By Simon Jessop and Alison Withers
LONDON- Some of the world’s biggest companies, finance houses, cities and regions have joined forces to urge governments to increase their climate ambition ahead of a February 2025 deadline to deliver their emission-cutting plans to the United Nations.
The group has signed up to a coalition named Mission 2025. It is convened by Groundswell – a collaboration between non-profits Global Optimism, Systems Change Lab, and the Bezos Earth Fund.
Corporate backers include consumer goods company Unilever the world’s biggest furniture retailer IKEA and British sustainable energy company Octopus EV. Others are represented through groups such as the We Mean Business Coalition.
While some fossil fuel companies have drawn criticism from environmental campaigners, others in business are frustrated by what they see as short-sighted governments reluctant to regulate to bring about necessary change when the evidence climate change is becoming more extreme is mounting.
Mission 2025 aims to reassure political leaders they have powerful support for bold action.
It is spearheaded by Global Optimism’s Christiana Figueres, who oversaw the Paris Agreement in 2015 that produced the first truly global agreement that countries would cut climate-damaging emissions.
