Supporting Tesco launch their Nature Programme

natcap team up with Tesco as their biodiversity intelligence partner.

^{Excerpt from Tesco's original press release, here.}

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Tesco has stepped up its support for a key commitment on tackling water pollution and risk in the food industry, as it announced plans to roll out a programme of work to aid the shift to a nature positive food system.

Tesco’s Nature Programme will focus its efforts on five key areas of action: protecting nature in key sourcing landscapes, both in the UK and abroad; scaling industry leading innovations to support biodiversity; implementing a nature plan across its own estate and operations; continuing to lead the industry on research into key challenges facing nature and the food system; and playing a leading role in cross sector engagement.

The Programme will build on the ground-breaking work of the Tesco WWF Partnership, which came to a formal end earlier this month. The retailer will continue to work alongside WWF and other retailers as part of WWF’s Retailers’ Commitment for Nature Group, as well as developing its own initiatives with its suppliers and farmers.

Tesco will continue to support vital water stewardship work in key UK and international sourcing areas alongside local partners such as the Norfolk Rivers Trust and the Wye and Usk Foundation. Tesco has committed to providing significant multi-year support to help achieve WRAP’s Courtauld 2030 Water Roadmap, which aims to ensure 50% of the UK’s fresh food and drink is sourced from areas with sustainable water management by 2030. The increased support will help fund a network of critical on-the-ground collective action projects under WRAP’s Water Roadmap, helping to address water risk in catchments identified as being most affected by UK food & drink production.

In a further move, Tesco has urged key suppliers in the River Wye catchment, an important region for food production which is struggling with the impact of water pollution, to match its ambition on achieving the Courtauld 2030 Water Roadmap, and sign up to third party environmental certification schemes as soon as possible. Tesco will also be encouraging suppliers to sign up to WRAP’s Water Roadmap and the Wye & Usk Collective Action Project.

The Nature Programme will continue to drive Tesco’s efforts to scale up cutting-edge innovations in its supply chains to help reduce emissions and protect nature, including promoting biodiversity monitoring technologies, as well as supporting the use of low carbon fertilisers by its farmers and growers.Tesco completed the roll-out of LEAF Marque certification across its UK fruit and veg supply chains earlier this year. Through the programme, Tesco will aim to increase habitats for biodiversity in its supply chains through nature corridors, riverbank planting and hedgerows, building on the work of its LEAF Marque certified produce growers.

Tesco has been working to comprehensively map out the metrics needed to understand nature-related impacts and pressures in its supply chains and has recently created a framework for nature monitoring at a supply chain level in partnership with Natcap. This framework will help inform the work it carries out as part of the programme, and will support the implementation of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) reporting framework.

As well as encouraging the protection of biodiversity in its supply chains, Tesco has also committed to embedding a strategy for protecting nature across its own estate, including its stores and distribution centres. The retailer will provide further detail of this work in the new year.

The work of the Programme will help Tesco achieve its stretching net zero targets. Tesco recently became one of the first companies globally to have its targets validated by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) including emissions relating to forests, land and agriculture (FLAG). WRAP welcomed Tesco’s commitment on supporting vital collective action projects on water stewardship across the UK and abroad.