"Global business and climate change: don’t get left behind", 5 May 2015

[C]hanging climate already costs Unilever between $300m and $400m every year, mainly due to droughts and flooding. Manifestations of climate-induced extreme weather will only become more frequent in the future. When the climate hurts, people and businesses also feel the pain...We teamed up with other global companies and governments and civil society groups to form the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020, which aims to eliminate deforestation from the supply chain of palm oil and other key commodities like soy, paper, and beef. Halting all tropical deforestation and forest degradation could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by three gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year...

There are a number of things we can do to increase the efficiency of our transition to an environmentally friendly world. For example, building more compact cities with good mass transit systems would substantially reduce pollution and generate savings of more than $3tn over the next 15 years. And restoring just 12% of the world’s degraded lands to production would feed another 200 million people without having to raze forests...Leading businesses are taking large strides in ensuring a sustainable future, but ultimately, they can only do so much. In many countries, unpredictable signals on climate policy make it difficult for investors to make the right long term choices...Global business is responding to the climate challenge. It’s time for governments to join us in ensuring a better planet for everyone...