sharing and spending with those communities and the program will invest a percentage of its profits in sustainable livelihoods.

Community credentials count

Corporate buyers increasingly deploy internal teams and third-party experts to assess project integrity and flag risks. But up-front diligence is only part of the picture.

While early assessments often focus on the technical quality of emissions reductions and carbon accounting, buyers are placing a growing emphasis on a project or program’s social credentials — how it engages communities, protects rights and shares revenues. After contracts are signed, however, oversight often relies on developer reports or informal feedback. That’s not a reliable basis for managing risk or ensuring accountability.

In response, some companies are beginning to use tools from human rights and supply chain audits in carbon projects and programs. For example, companies such as Microsoft and Salesforce have started including third-party verification, stakeholder engagement and safeguards for Indigenous rights in their carbon credit investment agreements. These approaches reflect a growing understanding that durable, high-integrity outcomes require independent, ongoing oversight, particularly when it comes to community engagement and revenue sharing.

Many corporate buyers would welcome clearer and more consistent reporting formats for nature-based projects and programs. They want transparency around how revenues are distributed, how communities can raise grievances and how developers respond to concerns. Tools such as Beyond Alliance’s Common App are emerging to combat these challenges by prompting developers to disclose such project details. 

An ethical guide for companies

As expectations rise, initiatives such as Beyond Alliance are helping shape what good looks like and setting higher standards for social integrity and buyer responsibility. Alongside this, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Buyer’s Guide offers a practical framework for companies procuring nature-based carbon credits from projects and programs that work equitably with Indigenous peoples and local communities. It’s built on two core principles: do no harm; and deliver benefits.

​​Project developers also play a pivotal role. Their approach to co-design, governance and long-term revenue sharing often determines whether these principles are upheld in practice.

Do no harm: First, companies should look for nature-based carbon projects and programs that demonstrate they have gained free, prior, informed consent from affected communities through dialogue using interpreters when necessary. Companies should engage in transparent, culturally appropriate communications with local people. Nature-based initiatives should also recognize local people’s land and resource rights. In fact, the best projects and programs help to consolidate and enforce these rights.

To ensure no harm, companies should check that nature-based initiatives regularly monitor the social impacts of their work. This means having proper safeguards and grievance mechanisms in place which local people can use to express opinions and raise concerns. It’s also important to submit projects and programs to local oversight institutions that may be aligned with activities on the ground. 

Deliver benefits: The best projects and programs consider local people as active participants rather than beneficiaries of carbon revenue. Companies can look for programs and projects that invest in local capacity building and leadership opportunities. For example, the Brazilian state of Acre just completed widespread consultations that led to the decision to channel 72 percent of the proceeds from one nature-based program to communities. 

Engagement is foundational to success

Engaging Indigenous people, traditional and local communities isn’t a formality; it’s foundational. Without involving the people with the best expertise, nature-based projects will lose out. They simply cannot be as successful.

The good news is that the tools to facilitate inclusion already exist. Now it’s time for companies to use their influence and push for better terms for Indigenous peoples, traditional and local communities.

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