Stage 3: Restore & Regenerate

Kering’s commitments

•    By 2025, to have regenerated one million hectares of farms and rangelands in the supply chain, with the priority on providing biodiversity and carbon sequestration. The Group will achieve this through the recently-launched Conservation International/Kering Fund for Regenerative Agriculture, focusing on materials with the highest environmental impacts according to our EP&L metrics: leather, cotton, cashmere and wool. This area represents about 3 times Kering’s total land footprint. 

•    By 2025, to have restored habitats where mining and other extraction activities have occurred, restoring an area three times larger than the Group’s total ‘direct’ footprint (which includes all stores, warehouses and offices). 

•    Expand the range of materials used by the Houses by identifying, sourcing and scaling forgotten plant varieties and livestock breeds in its supply chain. This will improve agricultural resilience and help the Group to move away from an industry that is overly reliant on monocropping. Kering has also committed to increasing the availability of such materials at its Materials Innovation Lab by 2025.

Spotlight on ongoing work: Restoring former gold mining sites

In French Guiana, Kering is working with conservation partners Solicaz and Forest Finance to reforest a former alluvial gold mining site. The project goes beyond the regulatory requirements (whereby 30% of a former mine area must be restored), and instead focuses on 100% restoration, making it the first full reforestation program of a mining site in the Amazon. After making detailed ecological assessments of the local species, Kering’s partners began by creating in-situ plant nurseries, and preparing more than 90,000 seedlings to plant over 116 hectares. The reforestation experts with Solicaz focused initially on species with high nitrogen-fixation potential that could act as ‘pioneer species’. Today, the systems are thriving, and the partners are regularly monitoring soil health, the quality of tree development, the appearance of spontaneous plant diversity and soil respiration. By working toward a full restoration of the ecosystem, the project not only restores the habitat for local biodiversity, but also facilitates carbon sequestration. The Group is now inviting other brands to join forces to extend the work to other goldmining sites, and is trying to launch similar initiatives for silver and platinum extraction. 

Spotlight on ongoing work: Building biodiversity through regenerative agriculture

With a €5 million budget for the new Conservation International/Kering Fund for Regenerative Agriculture, the Group will be able to support promising agriculture and rangeland projects throughout the world, with a focus on leather, cotton, wool and cashmere. Regenerative agriculture has the potential to completely transform the face of agriculture, and is grounded in the idea that we can replenish and strengthen ecosystems through improved farming and livestock rearing practices. Specifically, it increases farm biodiversity, reduces agro-chemical inputs, improves soil water retention, enhances carbon sequestration and is also designed to provide better livelihoods.

Kering has supported a number of regenerative projects, including an innovative goat rangeland program in Mongolia related to Kering’s cashmere supply chain, which is being delivered in partnership with the Wildlife Conservation Society. The Group is also partnering with the Savory Institute to promote and support the regenerative production of raw materials. This involves the use of Savory’s pioneering methodology, Ecological Outcome VerificationTM (EOVTM), for leather and fiber supply chains that are based on grazing systems, such as wool and cashmere. More recently, Kering partnered with RARE and SouthPole on a cotton project in China to quantify carbon sequestration through improved practices. At an industry level, the Group is working with food production companies via the One Planet Business for Biodiversity coalition to identify potential partnership projects in regenerative agriculture.