Last year, Rabobank, renewable energy company Ørsted, cosmetics company L’OCCITANE Group, and Chilean paper and pulp business Empresas CMPC, were among the first organizations to have their nature strategies published through It’s Now for Nature. 

In the first of two discussions, they discuss their experience of developing their strategies, how they started to address their impacts and dependencies, and why it’s important to start taking action rather than get tied up in the search for the perfect data. 

Chloé Milesi, Head of Biodiversity, L’Occitane en Provence  

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 

What was the thinking behind developing a strategy for nature for your organization?  

Chloé Milesi: We use over a thousand natural ingredients in our products, so nature is at the heart of everything we do. We also believe that business has an important role to play in the challenges we all face around biodiversity. 

Rennie Meyers: As one of the world’s largest renewable energy producers, creating a nature strategy has given us a roadmap to help us make connections between protecting biodiversity and other targets we have such as reducing water use, increasing circularity, and supporting our work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It’s also been helpful to pull everything into one place. 

Verónica Andrea De la Cerda Gubler: We’re a productive business, that manages over 1.2 million ha of forest across Chile, Brazil and Argentina. We are totally dependent on nature, and the main objective of our strategy is to help us to better understand how we can create a positive impact on nature, while at the same maintaining a successful business.  

Marie-Claire Franzen-Aerts​: We’re one of the largest food and agricultural banks in the world. While we don’t put seeds in the ground ourselves, we do finance farmers who work with nature every day and potentially have high impacts and dependencies on nature, which we want to manage.  

Where are your main impacts and dependencies, and how have you gone about assessing them? 

Chloé Milesi: To understand where our main dependencies and impacts are, we looked at materiality and traceability across our supply chain and our own operations. Upstream, this process highlighted land use changes and resource exploitation, while in our direct manufacturing operations there is a need to mitigate impacts such as water use, and downstream the focus is on pollution related to rinsed formulas and packaging disposal.   

Rennie Meyers: We carried out a double materiality assessment to look at our nature-related dependencies and impacts across both our direct operations and value chain. Among the material issues it highlighted were natural resource exploitation, land-use change and habitat loss from mining, and waste generation. 

To help us identify areas where we can take action, we have developed a Biodiversity Measurement Framework. It helps us to prioritize actions and, just as importantly, it has shown us where we can have the greatest positive impact. We intend to integrate the framework into all the renewable energy projects that we commission from 2030 onwards; in essence this commits us to deliver net-positive biodiversity impact through avoidance, minimization, mitigation and offsetting.  

Marie-Claire Franzen-Aerts: We carried out a nature dependency and impact analysis which was around the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). We then developed a three-way approach that looks across sector, country and topic, covering issues around land use, water and pollution. This reflects i.e. the fact that 85% of our financial portfolio is heavily dependent on nature, from water availability to soil quality and the effects of climate change.  

What immediate actions have you been able to take?  

Chloé Milesi: we want to minimize environmental risks and promote biodiversity across the production of all our raw materials. To support this, we’ve developed a regenerative agricultural framework, which guides sustainable agricultural practices, as well as helping us to track targets around biodiversity, water and livelihoods. 

Just ten plants make up the majority of all the raw materials we source. We’ve carried out a risk assessment for each of these plants, looking at issues around traceability – our goal is 90% traceability by 2026 – and identifying their potential to be linked with deforestation and chemical use. Based on the risks associated with each plant, and the land footprint related to those plants, we have prioritized key suppliers that we are now working with on action plans and targets.  

Rennie Meyers: It’s important for us to demonstrate practical support for species, so we’ve worked on programs to create artificial nesting sites for seabirds along England’s east coast and an initiative to re-stock the sea with cod. We’ve also issued a Blue Bond, which is a form of private investment in which all the proceeds go to supporting more conservation initiatives around our areas of operations. 

