Protecting Nature and Biodiversity

MetLife’s commitment to environmental stewardship and responsible resource management includes initiatives and programs that protect and enhance nature, plants and animals, including biodiversity and healthy ecosystems.

As a member of 1t.org, a global leadership platform to mobilize, connect and empower the global reforestation community to conserve, restore and grow 1 trillion trees by 2030, MetLife has made a pledge to plant 5 million trees around the world, prioritizing areas vulnerable to natural disasters. We undertake this pledge, in partnership with our customers, colleagues and other stakeholders, to reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere, enhance biodiversity and help reforest areas that have been decimated by deforestation by humans and by natural disasters, including hurricanes, floods and wildfires.

Colleagues learn about beekeeping with help from Bee Downtown.

MetLife and MetLife Foundation are making progress on this pledge through financial support to large-scale reforestation programs in national and state forests, distributing trees to homeowners in communities impacted by disaster and employee volunteer planting projects around the world. In addition, we leverage our support of tree‑planting projects to educate and engage our colleagues, customers and the community on the importance of trees in combating climate change and supporting healthy ecosystems.

Some impactful tree-planting projects MetLife and MetLife Foundation undertook throughout the year included:

25,000 trees planted in the Umpqua National Forest in Oregon, via the Arbor Day Foundation, to protect at-risk species like the northern spotted owl, as well as improve the forest’s resilience against future fires;
5,000 seedlings planted in the Nazaré Paulista region of Brazil, in collaboration with the Ipê Institute (Institute for Ecological Research), to improve the quality of the water supply to the Greater São Paulo area;
MetLife Foundation and the Shakti Foundation provided funding to Dhaka North City Corporation to plant 17,600 trees in Dhaka, Bangladesh, with the aim of improving air quality and transforming abandoned land into green, child‑friendly public spaces; and
MetLife Foundation provided support to the Arbor Day Foundation to plant 100,000 trees between 2022 and 2024 in forests and communities in need across nine different countries in EMEA.

In 2023, we reached a major milestone in our tree-planting commitment:

1.6M+ trees planted

since 2020.

Mangroves: An Outsized Impact  on Tackling Climate Change

Mangroves are trees or shrubs that grow chiefly in tropical coastal swamps that flood at high tide and are greatly important to biodiversity and local ecosystems. They’ve adapted to live in harsh, high‑salinity environments and promote shoreline stabilization and storm protection. Mangrove forests serve as nurseries for many fish species, and the wood is resistant to rot and insects.

Due to the carbon-rich mud that mangroves inhabit, they store up to four times more carbon than tropical forests and accumulate sediment over time, increasing the soil’s carbon content and keeping it in place. Over 35% of the world’s mangroves have been lost since 1980, however, largely due to competing land use, pollution and sea level rise.

In Mexico, MetLife is supporting the planting of 35,000 mangrove trees in 2023 and 2024 through Climate Impact Partners’ Million Mangroves program, helping to reverse mangrove degradation that has increased soil salinity and depleted oxygen in the soil, leading to surrounding vegetation death. Local planting partners monitor new seedlings’ health and make sure they receive enough water throughout the dry season.

In addition to Mexico, we have supported mangrove projects in Indonesia and Madagascar in partnership with Earthly.

In addition to reforestation and afforestation efforts, we are committed to protecting biodiversity more broadly. We have initiated a three-year partnership with Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC), whose mission is to conserve Australian native animal species and the habitats in which they live. MetLife’s partnership with AWC will include financial support for its reintroduction program, which aims to restore threatened species that have disappeared from Australian landscapes. AWC will also provide education on biodiversity and climate change to MetLife colleagues.

In an effort to promote the health of pollinators, MetLife supports programs that maintain beehives at some of our office locations. At our Cary, North Carolina, and Tampa, Florida, campuses we partner with Bee Downtown to maintain honey beehives and provide year-round employee engagement opportunities. In North Carolina, these bees produced 311 pounds of honey in 2023 (double the state average), flying an estimated 17 million miles in the process. MetLife also sponsors beehives maintained by our partnership with The Best Bees Company at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, which seeks to promote pollination in the surrounding meadowlands’ ecosystem.

MetLife and MIM also originate investments that support biodiversity and healthy ecosystems.