The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has announced a groundbreaking private sector partnership with a "significant, non-earmarked contribution" by global luxury group, Kering.
The contribution will be used to support IPBES' work to strengthen the evidence for better-informed decisions about nature, including policy support activities and capacity-building, outreach and ongoing expert assessments.
Announcing the move, IPBES Executive Secretary Dr Anne Larigauderie said: "The message from science is clear. To properly protect nature and nature’s contributions to people, we must build a globally sustainable economy. This requires the evolution of global financial and economic systems – and this can only be achieved working in partnership with all responsible decision-makers, in government but also, very critically, in the private sector.”
The luxury industry has the power to play a pivotal role in leading the shift towards a sustainable future. Kering's Chief Sustainability Officer and Head of International Institutional Affairs, Marie-Claire Daveu, commented: “This partnership is part of a broader approach to support science and research in order to have a science-based framework to inform our decisions. We need to act now by finding ways to give back to nature what it is offering us on a daily basis.”
The company has emerged as a driver of positive industry change - it led the creation of a Fashion Pact - 32 major companies from the fashion and textile industry that are working to reduce the environmental impact of their businesses. Earlier this year, it was ranked as the second most sustainable company in the world, across all industries, in the annual Corporate Knights Global 100 Index which measures more than 7,500 companies with sales of more than $1billion on 21 indicators related to corporate social responsibility. Kering’s Animal Welfare Standards, published in May, are also the first-ever set of full standards covering animal welfare for luxury and fashion.
Dr Larigauderie added: “This is the first step in what we expect will be a long and fruitful partnership with Kering, hopefully also inspiring many other private sector members to partner with IPBES. There are no viable, long-term solutions to halt or reverse the degradation of biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people that don’t also include the collaboration and active engagement of business.”