10,000 Companies Have Climate Targets.

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In January 2026, the Science Based Targets initiative announced a milestone that genuinely deserves celebration: 10,000 companies now have validated science-based climate targets. These 10,000 companies represent over 40% of global market capitalization. Corporate climate target-setting was up 40% in 2025. The number of companies with both near-term and net-zero targets increased by 61% year over year.

And yet, the forests are still falling. Emissions from deforestation continue. The nature finance gap grows. High-integrity carbon credits are supply-constrained. And the gap between what companies say they will do and what they actually do with the forests, land, and ecosystems their supply chains depend on remains vast, measurable, and damning.

So yes — let's celebrate the milestone. And then let's ask the harder question: are these targets actually working?

The Commitment-Action Gap Is the Central Problem of 2026

Half of Fortune 500 companies now have net-zero goals. That's a remarkable shift from 2020, when just 8% had made such commitments. Corporate climate action, as a stated priority, has achieved something close to mainstream status in the boardrooms of the world's largest companies.

But here's the problem: commitments are not the same as outcomes. In 2024, the world lost 8.1 million hectares of forest. Many of the companies contributing to that loss, directly or through their supply chains, have net-zero targets. The commitments and the behavior have not converged.

Scope 3 emissions — which account for approximately 90% of most companies' total carbon footprint — remain the most difficult to address. These are the emissions that live in supply chains, in the land use decisions of suppliers, in the forests cleared to grow the soy that feeds the beef that ends up in products sold by companies with gold-plated net-zero targets.

The SBTi Milestone Is Real — The Integrity Question Remains

The organization has done more than almost any other body to make corporate climate target-setting rigorous, comparable, and credible. SBTi CEO David Kennedy said it plainly in January 2026: companies are setting science-based targets because they recognize the strategic, reputational, and financial benefits of net-zero business transformation.

What 'Real Action' Actually Looks Like in 2026

The companies that are doing this properly are not just buying carbon credits and calling it a day. They are building portfolios. They are moving from purchasing offsets to investing in verified nature-based solutions with long-term offtake agreements. They are using blended finance structures. They are entering into partnerships with Indigenous communities whose land tenure is the most effective form of forest protection ever documented.

The regulatory environment in 2026 rewards this kind of action in ways it never did before. The EU Deforestation Regulation creates hard legal requirements around supply chain traceability. The CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) creates mandatory disclosure obligations. The era of getting credit for a nice-sounding pledge is ending.

The Forest Investment Model: From Cost to Competitive Advantage

Perhaps the most important mindset shift required in 2026 is this: forests are not a cost center. They are not a CSR expense. They are an asset class — one that generates verified carbon sequestration, biodiversity outcomes, supply chain resilience, and long-term financial returns simultaneously.

The companies that have internalized this — that are building actual nature investment portfolios alongside their internal emissions reduction programs — are building structural advantages in supplier relationships, in regulatory positioning, and in the access to premium-quality carbon credits that will become increasingly scarce.