India is the world’s second-largest cotton producer, after China , with more than 60 million people working directly or indirectly in the country’s cotton value chain. WWF and IKEA have been working together in India to address challenges in cotton agriculture and to introduce better farming practices. In doing so, the partnership has joined forces with farmers and local communities to promote community-led water stewardship, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and soil erosion, and increase biodiversity by integrating trees in cotton landscapes. The partnership also works with farmers on increasing their use of low-cost Nature-based Solutions (NbS) to manage their land and water resources in a responsible way.   
   
2004: Early years  
In 2004, WWF-India and IKEA developed the ‘Thirsty Crop Sustainable Cotton Initiative’ with the aim of defining what ‘better management practices’ entail.  This initiative provided an initial 40 farmers with water-efficient farming methods to reduce the water footprint of cotton cultivation.  The early years of the partnership also revealed the need to establish a governance structure to bring people together on issues surrounding global cotton production and help support its market transformation to collectively address the negative environmental and social impacts of conventional cotton production. These groupings are eventually what helped lead to the establishment of the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), today known as Better Cotton, a programme working to promote responsible cotton production at a global scale and setting standards for reducing pesticide and water use while improving social and economic conditions of farmers.    

2005-2010: Laying the groundwork for the Better Cotton Initiative     
In 2005, the cotton programme was officially established within the partnership. The same year, the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) was formed, where WWF and IKEA were founding members. But it would not be until 2009 that BCI had developed global principles and criteria for Better Cotton. A precursor to the BCI was the Sustainable Cotton Initiative in India, established in 2007. Here, the partnership initiated a pilot project with the goal of helping farmers transition from conventional to more sustainable farming by developing Better Management Practices (BMP) that improved crop yields, lowered input costs for farmers, created market linkages, and encouraged practices that protect soil health and biodiversity. These initiatives were at the forefront of the development of worldwide standards for BCI. Results of the pilot showed that the consumption of water, pesticides, and fertilisers had decreased by 30%, 38% and 32%* among the roughly 4000 farmers who adopted BMP. In 2010, the project transitioned from a better management practice pilot to fully adopting BCI standards, resulting in the first BCI-certified cotton being produced in India. 



2010-2015: From Pilot Success to Building Global Momentum   
By the mid-2010s, 43,000 farmers across the Indian subcontinent had adopted better cotton practices. The success of early cotton sustainability initiatives led to a call to action during World Water Week in 2010, urging more businesses to join the BCI platform and scale up their commitment to sustainable cotton production. In 2015, IKEA achieved a 100% more sustainable cotton sourcing with 100% of its cotton from recycled or Better Cotton sources.