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The Science Based Targets Network has announced the first set of companies adopting science-based targets for nature, and Kering is leading the charge for fashion.
The announcement, made today during the UN biodiversity conference in Cali, Colombia, follows a year-long pilot of the targets by 17 global companies. Kering is now one of three companies (along with pharmaceuticals giant GSK and building materials company Holcim) to formally adopt its targets — meaning it has committed itself to meeting them, and to publicly disclosing progress along the way — as the heat on companies to preserve biodiversity catches up to the pressure they’ve been facing to act on climate change.
“This is a significant milestone in advancing ambitious and measurable action on nature, because we have the first three companies publicly adopting their targets,” says Erin Billman, executive director of the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN). “We hope and anticipate that more will follow suit.”
From today, a new pilot will test science-based targets for biodiversity and nature conservation, building on the success of targets for reducing carbon emissions. Moving nature into the boardroom will be a big task.
Biodiversity loss has received less attention globally than climate change, but scientists emphasise it is just as much of a threat to the health of the planet — and while fashion is behind on missing its climate targets, it’s even further behind on its biodiversity efforts. It’s a particularly difficult issue for even the most informed and proactive companies to tackle, because biodiversity strategies need to encompass everything about how fashion impacts nature — from soil health and water pollution to the relationships that so many communities around the world have with their local ecosystems. Biodiversity is also geography-specific, meaning efforts will vary from one region to another, whereas carbon emissions — or emissions reductions — contribute to the global total wherever they are generated.
“Climate and nature are intrinsically connected. For too long they have been placed in separate silos by the global community, when in reality, biodiversity restoration leads to climate mitigation and holistically safeguards against climate-related issues,” says Marie-Claire Daveu, chief sustainability and institutional affairs officer at Kering.
Of the 17 companies that participated in the pilot, which included LVMH, L’Occitane and H&M from fashion and beauty, SBTN says a majority of them were able to complete the main steps involved — assessment, prioritisation of their environmental impacts and target setting. Some are anticipated to publicly adopt their validated targets by the deadline of six months after the pilot concludes (10 January 2025); others are planning to resubmit their targets using updated methods from SBTN, while others “viewed the pilot as a test-and-learn opportunity”, says Billman.
SBTN targets are broken out by category of impact — starting with freshwater and land (Kering has targets for both; the other two companies have freshwater targets only), and will eventually include oceans and guidance for cities. For fashion, the key hotspots for companies looking to set nature targets in the future are likely to be related to leather tanneries, agricultural supply chains and textile production, for example in the washing and dyeing stages of manufacturing.
Kering’s targets — which focus on the Arno basin in Italy, where most of its leather tanneries are located — include both its direct operations as well as upstream suppliers, “equaling a significant percentage of the group’s water use across its supply chain”, according to Billman. Its land targets include engaging in “materially relevant landscape initiatives” and avoiding the conversion of natural ecosystems.
Key themes to follow as the science-based targets for nature framework scales and expands, are how companies engage with communities that have been impacted by supply chains and where the work of meeting targets will need to be done. Too many environmental projects have operated from a distance and through a top-down model, which has left communities out of the process feeling exploited and marginalised, causing tension — when there should be natural alignment — between environmental and social outcomes, says Joyce Hu, global director of marketing and communications at Wildlife Works.
These criticisms have been levelled against carbon offset frameworks: the Science Based Targets initiative — which oversees climate-focused science-based targets — and, more recently, the Taskforce for Nature Financial Disclosures, or TNFD. (A group of environmental organisations filed a formal complaint in Colombia this week, maintaining that the TNFD, and the United Nations Environment Programme supporting it, have “failed to uphold principles of good governance, international human rights frameworks, the rights of environmental defenders, gender equity and access-to-information rights”.)
Experts and community representatives are concerned the same dynamics will play out with the SBTN. “In general, I find that private sector climate and nature guidance organisations founded in the Global North are completely disconnected from understanding the conditions needed to make progress in the Global South,” says Hu. “There is little to no engagement with Indigenous peoples and local communities on how their guidance and frameworks actually shake out on the ground.”
The Science Based Targets Network is designed specifically to incorporate feedback from, and impacts in, local communities into how companies approach meeting their targets, says Billman, adding that the framework embeds Free and Prior Informed Consent — a human rights principle recognising the right of Indigenous peoples to approve or deny consenting to projects that could affect their lands or rights — into its mechanism for community engagement.
How effective those mechanisms are, ultimately, will help determine whether science-based targets for nature can forge a path for holistic solutions, rather than strategies that solve some aspects of an issue but neglect others or even create new problems in their wake.
“Solutions need to come from the ground, and any guidance needs to be validated and verified by those on the ground,” says Hu. “We are still so far from fully understanding all of the benefits of biological diversity and ecosystem intactness to the human species. We can’t possibly expect to properly measure the impact of its destruction. But we know we can’t survive without nature so we must prioritise and properly pay the people who are actively protecting the world’s forests and biodiversity.”
The overall impact of SBTN also depends on companies participating, and levelling up their efforts to meet the urgency of the moment — and critics are sceptical that will happen, but welcome any possible nudge that will push them in the right direction.
“Companies need to put as much effort into reducing and restoring their impacts on nature as they do on reaching their climate ambitions. Adopting science-based targets for nature will lead to decisive action, enabling companies to do their part in reversing nature loss,” Daveu tells Vogue Business. This is ultimately why Kering participated in the SBTN pilot from the beginning and I hope other companies in the fashion industry will also commit to this critical journey.”
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