A rapidly growing global population, accelerating consumption, dietary shifts, climate change and other factors are driving unprecedented price volatility, resource shortages, and other risks in soft commodity supply chains. These challenges pose material, reputational, and systemic risk to investors. WWF seeks to untangle this complexity. Providing distilled guidance based on leading industry practice, The 2050 Criteria is designed to serve as a field guide for investors to access mainstream agricultural, forest, and seafood commodities in a responsible manner.

Climate change adds new threats to fish species over and above those posed by pollution, overexploitation and other factors. The largest threats are rising water temperatures that reduce the growth rates and survival, ocean acidification killing coral reefs, sea changes caused by thawing ice and ocean current disturbances.