Environmental Philanthropy and Partnerships
We believe that making positive contributions to our communities offers long-lasting benefits to society, our employees, and our company. That’s why, through the ACE Foundations and through regional initiatives, we make philanthropic contributions in support of programs aimed at making our world a cleaner and healthier place for people around the world and for future generations.
For example, the ACE Charitable Foundation has provided US$850,000 to the ACE Land Legacy Fund since the fund's inception in 2005. The funds have been leveraged with other capital sources to protect more than 300,000 acres of the United States' most threatened lands and waters. And since 2008, ACE Environmental Risk—the environmental liability division of ACE USA—has made an annual donation to American Forests as part of its Global ReLeaf campaign. This year the funds will be used to plant 13,000 trees – one for each environmental policy written by ACE globally last year – in multiple locations around the world.
Another area of focus for ACE’s philanthropy is fostering sustainability and resource management. In 2009, the ACE Charitable Foundation provided a number of grants to sustainable agriculture and microfinance programs. For example, a three-year, $600,000 grant to CARE, one of the world’s largest humanitarian aid agencies, focuses on the Sustainable Andean Agriculture program in Peru. This program, which reaches 4,000 people in Peru’s Ayacucho region, offers an innovative response to the global food crisis by training and organizing local farmers to increase the production and quality of native foods. Results are sustainable, improved crop production and reduced environmental degradation, which drive improved nutrition and higher incomes that will enable farmers to better provide for their families’ basic needs.
A $200,000 grant to the World Food Program supported a 2010-2011 Food for Work initiative in Indonesia and Colombia aiming to conserve and restore the local community’s natural resources, as well as reduce the impact of climate change on local farms. More than 2600 Indonesians benefited from immediate and long-term investments, such as cashew planting, agroforestry and nutrition training, and local water conservation and irrigation projects. In Colombia, more than 7000 individuals benefited from ACE’s funding supporting production of staple foods, participation in vocational training such as construction, agriculture and literacy as well as other activities aimed at restoring or building production infrastructure, family and community assets and sanitation for improved health and hygiene.
Corporate Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions
One of the primary objectives of ACE’s corporate environmental strategy is to measure, record, and reduce our corporate greenhouse gas emissions. In 2007, ACE joined Climate Leaders, an industry and government partnership sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Through Climate Leaders, ACE developed long-term, comprehensive climate-change strategies and set a company-wide GHG reduction goal of 8% per employee by 2012. We achieved this goal in 2010 —two years ahead of schedule.
ACE is also a voluntary responding company for the Carbon Disclosure Project, an independent not-for-profit organization which aims to create a lasting relationship between shareholders and corporations regarding the implications for shareholder value and commercial operations presented by climate change.
