The company initially expected to achieve the target by 2030
Suzano, the world's leading eucalyptus pulp producer and a global benchmark in the manufacture of bioproducts developed from eucalyptus,announces today that it has revised one of its 14 long-term goals – collectively known as Suzano’s “Commitments to Renewing Life”. Suzano’s goal to remove 40 million tons of carbon from the air by 2030 has been brought forward by five years to 2025. With this revision, Suzano reinforces its capacity to make an even more positive contribution to the planet's climate by achieving net carbon removals from the atmosphere at a faster pace than previously expected.
The new five-year target will be supported by the expansion of Suzano’s forest covering which will involve both an uplift in commercial planting operations and setting aside new designated conservation areas that were previously anthropized. In capturing carbon from the air, trees play an important role in combating the intensification of the greenhouse effect. Alongside these improvements, Suzano will maintain its focus on reducing carbon emissions across its own operations and supply chain and will continue to improve its forest management to avoid losses in its operations, maximize productivity and increase carbon removal. In parallel, the company remains committed to and engaged in discussing new methodologies for reporting carbon emissions and removals as well as for setting targets linked to climate change, such as the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) and the GHG Protocol guidance on land use.
For the purposes of measuring its carbon removal, Suzano considers only its standing forest base only, with all harvested wood excluded from the calculation.
“Revising the target from 2030 to 2025reinforces our commitment to capturing carbon from the atmosphere and underlines our belief that addressing climate change must be a priority. Decarbonizing the world economy is a matter that requires serious attention and is of utmost importance to current and future generations,” said Walter Schalka, CEO of Suzano.
Discussions around the constant increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,which has been intensifying global warming, will be the subject of an important chapter at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), to be held from October 31 to November 12 in Glasgow, Scotland, which will be attended by Suzano representatives.
Suzano has been participating in a series of events and meetings with other companies,Brazilian government representatives and global leaders to address the topics that will be discussed at COP26. Suzano maintains that in order for concrete targets for reducing carbon emissions to be achieved in the long term, governments,companies and society must set and meet short- and medium-term targets.
On 21October 2021, Suzano hosted its own seminar titled “COP26: What’s News for Brazil” for Brazilian media with the aim of increasing the level of understanding of local journalists around the topics that will be addressed at COP26. The new carbon capture target also was announced at this media event.
Removing carbon from the air, which helps to combat the climate crisis, is one of Suzano’s main long-term targets. The “Commitments to Renewing Life” defined by Suzano are reported annually and verified by an independent third party. The commitments can be viewed at https://centraldeindicadores.suzano.com.br/en/long-term-goals2/.