Target 15.3: Combat desertification; restore degraded land
By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
UNEP reports up to 40 percent of the planet's land is degraded and that farming expansion has cleared or transformed an estimated 70 percent of the world's grasslands and 50 percent of its savannahs. Restoring land therefore runs through the practices of agribusiness, food and fertilizer companies and the commodity traders that finance conversion. The Bunge case shows owners can move the traders whose sourcing drives savannah conversion. Shareholder support reached 98 percent in 2021, and commitments covering native vegetation conversion in the Cerrado followed. Governments must still deliver land-degradation-neutral policy and restoration programs, so owners supply a necessary input and governments must also act.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Files shareholder proposals and negotiates agreements with agricultural commodity traders and retailers to stop conversion of native vegetation in soy supply chains, securing time-bound no-deforestation and no-conversion commitments from Bunge and ADM.
Green Century's Top Ten Highlights from 2025, Green Century Capital Management, 2025-12
Led a 2026 shareholder proposal asking Home Depot to assess and disclose its dependencies and impacts on nature, citing degradation of the Canadian boreal forest that supplies about 17 percent of the company's timber.
Investors ask Home Depot to disclose its impact on nature, Green Century Capital Management, 2026-05
2 campaigns on record
Assess and publicly disclose how the company depends on and impacts nature, using frameworks such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures.
With Green Century Capital Management
Result: 14.3 percent of voting shareholders at the May 2026 annual meeting, representing about $33 billion of company ownership.
Investors ask Home Depot to disclose its impact on nature, Green Century Capital Management, 2026-05
Adopt time-bound no-deforestation and no-conversion commitments covering Latin American soy supply chains, including the Amazon and the Cerrado.
Result: Both companies made time-bound no-deforestation and no-conversion commitments in their Latin American soy supply chains.
Protecting Forests in Brazil, Green Century Capital Management, 2025-11
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.