Marie-Claire Franzen-Aerts: We are trying to integrate nature aspects into our core banking processes and decision making e.g. via the Biodiversity Monitor for which we monitor and reward good on-farm biodiversity performance together with partners within the value chain. We’ve also developed a program with the multinational food company McCain to implement regenerative agriculture practices in their value chain.  

Was there an immediate win from introducing a nature strategy? 

Chloé Milesi: Having a nature strategy has given more understanding of our impacts and dependencies across the whole value chain, giving us internal legitimacy to secure the dedicated resources we need to bring the strategy to life. 

Verónica Andrea De la Cerda Gubler: By analyzing our relationship with nature, we now better understand the risks that the business is exposed to.   

Marie-Claire Franzen-Aerts: Nature has always been a relevant topic for us and developing this strategy has provided more awareness, structure and focus. Nature is also often perceived as a risk, but now we’re able to show our stakeholders that it is also an opportunity for sustainable growth and that ideas such as regenerative agriculture, agroforestry and robotics are part of the future. 

Could you give an example of a way in which you have addressed one of the key material issues for your organization and nature? 

Rennie Meyers: We’re a technical engineering company and innovation plays a key role in finding solutions. For instance, we’ve developed a new low noise piling technology, which reduces disturbance to marine life. 

We’re also working with AI specialists, who can monitor, in real time, the birds that visit a potential offshore site. This helps us to better understand what species are present in the area and how we can reduce the potential impacts of our developments.  

Chloé Milesi: A challenge in the cosmetics industry lies with ingredients in processed products purchased from our suppliers, which are not sourced directly, particularly when tied to complex global supply chains involving family-run farms in rural areas, or resource-scarce regions, such as palm or coconut oil. This makes addressing social and environmental challenges at the crop’s origin more complex. So, we make assessments, based on the volumes we use, to work out the equivalent land needed to grow these crops. We then support local initiatives across a similar hectarage of land, so that our full land print will be covered by positive projects by 2030.  

We are also very conscious of our impact on water. A lot of our products are ‘rinse-off’ products such as shower gels and shampoos and to avoid any issue around potential pollution, by 20530, 95% of our rinsed formulas will be biodegradable.   

Many of our factories are also based in areas of water stress, such as around the Mediterranean, so we have introduced targets to reduce freshwater consumption by 30% by 2030, with many sites introducing innovative new circular loop systems. 

Verónica Andrea De la Cerda Gubler: Thirty percent of the land that we manage is protected and left ‘un-productive’, in line with legislation such as the Forest Code in Brazil, which regulates how private land is used. We want to maximize the biodiversity of this land and one way we achieve is by creating biological corridors, allowing wildlife to move freely between otherwise unconnected pockets of forest.  

Has finding the data and the metrics you need to measure your impact on nature been difficult? 

Verónica Andrea De la Cerda Gubler: Metrics can be a problem but it’s important to start the process, even if you don’t have all the tools and data points you feel you need. Nature strategies are a new concept, so you need to start doing something even if it isn’t perfect. You might also discover that you already have a lot of the data you need, whether through previous work on climate change, or in our case, meeting standards such as the Forest Stewardship Council, and other local forestry regulations. 

Marie-Claire Franzen-Aerts: The good news is that there is much data out there. Actually, organizations can no longer hide behind a lack of data to hide behind. Begin with some quick analysis that will provide insights to build upon. 

It’s also important to look at work that is already done. For us, we’ve learnt a lot from our efforts to calculate and reduce carbon emissions and we already have client insights as well as locations through i.e. satellite images and remote sensing.  

Chloé Milesi: Although the ecosystem remains complex when it comes to biodiversity, things are starting to harmonize and there are initiatives that try to provide clear information for companies about what they should measure. Don’t wait for the perfect metrics and data, act now and start with traceability.  

In the second part of the discussion, our four companies talk about the role of collaboration, working with stakeholders and why, at the start, it’s important to keep things simple.