Unveiled on the sidelines of the COP15 Biodiversity Summit in Montreal, the new Climate Fund for Nature has already secured €140m of backing and is seeking to raise €300m from across the luxury fashion and beauty sectors
RH DESK
December 12
Luxury goods giant Kering and cosmetics firm L’Occitane Group have today teamed up to launch a new multi-million Euro investment fund designed to support nature-based solutions that can both enhance biodiversity and expand natural carbon sinks, agency reports said.
Unveiled on the sidelines of the COP15 Biodiversity Summit in Montreal, the new Climate Fund for Nature has already secured €140m of backing and is seeking to raise €300m from across the luxury fashion and beauty sectors.
The fund is to be managed by Mirova, an affiliate of Natixis Investment Managers that is 100 per cent focused on sustainable investing.
The companies said the fund vehicle would start operations in the first quarter of 2023, with the objective of supporting high-quality projects dedicated to nature protection and restoration. It is expected to back a range of regenerative agriculture and carbon offset projects, with a “specific emphasis” on projects that can generate co-benefits for communities and lead to the empowerment of women.
The fund is also designed to help investing companies deliver on their low carbon and sustainable supply chain goals, with projects mostly selected from countries where the investors source their core raw materials.
Marie-Claire Daveu, chief sustainability and institutional affairs officer of Kering, said the fund was an opportunity for firms across the Luxury Fashion and Beauty sectors to “collectively support biodiversity restoration and conservation at scale”.
“Kering is proud to collaborate with Mirova and we welcome the fund’s first partner L’Occitane Group,” she added. “Innovative financing mechanisms are crucial to channel much-needed investment into nature-based solutions if we are to reverse biodiversity decline by 2030 and, simultaneously, address climate change, which is intrinsically interlinked with nature. We entreat other companies to join this ambitious initiative contributing to a nature-positive future.”
Adrien Geiger, chief sustainability officer of L’Occitane Group and managing director of L’Occitane en Provenc, said: “With our planet facing a global climate and biodiversity crisis never witnessed before, L’Occitane Group is proud to join forces with Kering and Mirova to scale-up our action against the degradation of nature, which provides the very resources and services we rely on. While reducing our emissions and impacts is our priority, the Climate Fund for Nature will help us go further by supporting projects that encourage regenerative practices, benefiting both nature and communities.”
The launch comes on the same day as International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) published a major new report – titled Restoration Barometer – which documents how investments of $26bn from public and private sources across 18 countries have brought 14 million hectares of degraded landscapes under restoration. It shows that restoration activities are currently ongoing in an area almost the size of Greece, supporting an estimated 12 million jobs and resulting in over 145 million tonnes of carbon dioxide being sequestered in 2022.
The latest developments on the sidelines of COP15 come as negotiations continue to try and finalise a new global agreement to significantly enhance nature protection and restoration efforts globally. Reports over the weekend suggested the talks were making good progress, but campaigners remain concerned that proposals for ambitious targets to protect 30 per cent of land and sea, mobilise increased investment in nature protection projects, and require companies to report on nature-related risks are at risk of being watered down.
