Luxury fashion, like every other sector, is coming under pressure to do more to support biodiversity. That much is clear from the IUCN World Conservation Congress, which is being staged in Marseilles from 3 to 11 September.
Luxury industry powerhouses LVMH and Kering have both participated in the high-profile gathering of scientists, policy makers and NGOs. The congress has taken on increasing urgency in the countdown to the COP26, the UN’s global climate summit to be staged in November in Glasgow, Scotland.
Antoine Arnault, head of LVMH image, communications and environment, and Marie-Claire Daveu, Kering chief sustainability and institutional affairs officer, who shared the platform at the congress on Friday, both emphasised luxury’s reliance on nature. “There is no champagne without grapes, no ready-to-wear without silk and cotton, no perfume without flowers,” said Arnault. “It’s our role to give back what we borrow from nature. We see protecting and regenerating biodiversity as offering a creative opportunity rather than new constraints.”
Daveu made it clear that there is a strong business incentive to do more to support biodiversity. “Of course we are doing it for ethical reasons, but not only,” she said. “It’s also very important from a business point of view. We want to continue to have raw materials by volume and also by quality.”
The congress, usually held every four years, is being held a year later than scheduled due to Covid-19 restrictions. French president Emmanuel Macron, actor Harrison Ford and photographer Sebastião Salgado were among the varied group of speakers on the opening day. Also participating from the luxury sector, Cyrille Vigneron, president and CEO of Cartier, and Yves Blouin, general manager of L’Occitane Group.
Diagnosis and measurements
One key challenge is to find the best way to measure biodiversity impact. “On climate change, we have one easy indicator, CO2 emission, and one simple rule – taxing CO2,” said Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, president of MEDEF, France’s employer federation. “On biodiversity, it is much more complicated.”
In 2020, the carbon footprint of the LVMH Group amounted to 4.8 million tons of CO2, with the most significant components of the footprint relating to raw materials and packaging procurement as well as upstream and downstream goods transport, according to LVMH’s latest sustainability report. Kering’s total emissions for 2020 came in at 2.1 million tons of CO2 in 2020.
There is much work to do, Arnault told reporters at the congress’s LVMH booth with Unesco (LVMH partners with Unesco to combat deforestation in the Amazon). “It’s like in medicine: if you don’t have the right diagnosis you can’t offer the right cure. Unfortunately we are still in the diagnosis phase,” he said.
In the meantime, focus has been on regenerative practices.
"Luxury brands can still address this issue while waiting for tools. Their biodiversity impact is primarily in 1) sourcing and 2) influencing their customers' choices," says Erin Billman, executive director at Science Based Targets.
Kering has announced the seven first grantees of its Regenerative Fund for Nature endowed with €5 million, launched this year with Conservation International and intended to help drive the transition of 1 million hectares of land to regenerative approaches in luxury’s supply chains. “Our aim is to protect 2 million hectares by 2025,” said Daveu. Kering’s goal is to have a net positive impact by 2025.
The Regenerative Fund for Nature’s projects include a high-profile initiative with non-profit Fundación Global Nature, which Pur Projet helped conceive (a firm that assists other companies in the integration of social and environmental innovations). It involves working with goat shepherds in Spain to restore traditional grazing systems and regenerate the environment, covering an estimated 17,000 hectares. The project will support producers using holistic grazing and provide micro-grants for the most vulnerable farmers.
LVMH’s initiatives include a training programme with cotton farmers in Turkey to encourage them to reduce chemical use, a project first initiated by Stella McCartney, and Guerlain’s female beekeeping entrepreneurship programme as part of LVMH partnership with Unesco (Guerlain’s skincare range Abeille Royale features bee products). Another approach being adopted by companies is to set clear targets for a number of hectares to regenerate. LVMH, for example, targets the preservation or restoration of 5 million hectares of habitat for flora and fauna by 2030 – “the equivalent of a small country,” Arnault said at the Congress’s CEO summit.
More effective measurements are also important to raise public awareness, Hélène Valade, LVMH environmental development director, added. LVMH is testing a new methodology conceived by CDC Biodiversité, a subsidiary of French public sector savings giant Caisse des Dépôts, called the Global Biodiversity Score (GBS). Using this footprint assessment tool as well as an assessment led by sustainability consulting firm Quantis, LVMH concludes that it borrows “the equivalent of the London area”, says Valade.
One particular measure is fundamental. “At the global level, the rate and scope at which we see the extinction of species are alarming — the ongoing ‘sixth great extinction’ is measured and documented,” says Juliette Cody, head of fashion and luxury at Pur Projet. Fashion specifically has been linked to deforestation, soil degradation and loss of wildlife habitats.
However, Cody says that at the corporate level, the best measure is still unclear. “We know that climate change is aggravating the global decline in biodiversity. But, contrary to climate change, corporate impacts on biodiversity lack a global framework widely understood and used by all the stakeholders.”
She sees signs of hope. “Measurement tools of corporate environmental impacts are getting more and more professional,” she notes. That includes the Global Biodiversity Score being tested by LVMH as well as the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) for nature. Kering has its own Environmental Profit & Loss account which includes “land use”.
A start has been made, but no one should be complacent. “Luxury groups are one step ahead on the biodiversity front, but the scope is not sufficient,” says Cody. Protecting biodiversity, she says, requires “major transformations of agricultural practices and of business models at a drastic level”.
“It’s great to see that frameworks to measure corporate impacts on biodiversity are strengthening and are more widely used across the industry,” she adds. “However, we are in a race to preserve biodiversity and ecosystems. It’s the responsibility of luxury brands to both support these frameworks and take massive actions now.”
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