Last year, Rabobank, renewable energy company Ørsted, cosmetics company L’OCCITANE Groupe, and Chilean paper and pulp business Empresas CMPC, were among the first organizations to commit to a nature strategy as part of It’s Now for Nature. 

In the second of two roundtable discussions, these companies discuss the role of collaboration, working with stakeholders and why it’s important to keep things simple at the start. 

Chloé Milesi, Head of Biodiversity, L’OCCITANE Groupe

Rennie Meyers, Global Ocean Policy Lead, Ørsted   

Verónica Andrea De la Cerda Gubler, Vice President of Corporate Sustainability, Empresas CMPC 

Marie-Claire Franzen-Aerts, Nature Lead, Rabobank 

If you missed it, read the first article in this series. 

How important is working with and managing your supply chain when it comes to addressing your impacts on nature and biodiversity? 

Chloé Milesi: How we manage our supply chain is the biggest element of our nature strategy. That’s where we have the biggest potential impact and the most opportunities to act.  

Where we can, we work directly with farmers, helping to improve local practices by introducing regenerative agriculture or by helping them to achieve organic certification. 

However, a challenge lies with ingredients in processed products purchased from our suppliers, which are not sourced directly. This is especially true for ingredients tied to complex global supply chains, such as palm oil derivatives. Here the plan is to act at a landscape rather than a farm level, supporting much larger local initiatives that are dedicated to improving practices and incomes, and preserving and protecting biodiversity, over a much larger area. 

How have employees reacted to the nature strategy? 

Chloé Milesi: For years, we’ve run ‘Climate Fresk’ and ‘Biodiversity Collage’ workshops to help employees understand climate change and biodiversity loss while fostering solutions-oriented thinking. We also hold biodiversity workshops to help everyone understand the challenges we face as a business and the targets we’ve set. Our employees didn’t realize the full extent of everything we do until they saw the global view. That made them even more eager to act personally and professionally, especially through our “act locally program” that allows employees to dedicate one day to a local initiative with positive outcomes for biodiversity. 

Rennie Meyers: Employee engagement around the strategy is critical and especially so for us, because not only do our people need to understand what we’re doing for nature and biodiversity, but they also need to go out and implement it.  

Verónica Andrea De la Cerda Gubler: The nature strategy brings together all the many things that the company is doing to help nature into one clear narrative.  It gives our people an orientation and helps them to understand why the business is doing certain things. Our employees work in nature, they know and love nature, and the strategy has been an important piece of culture building within the company. 

How important is C-suite buy in? 

Marie-Claire Franzen-Aerts:  Nature is a broad and complex topic and when it comes to engaging with senior management, it’s important to have a focused approach and to make sure the level of detail is manageable. That said, we’ve also got a board that is dedicated to valuing nature and helping our customers to reduce their impacts, and that’s been a boost for our nature strategy.  

Chloé Milesi: C-Suite buy in is key. Our senior management team is open to new ideas and encourages our sustainability teams to push the topic and propose new projects.   

What work have you done with other stakeholders? 

Rennie Meyers: Biodiversity can be a tool for community engagement, so it’s important to build pathways for community consultation that investigates how you’re approaching the work, the type of projects you’re proposing, and finding out what people who could be impacted think. We’ve put a lot of effort into consulting with the broader stakeholder community and used the nature strategy as an opportunity to uplift local community voices in the development of the projects. 

All of this has to be grounded in work with research institutions and civil society. If you’re open about things, and actively work with communities so that they have their say, you can discover issues that are really important to them such as such as  particular local habitats that might be under threat. That’s why we build a stakeholder consultation process into our measurement framework rollout.  

Verónica Andrea De la Cerda Gubler: There are very practical ways you can work with communities. We have very strong links with those close to our plantations. They are key stakeholders, and we work with them around issues such as removing invasive species and guarding against wildfires.  

Marie-Claire Franzen-Aerts: We partner with several stakeholder groups and NGOs such as WWF  and have had many positive reactions about the work we are doing.  We explain our role, the problems we are trying to solve and what we want to achieve, and they appreciate that level of transparency. We want to be transparent to our stakeholders; explain our role, the problems we are trying to solve, and what we want to achieve; and they appreciate that level of transparency. 

What role has collaboration with other companies and organizations played in your nature strategy? 

Chloé Milesi: We work with a range of other companies, and not just those in the cosmetic sector, because it’s at the landscape scale, beyond your own supply chain, that you can really tackle these big interconnected challenges. For instance, we hold joint workshops looking at sustainability challenges around specific raw materials such as palm oil – especially those sourced from family-run farms, rural areas or parts of the world where resources are scarce.  

We’re also part of an industry group called Action for Sustainable Derivatives, which is dedicated to improving traceability in the supply chain and supporting positive changes across landscapes and territories, in the palm derivatives sector. If the opportunity arises, collective action, rather than working alone, can have a far greater impact. 

Marie-Claire Franzen-Aerts: We collaborate with other value chain partners, such as major wholesalers, around biodiversity monitoring. We’re also active at farm level and incentivize individual farmers with discounted interest rates based on biodiversity performance. 

What one piece of advice would you offer a company starting out on their nature strategy journey? 

Chloé Milesi: Companies need to realize that climate and biodiversity strategies are inter-linked; the two issues should be addressed together, especially as nature-based solutions are one of the key ways to tackle both challenges. 

 Verónica Andrea De la Cerda Gubler: Nature is a very important topic and companies need to prioritize where to put their focus. Decide how material an issue is before taking action – protecting nature isn’t a box ticking exercise. 

Rennie Meyers: Every company is different, and how they implement projects, and then monitor and measure progress, is going to be very specific to their organization. So, know your company, find your leadership champions, and communicate! 

Marie-Claire Franzen-Aerts: As soon as possible focus on opportunities and not just the risk angle. But at the same time, keep a limited scope and focussed approach, otherwise people will be blown away with the complexity.