Kering: Turning nature priorities into opportunities for resilience

Why SBTN?

Kering is a global Luxury group that manages the development of a collection of renowned Houses in fashion, leather goods and jewelry. Kering was already focusing on nature as a priority and had a robust approach. More than a decade before joining SBTN’s corporate pilot, the Luxury Group was already measuring land, biodiversity and water impacts through its Environmental Profit & Loss accounting approach and had developed a comprehensive biodiversity strategy focused on regenerative sourcing and nature restoration.

SBTN offered a way to put that existing ambition and longstanding action against a common science-based methodology — helping Kering test where its most material impacts lay, where action should be prioritized, and where its existing programs could be strengthened.

As Rachel Kolbe Semhoun, who leads sustainable sourcing and nature initiatives at Kering, puts it:

“A recognized international and science-based methodology acts as a compass that prevents a company from having to navigate too many different approaches, which can add to unnecessary complexities, and supports a strong pathway towards positive impacts.”

From assessment to action

Kering completed and publicly disclosed its science-based assessment, prioritization and target-setting steps (Steps 1–3) across its entire Group through SBTN’s initial corporate pilot, resulting in adopting the first-ever science-based targets for both freshwater and land globally. 

The process also exposed important data and traceability gaps. Even where Kering had relatively advanced sourcing information, it did not always extend to the farm level due to suppliers’ traditional business models in place for the fashion industry. Suppliers — often small or medium-sized businesses — were not always collecting the location-specific information required, while data held by local authorities did not necessarily match what companies needed.

Rather than treating data gaps as a barrier, Kering used pragmatic approaches to continue the assessment — for example, using logistics-based sourcing areas where farm-level traceability was unavailable — while working with suppliers to improve data quality over time, thus further strengthening those relationships.

Following validation, the company used SBTN’s materiality and prioritization work as an input into a broader, comprehensive water strategy for its Group, helping connect the locations where water stress is highest with the company’s activities and sourcing footprint.

Value in practice

One of the clearest outcomes has been the translation of prioritization into place-based action.

SBTN identified the Arno Basin in Italy as Kering’s highest-priority location for water action. That helped inform the creation of Kering’s first Water Resilience Lab, which brought together a basin-level diagnostic of ecosystem health, water use, dependencies and pollution with an analysis of local stakeholders and shared challenges Kering has orchestrated and rolled out.

The goal is not for Kering to act alone in this basin that includes fashion industry peers, shared suppliers, public authorities, and a broad diversity of neighbouring industries. The Lab is designed as a collective effort across businesses and other local actors, identifying opportunities including nature-based solutions that can restore and regenerate the land, reduce flood risk and erosion, and help replenish the groundwater, enabling greater and longer lasting  resilience across the basin.

For Kering, this collective dimension is particularly important. Its first-hand experience over the years — as well as through SBTN — reinforced that some nature challenges cannot be solved through individual company targets alone — especially where supply chains are highly intermediated or multiple sectors depend on the same landscape or water system.  Considering the A3RT methodology, transformation will be achieved through collective action coordinated by the Water Resilience Lab, spearheaded by Kering. This Lab approach is constituting a model for collective watershed regeneration and replenishment action that can be duplicated and useful worldwide.

What they learned

Kering’s experience points to the importance of treating SBTN as a cross-functional change process, not simply a technical exercise. The company recommends creating a task force across relevant teams and engaging suppliers and internal stakeholders early so they understand why information is being requested and how it will be used.

The process also reinforced the importance of pragmatism around data. Traceability may not yet be perfect, particularly deep in complex supply chains, but working through those gaps can itself reveal where stronger systems and relationships are needed to, in turn, greater long-term resilience.

Above all, Kering’s experience highlights the value of combining a common science-based methodology with collective action: using SBTN as a compass to identify where action matters most, then the company bringing together the actors needed to collaborate and respond at the scale of the challenge.

Learn more

• Find Kering’s targets on the SBTN Target Tracker.
• Kering’s leadership shared their perspective on the business case for science-based targets alongside other companies in the Step Up for Nature report. Read the full report here.
• Find more case studies