Today, climate change is driving the biggest humanitarian crisis of our lives. The frequency and severity with which climate-related disasters are impacting communities unsurprisingly wears down the resiliency of physical environments, but also of the people in these frequently impacted areas. Without question, we will all experience the damage wrought by climate change if we haven’t already.
Solutions to decarbonization are being deployed and the great energy transition is underway. Over the years, major investments in renewables and climate technologies have had breakout growth. But what are we to make of investments in community-led climate solutions, circular innovations, or nature-based solutions? They all play a critical role in a net-zero future, but has the prioritization of these efforts and rate of investments kept pace?
This year at Climate Week NYC, we’re asking this community of climate leaders to answer how we can collectively contribute to building more resiliency for people and planet.
There’s never been a clearer need to keep all solutions on the table, and more critically, keep people centered in our transformations, as they all build resiliency for people and planet. Through L’Oréal for the Future, we don’t look at resiliency in a vacuum. In addition to our own sustainable business transformation, which includes an aggressive strategy of reducing our own emissions and powering our operations through renewable energy, we’re building resiliency in a few ways.
First – we work to empower vulnerable communities and raise living standards.
We can fight against poverty and create a more fair and inclusive society by raising living standards for as many people as possible. One way L’Oréal does this is through an inclusive sourcing program, which directs a proportion of our global purchases to suppliers who employ people from socially and economically disadvantaged communities, providing them with access to work and a sustainable income. In addition, we ensure all company employees are paid a living wage and recently, in partnership with Fair Wage Network, we implemented a strategy to see our key suppliers pay their employees a living wage too.
Second – we’re creating economic opportunity through impact investments in nature and circular innovations.
Humankind depends on the stability of climate, and our environment needs restoration and regeneration in order to support this stability. Degrading ecosystems require urgent attention and increasingly pose a risk to business. When business is threatened because of nature-related risks, so are the jobs that depend on it.
We make investments in nature-based solutions around the world and are urgently trying to solve for circularity through commitments to design principles, materials and ingredient choices and new business models. L’Oréal is addressing the concurrent nature and plastics crisis through impact investment vehicles like our Fund for Nature Regeneration, which is investing more than €50 million to restore 1 million hectares of land and remove 15-20 Mt of carbon by 2030. We’ve also invested €50 million in the Circular Innovation Fund, which finances projects that promote circular innovations to eliminate waste, enable reuse and accelerate the circular economy.
Investments made through these vehicles will create hundreds of jobs in the process, all of which contribute to protecting the environment and reversing course on the current damage of our ecosystems.
Third – we’re supporting community-led initiatives and solutions, especially women-led ones.
Women remain one of the most disproportionately impacted people by the climate crisis, with alarming rates of displacement, which exacerbates economic inequality, exposure to violence and negative impacts to their health and wellbeing. Women are on the frontline of the climate crisis, and yet they remain under-represented in climate decision-making.
The L’Oréal Fund for Women is a global endowment fund that empowers women at risk through access to education, employment, and social support, while fighting against violence, poverty, and supporting women refugees and women in disadvantaged situations.
By providing women with more access to resources, we can also reduce vulnerability and create more resilient households and communities. This is a priority of The Women and Climate program of the Fondation L’Oréal, in partnership with C40 Cities, which supports women in developing and leading climate action projects in cities, empowering female farmers to reinforce climate resilience and raises awareness of gender-sensitive climate action.
At the heart of everything we do to fight climate change, is the human impact of the work.
By helping to build resilience for people and the planet, we can contribute meaningfully to addressing social and environmental needs. Across our own climate transition work, along with our philanthropic and impact investments, we see how we can help to prepare and protect those who are or will be most affected.
In supporting Climate Week NYC 2023, L’Oréal Groupe is proud to join the world’s most innovative and committed companies in the fight against climate change. Together, we champion the change needed to accelerate the critical work of building resiliency for people and planet, driving systems change, finding new collaborators, and closing some the biggest gaps across public-private partnerships.