Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2025

The Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2025 finds that major agrifood companies often rely on undefined land-based carbon dioxide removals (CDR) to meet emission targets, which obscures a lack of structural action on key transitions. While most companies commit to halting deforestation, they generally lack strong commitments to shifting toward plant-based proteins or reducing synthetic fertilizer use. The report highlights significant integrity gaps, particularly for JBS, and calls for standard setters like the SBTi and GHG Protocol to require separate targets for emission reductions and removals.

• Agrifood companies' emission reduction targets are undermined by the use of an unspecified amount of land-based carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to claim progress, which distracts from a lack of deep structural reductions, particularly regarding methane.
• Most assessed companies fail to commit to transitioning to plant-based proteins as a core mitigation strategy, despite the high impact of livestock on global methane emissions.
• While most companies have commitments to source deforestation-free commodities by 2025, implementation details are often lacking, and targets frequently exclude certain commodities or indirect suppliers.
• There is a critical lack of targets and measures to reduce the use of synthetic fertilizers, which are a major source of nitrous oxide emissions.
• The use of mass balance and book-and-claim commodity certificates to claim emission reductions is considered premature and potentially misleading due to a lack of physical traceability.
• Commitments to reduce food loss and waste are largely absent from the strategies of the assessed companies, with Danone being the only one with a credible and ambitious target aligned with Sustainable Development Goals.
• JBS's climate strategy is rated as having very poor integrity, as its net-zero pledge for 2040 lacks an accompanying absolute emission reduction target and its 2030 intensity target would result in only a 1.1% absolute reduction.
• Nestlé's 2030 pledge to reduce emissions by 50% is interpreted by the authors as translating to actual reductions of only 13–26% when land-based removals are excluded.
• PepsiCo has delayed its net-zero target from 2040 to 2050 and reported an increase in the absolute tonnage of virgin plastic in 2023 despite having packaging targets.

APA

Smit, S., Fraser, E., Day, T., & Hans, F. (2025). Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2025. Carbon Market Watch. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/CCRM2025_SectionB1_Agrifood_Standalone_v04_web.pdf

Chicago

Smit, Sybrig, Eve Fraser, Thomas Day, and Frederic Hans. Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2025. Carbon Market Watch, 2025. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/CCRM2025_SectionB1_Agrifood_Standalone_v04_web.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Smit |first1=Sybrig |last2=Fraser |first2=Eve |last3=Day |first3=Thomas |last4=Hans |first4=Frederic |title=Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2025 |publisher=Carbon Market Watch |date=June 2025 |url=https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/CCRM2025_SectionB1_Agrifood_Standalone_v04_web.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{smit2025corporate, author = {Smit, Sybrig and Fraser, Eve and Day, Thomas and Hans, Frederic}, title = {{Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2025}}, institution = {Carbon Market Watch}, year = {2025}, month = jun, url = {https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/CCRM2025_SectionB1_Agrifood_Standalone_v04_web.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }