"What's the Deal with COP21?" - Your Mars Guide to the UN Climate Talks and the Bigger Picture

You’ve probably heard a lot about COP21 recently. 

Global leaders descending on Paris? Talks that will finally solve climate change? 

But what’s it all about? And importantly, what does this one meeting mean when we look at the bigger picture around climate change? 

Our Mars Guide to COP21 aims to give you the lowdown. 

What’s the big deal about COP21? 

Climate change is a huge deal that’s affecting all of us. It’s already widely believed to have caused disasters all over the world - from floods in Bangladesh to droughts in California – that have put lives and livelihoods at risk. 

Next week at COP21 (which is short for the Conference of Parties, brought together by the United Nations) global leaders will come together and attempt to reach an agreement on how the world’s nations collectively tackle the climate crisis. 

Between November 30 and December 11, almost every country from across six continents will be represented at the conference, in the hope that together, their leaders will create clear, meaningful and global targets on how to tackle climate change.

COP21 in Numbers

• 2°C is the threshold temperature rise scientists tell us we need to keep global warming below
• Leaders from 6 continents will be attending COP21 
• And 195 nations will be represented, plus the European Union
• Over 50,000 delegates from business, NGOs, the UN and the general public will be in and around COP
• 7 billion people – the entire world’s population – who will be affected by climate change

What’s this got to do with Mars?

We’re heading to Paris for the conference because we believe that tackling climate change is crucial not only to our business – because we rely on sustainable and efficient agriculture and food production - but also to the future of the planet. And we believe we can add our voice to the calls for decisive action and agreement in December. 

So what is Mars doing?

For more than ten years, we’ve been working to meet numerical, science-based goals, including eliminating all fossil fuel use from our operations by 2040. And we’ve opened a 118-turbine wind farm in Texas to help us reach that goal. It now generates the equivalent of 100% of the electricity needed to power our U.S. operations. 

This is just the start of a long journey and you can see what else we’re committed to achieving in our Principles in Action summary. But no one business can do it alone. We need to work across industries and sectors to make clear and ambitious commitments to tackling our own impacts. So in October, we joined the world’s leading food companies and published an open letter to global leaders pledging individual and collaborative action on climate change. We also joined a number of other American companies in signing up to support the American Business Act on Climate, led by Barack Obama and the White House. 

So as a business, like many others, we’ve been able to make some progress. 

And like other businesses, we’re in a unique position to positively influence global leaders at the conference. We’ve been leading by example with big bold commitments of our own that tackle our impacts, and will continue to add our voices and influence to advocate for policy change.

Is Mars hopeful about COP21?

Although there are immense challenges ahead of us, with the prospect of more businesses becoming involved in sustainability initiatives, coupled with the results from the much anticipated talks - there remains hope that we will finally come to an agreement on how to overcome the most important global issue of this century.