Today, L’Oréal launches a €15 million endowment fund to support vulnerable communities to develop greater resilience in the face of climate disasters. The L’Oréal Climate Emergency Fund will support communities in the most exposed areas by enabling expert partner organizations to help them prepare for and recover from climate disasters.
The Climate Emergency Fund couldn’t arrive at a better time: The World
Meteorological Organization
estimates that
climate-driven disasters have increased five-fold over the past 50 years —
the most recent evidence being the wildfires that devastated
Maui
last month, the at least eight catastrophic
floods
that have ravaged cities across four continents just in the first 11 days of
September, and Hurricane
Lee
— the 14th Atlantic hurricane of the year — gearing up to rock New
England and eastern Canada sometime today.
Today, up to three billion people live in disaster-exposed areas, with the
number predicted to increase to four billion by
2050.
The L’Oréal Climate Emergency Fund will reach vulnerable communities through
partnerships with both local disaster-relief organizations and international
NGOs. The new fund builds on L’Oréal Groupe’s longstanding commitment to
address growing humanitarian and environmental challenges, bringing the
Groupe’s total investments to more than €200 million across several funds —
including the L’Oréal Fund for Nature
Regeneration,
the Circular Innovation
Fund
and the L’Oréal Fund for
Women.
“As an industry leader, L’Oréal has a responsibility to address the world’s
most urgent environmental and social needs,” said Alexandra
Palt, Chief Corporate
Responsibility Officer of L’Oréal Groupe and CEO of the Fondation
L’Oréal. “The urgent climate crisis we
are facing necessitates action on all fronts and calls for global
collaboration at every level. With the new Climate Emergency Fund, we are
expanding on our commitments to help build resilience for vulnerable
communities, together with organizations deploying innovative solutions on
the ground.”
The funds will be directed toward two types of actions:
-
Prepare — to help minimize the impact of climate disasters before they occur, through disaster planning and early warning systems; and
-
Repair — to restore essential infrastructures and vital services such as healthcare, housing and access to food and water when disaster strikes.
The SB Resilience Summit
Join us for the inaugural SB Resilience Summit (October 17) at SB’24 San Diego — where business leaders preparing their organizations for adaptation and resilience in a tumultuous world will share insights on proactive measures organizations can take now to navigate uncertainty, mitigate risk, ensure continuity and future-proof their businesses.
The first two L’Oréal Climate Emergency Fund recipients are The Solutions Project — a US-based nonprofit organization that funds and amplifies climate-justice solutions created by frontline communities building power for an equitable and regenerative economy; and Start Network — a global alliance of more than 80 local, national and international NGOs that work with people on the frontline to provide early and effective responses before and when humanitarian crises strike.
“Whilst the climate crisis is global in nature, it is clear that some
communities are at far greater risk of near-term climate disasters and must
mitigate for these climate-related events to prevent them from becoming
human disasters,” said Christina
Bennett, CEO of
Start Network. “In partnership with L’Oréal and local organizations rooted
in their communities, we will support people at risk of crisis to prepare
and protect themselves — with the assistance delivered by local teams
familiar with their circumstances and best placed to ensure affected
populations rebound more
quickly.”
How the Climate Emergency Fund could be put to work
As an example of this in practice, Start Network has created new
disaster-risk funding instruments — such as its Start Ready
fund — that help ensure timely,
reliable humanitarian funding in the event of a climate-fueled natural
disaster. Start Ready pre-positions funding for crises that happen with
regular and predictable patterns of recurrence — such as floods, droughts
and heatwaves; funds are
disbursed
based on the prediction of a climate shock, to a pre-agreed level of
severity, using live data and scientific modeling. The organization says
that roughly 55 percent of humanitarian funding goes to these kinds of
crises; but only 1 percent of this funding is organized in advance – despite
this being a much more effective method of crisis response. The Start
Ready Risk Pool — now in its second iteration — has amassed
£7.3m
to protect communities against droughts, floods, cyclones and heatwaves in
Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar,
Pakistan, Philippines, Senegal and Somalia.
Here in the US, The Solutions Project also mobilizes rapid-response grants for the often-underfunded frontline organizations providing on-the-ground disaster response and mutual aid during crises. According to the organization’s 2021 Impact Report, that year The Solutions Project scaled its on-the-ground impact by increasing grants by more than five-fold — from $2 million to nearly $11.5 million — and tripling the number of grantees it supports to 193 organizations across 26 states and territories, with 82 percent being People of Color-led organizations.
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Sustainable Brands Staff
Published Sep 15, 2023 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST