The Clock is Ticking on Sustainability Issues in the Watch & Jewellery Sector

At the Watch Forum 2022 on 12-13 September, key players from the Watch and Jewellery sector and a diverse panel of their stakeholders came together under the auspices of Watches and Culture, the cultural division of the Fondation de la Haute Horologerie (Foundation High Horology) and in partnership with the New York Times to explore how the industry can more effectively address its own material sustainability issues and contribute together to the wider Sustainability Transition.???This article tells the story of this meaningful dialogue and how the industry is drawing on its timeless values and a new sense of urgency as it seeks to address the ticking clock of global sustainability challenges.

Making it personal

The event kicked off at Maison de la Paix (the House of Peace), home to the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and development Studies, with a private showing of the film Bigger Than Us by journalist and film-maker Flore Vasseur, who was present in person and engaged the audience after the film in a moving dialogue about its key themes and desired impact. It was a powerful example of how the stories of seven young global change-makers seeking to make a difference in their own unique and compelling ways can break through the impersonal veneer of business-as-usual to inspire all of us to do more, to join forces with others and to find a way. The voices I heard that evening - including those of employees and CEOs of companies in the sector - were deeply touched and personally committed, and the film set a very personal, meaningful tone for the following day’s agenda.

Raising the game to match the stakes

The next morning, Fabienne Fischer from the Ministry of the Economy of the Canton of Geneva, Sami Kanaan from the Department of Culture & Digital Transition of the City of Geneva, and Pascal Ravessoud from the Foundation High Horology delivered several pertinent key messages that blended well with the previous evening’s heart-felt dialogue. The private sector and government must aim for the same goal, collaborate, and share experiences & practices. Ultimately, it is about human beings sharing and creating together. The industry must raise its game in Sustainability and overcome its shyness when it comes to communicating on the complex issues it faces, the efforts it is already making and where it needs to do more. Transparency is key to responding to growing consumer demands for sustainability. The sector must also harness the means and power of its luxury status to tackle issues in its supply chain, including Scope 3 emissions and the social and environmental impact of the extraction and processing of raw materials for its products. When it comes to climate change and the preservation of the planet’s ecosystems, we don’t have the luxury of time, we must act now.??

Focusing on what matters, together?

To reinforce the message and the sense of positive collective momentum, the next panel focused on the newly formed Watch and Jewellery Initiative 2030, represented by the President and CEO of Cartier, Cyrille Vigneron, and Chief Sustainability and Institutional Affairs Officer of Kering, Marie-Claire Daveu – the two founding companies – and Iris Van der Veken, the Initiative’s Executive Director. The conversation that unfolded pointed clearly to some of the major drivers of change for the industry through this new coalition that will focus on building climate resilience, preserving resources, and fostering inclusiveness. We heard that the Initiative was born out of a desire to move faster, to focus on issues that weren’t already being addressed and, notably, to find common ground and achieve a critical mass for measurable game-changing positive outcomes, as opposed to the more incremental improvements that can be achieved through processes and certifications.????

Players in the industry need to set ambitious goals, individually and together, and demonstrate accountability by measuring progress with ‘mission-critical’ KPIs and data on material issues in the spirit of disruptive innovation. On climate, environmental and human rights issues, transparency and traceability upstream are key, and blockchain tagging and careful analysis will make it possible in the future to home in on hotspots and weak links in the supply chain, from conflict diamonds to illegal mining and artisanal mining. Companies will need to support and work with suppliers to build their capacity, we heard, but they must also be ready to stop buying from the most recalcitrant offenders whose activity is beyond their control.

The panelists reiterated the importance of factoring externalities into the environmental and social footprints of companies throughout the sector, drawing on the widely recognized best practice of Kering, which has made its Environmental Profit & Loss methodology open source, enabling the automotive and pharmaceutical industries (among others) to benefit from and build on its innovation. It was also noted that it is critical for CEOs and top management to be directly involved in these efforts and to hammer home the importance of integrating sustainability in every department, every decision and every aspect of the business.??

Inspiring a pragmatic, holistic approach to Climate and Biodiversity?

In the first of a series of more in-depth panels with an educational as well as inspirational dimension to them, the Climate Watch panel with Andrew Prag from the OECD and McKenna Smith from the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) offered us a brief and sobering reminder of the alarming acceleration of climate change and the urgent need to reach Net Zero by 2050, while also building resilience to adapt to climate impacts. We must remember, we were told, that the ‘net’ in Net Zero requires governments and companies not just to eliminate their own emissions (through energy efficiency measures and the use of renewable sources of energy, for example), but also to draw existing carbon emissions out of the atmosphere in order to reduce global temperatures. Since governments are slow to implement their plans and we would still overshoot the Paris Climate Agreement target of 1.5 degrees with all current pledges taken into account, it is all the more critical that business steps up to take action, including beyond their own organisational boundaries (i.e. Scope 3).??

This is where Science Based Targets?come into the picture. The SBTi works with companies to figure out what targets to set in the context of their specific sector, including how to work effectively with assumptions and estimations to fill in the gaps where primary data is missing. Some of the key messages we heard here were that science is not always quantitative, there is an art to starting somewhere and refining as you go along. In addition, we are likely to see – and must find ways to support - more collaboration between companies and stakeholders to obtain and pool data effectively. And while long-term objectives can feel daunting and overwhelming, it can be more manageable to focus on near-term steps to reducing emissions by 50% by 2030. Just asking questions across the company can trigger a wealth of ideas and positive reactions.??

?In the Biodiversity Watch panel, with Damien Oettli from WWF and Gerard Bos, formerly from IUCN, the focus shifted to the need to ensure a holistic mindset in the approach that companies take to the environmental piece of their sustainability strategies. Biodiversity is all about the interconnectedness of the ecosystems that sustain our planet and our human activity. It is complex by definition. It’s not just about endangered species, as people sometimes assume, but about the integrity and well-being of nature as a whole. Nature is sending us ‘invoices’ in the form of fires, floods, and other disasters. The message is clear and of the utmost importance: if we don’t take care of nature, we will be faced with wide-spread ecosystem collapse.??

One of the challenges to date, we heard, is that the strong focus on climate change and reducing emissions was eclipsing the urgent need to address biodiversity loss and the major risks this poses. This was partly because climate change could be measured more easily through a single unit of measurement (carbon emissions), while biodiversity is more complex to measure. There are clear signs today, however, that biodiversity and climate change are becoming more integrated in the global mindset and will soon merge into a single combined approach focusing on nature-based solutions for the climate (instead of being the focus of separate COP processes, for example). This holistic mindset also involves using human ingenuity to harness what nature does best, such as symbiosis and collaboration between species. Another clear sign that biodiversity is going to be much more prominent in sustainability frameworks and efforts worldwide is the progress being made to identify and use a handful of key performance indicators that will enable us to measure and address our impact, such as the Living Planet Index, the Species Habitat Index, the Red List Index (for extinction) and the Biodiversity Survival Index.??

The panelists emphasised that the Watch and Jewellery industry can and must act on this critical issue, notably by identifying biodiversity hotspots that overlap with mining sites, shining the spotlight of transparency onto the risks in those areas and engaging as stewards to protect vulnerable areas that are often ravaged by a host of other commercial activities, such as logging and intensive farming, as soon as mining gets a foothold.? Companies were reminded that a lot can be gained by listening to and learning from what other industries, such as Regenerative Agriculture, are doing and joining forces where relevant. They can also take comfort in the fact that the financial sector is moving fast on biodiversity, and investments will flow to those actors who are ambitious and effective on the subject.

Addressing social issues, embedding circularity and harnessing transformational thinking?

The event’s afternoon panels offered an opportunity to hear tangible examples of how companies in the sector are crafting their sustainability journeys, strengthening their strategies, experimenting with new circular business models and products, cultivating diversity in the workforce, and finding new ways to engage employees in finding the solutions for complex issues and achieving positive impact. There was an acknowledgement, too, that more needs to be done. One example of this was the pressing need to collaborate more effectively on artisanal mining, embracing the challenge of improving working conditions and environmental performance in this part of the sector’s supply chain, traditionally seen as a ‘weak link’.?

With the intention of bringing all of the day’s themes together, a panel on Sustainability Transformation - with Bérangère Ruchat, Chief Sustainability Officer of Richemont, Jonathan Normand, CEO at B-Lab Switzerland and myself, moderated by Stephen Dunbar-Johnson from the New York Times - reiterated the importance of taking a holistic approach to Sustainability, pointing out some of the key factors of success:??

• Sustainability has to be fully embedded in governance and core business strategy and is a vital component of a company’s purpose and licence to operate in a fast-changing landscape that is redefining the criteria of business success and value creation.?
• Fertile cultural conditions and inspiring, participatory leadership are fundamental and must be actively cultivated throughout the organisation to harness the skills, passion and collective intelligence of employees.?
• Setting meaningful and material strategic goals and measuring them with relevant KPIs and automated data management systems enables greater focus, more effective decision-making and efficiencies that free up time and resources to focus on implementation.?
• Collective action through smart collaborative industry initiatives and effective stakeholder engagement is key to addressing complex, systemic issues that cannot be solved by any one actor.???

The event was brought to a close in the company of Helena Drobna from UNESCO with a focus on the intangible, cultural heritage of watchmaking and a presentation by Watches and Culture on the Meaningful Watch Movement, a programme designed to support its partner brands in their sustainability journey.?

Overall, I came away from the Watch Forum feeling that it had been a rich day of open dialogue, learning, inspiration and pathways for more decisive action and future collaboration on many of the issues that matter to the Watch & Jewellery industry and the individuals who animate it.??