{"id":420,"date":"2023-05-12T15:34:13","date_gmt":"2023-05-12T14:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/tcrg\/?p=420"},"modified":"2025-03-03T11:43:14","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T11:43:14","slug":"big-tobacco-sustainable-future-sdgs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/tcrg\/2023\/05\/12\/big-tobacco-sustainable-future-sdgs\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Big Tobacco really be part of a sustainable future?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Grow food not tobacco is the message of this year's World No Tobacco Day, as campaigners point to the social, economic and environmental harms caused by the industry. Yet tobacco companies argue that they've embraced the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. In this piece, we consider whether tobacco really has a sustainable future.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)<\/a> are a set of 17 objectives which seek to provide \u201ca shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future\u201d.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tobacco control advocates, researchers and other public health experts argue that tobacco should have no place in that future, citing a range of social, political, economic and environmental harms associated with the industry.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Worldwide, 193 countries have signed up to the SDGs, along with thousands of individual companies and organisations. Among them are the Big Four tobacco companies \u2013 Philip Morris International (PMI), British American Tobacco (BAT), Imperial Brands and Japan Tobacco International (JTI). All four use the UN\u2019s own icons representing the 17 SDGs in their reporting. In 2020 and 2021, PMI produced a dedicated \u201cSustainable Development Goals Index\u201d, outlining how it believes its business activities contribute to the SDGs.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Can Big Tobacco really contribute to a sustainable and healthy planet? Let\u2019s examine their performance against three key SDGs aimed at protecting our health and wellbeing, livelihoods and the planet.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

SDG 3: \u201cEnsure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages\u201d<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

For decades, tobacco companies have made billions of dollars selling a product which is the world\u2019s single biggest cause of preventable disease and premature death. To emphasise their commitment to SDG 3, the Big Four cite <\/span>harm reduction<\/span><\/a>, with claims that they are improving the health and well-being of smokers by offering newer and \u201cless harmful\u201d or \u201cless risky\u201d products, such as <\/span>e-cigarettes<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>heated tobacco products<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>nicotine pouches<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The global market for <\/span>newer nicotine and tobacco products<\/span><\/a> is growing rapidly. But as of 2021, cigarettes still accounted for over 83% of the total market value of all nicotine and tobacco products worldwide \u2013 a total of $779 billion. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

SDG 8: \u201cPromote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all\u201d<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

All four tobacco companies have signed up to initiatives which they claim are aimed at eliminating child labour and ensuring fair working practices. However, these initiatives tend to be industry founded and backed.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Of particular note is the <\/span>Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Growing Foundation<\/span><\/a>, or ECLT. Although it describes itself as independent, since its inception in 2000 ECLT has been funded and governed by the tobacco industry. Its board is formed almost entirely of executives from tobacco companies and tobacco leaf merchants.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite more than 20 years of work by ECLT, child labour remains endemic within tobacco industry supply chains. As of 2018, children were working on farms in virtually all the main tobacco producing countries<\/a>, including Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, Malawi and the United States.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

SDG 13: \u201cTake urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts\u201d<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

In 2020, both PMI and JTI received perfect scores for \u201cEnvironmental reporting\u201d and \u201cClimate strategy\u201d in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, while BAT and Imperial Brands were named as \u201cClimate Leaders\u201d by the <\/span>Financial Times<\/span><\/i> in 2021 and 2022.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While precise data on the tobacco industry\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are difficult to obtain, tobacco\u2019s contribution to climate change is likely to be considerable. A 2018 study<\/a> estimated that production of the six trillion cigarettes manufactured worldwide in 2014 generated almost 84 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. This is higher than total GHG emissions for that year for countries such as Ireland, Portugal and New Zealand.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tobacco companies\u2019 commitments to become \u201ccarbon neutral\u201d tend to focus on their direct emissions and energy use. But the tobacco industry has a complex supply chain, with most emissions coming from other parts of this chain, particularly tobacco farming. This is largely because of curing \u2013 the drying of tobacco leaf \u2013 which often takes place in barns heated by burning wood or coal.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Growing and curing tobacco are also direct causes of deforestation. Forests are cleared to make way for tobacco plantations, while wood is burned as fuel to cure tobacco leaf, leading to the destruction of approximately 600 million trees every year.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Big Tobacco and the SDGs<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

No amount of sustainability strategies, reports and commitments can detract from the harms of Big Tobacco. The focus for the 2023 World No Tobacco Day campaign<\/a> is \u201cgrow food, not tobacco\u201d. According to the campaign page, \u201ctobacco growing harms our health, the health of farmers and the planet\u2019s health\u201d.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Does the tobacco industry really have anything to contribute to a sustainable planet? On the contrary, the threat\u00a0 was summed up by the former Director-General of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan. In 2017, she warned that \u201ctobacco use \u2026 threatens development in every country on every level and across many sectors \u2014 economic growth, health, education, poverty and the environment \u2014 with women and children bearing the brunt of the consequences.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We discuss tobacco and the environment in our podcast Deadly Industry: Challenging Big Tobacco<\/em> - listen here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Header image: Stock Photo ID: 2086918282 on Shutterstock<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Grow food not tobacco is the message of this year's World No Tobacco Day, as campaigners point to the social, economic and environmental harms caused by the industry. Yet tobacco companies argue that they've embraced the UN's Sustainable Development Goals....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":943,"featured_media":421,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[78,91,82,90,89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-sdgs","category-supply-chains","category-sustainability","category-wntd"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/tcrg\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/52\/2023\/05\/20230510_SDGs_blog.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/tcrg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/tcrg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/tcrg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/tcrg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/943"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/tcrg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/tcrg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/tcrg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/tcrg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/tcrg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/tcrg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}