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IKEA Bought 10,840 Acres of Forest Land in Georgia To Protect It

By Arnesia Young on February 16, 2021

IKEA Bought Forest Land In Georgia To Protect It

Green trees at shady swamp by Altamaha River, Georgia, USA (Photo: Stock Photos from CLP Media/Shutterstock)

As a result of the ongoing climate crisis, many large companies are taking stock of the environmental impact of their business practices. The Ingka Group—the investment group behind the multinational Swedish corporation IKEA—is actively working towards a vision of environmental protection and sustainability. Their latest step in that direction was a recent purchase of 10,840 acres of forest land near the Altamaha River Basin in Southeast Georgia from The Conservation Fund.

Their most recent acquisition in Georgia isn’t the company’s first, as they have already obtained lands in several regions of the United States, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania. Some of the U.S. locations of their holdings include the states of Alabama, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. And in total, the company has bought around 612,821 acres of forest land.

The Ingka Group’s aim behind these purchases is to conserve and protect these lands from being broken up into smaller parcels, sold, and developed. In addition to their conservation efforts, the group also intends to reduce the total greenhouse gas emissions by more than what IKEA currently emits by 2030.

“We truly believe responsible forest management is possible and we see that a large part of our responsibility towards the land we own—and by extension the planet—is to restore forests and plant more than we harvest,” Krister Mattsson, The Ingka Group’s managing director says of the company’s commitment. “In all our properties, nature conservation is important. In this particular U.S. investment in Georgia, first it is important that the land cannot be broken up into small units and it remains forever forestland.”