Donna Gregory
There’s a version of corporate sustainability news that arrives every week — a company announces a commitment, issues a quote, and moves on. This one is a little different.
On March 19, H&M Group adopted science-based targets for land, developed using the Science Based Targets Network methodology and independently validated through the Accountability Accelerator.
The distinction matters because the validation step isn’t just a credentialing formality. It means an external body reviewed the targets against scientific thresholds and found them credible, comparable, and robust — language that carries increasing weight as regulators and investors get more serious about separating substantive commitments from polished ones.
What H&M Actually Signed Up For
The targets focus on two materials where H&M’s land-use pressure is most significant: cotton and wool. That’s not an accident — it’s the result of a prior assessment the company conducted to map where in its supply chain nature-related impacts are actually concentrated.
From that foundation, H&M set three specific commitments:
The Bigger Picture
H&M’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Leyla Ertur, put it in terms that any sourcing professional will recognize: the threats to nature also affect the resources the industry depends on — soil health, water cycles, biodiversity. When those systems degrade, so does the reliability of the supply chain built on top of them.
According to SBTN, more than 150 companies are now preparing to set science-based targets for nature. Thirty have publicly signaled their ambition through the Step Up for Nature initiative. The SBTN Ambition Board — which tracks companies with formal commitments — includes Adidas, Novo Nordisk, and Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield among recent entrants. Most of them committed in late 2025 or early 2026. The trajectory is clear.
Five years ago, science-based climate targets were a leading-edge practice adopted by companies trying to get ahead of the curve. Today they’re an expectation, increasingly backed by regulation. Nature targets appear to be following the same path — just on a compressed timeline, with validation infrastructure already in place.
H&M’s disclosure is now part of the public record on SBTN’s Target Tracker, alongside a growing list of companies that have moved from ambition to accountability.
The organizations that start their own assessments now — mapping where their nature-related exposures actually sit — will be better positioned when the question stops being optional.