Global beauty product brand L’Oreal is partnering with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation (GBRF) to pioneer a methodology to calculate the value of coral reef biodiversity and support the deployment of heat-tolerant corals.
The foundation said in a statement this week that the L’Oreal Fund for Nature Regeneration has committed to a decade-long investment; however, a specific dollar figure was not disclosed.
It said the development of a method that could calculate the value of coral reef biodiversity is expected to stimulate a market for nature rehabilitation, thereby securing crucial funding to safeguard and rejuvenate Australia’s reef ecosystems.
Significantly more investment is needed to restore declining reef ecosystems, with nature repair markets emerging as an effective way to finance the necessary acceleration and scaling up of conservation activities, GBRF said.
“If well designed and backed by rigorous science, they can give private and corporate investors the opportunity to deliver on their nature positive goals by generating independently verified environmental, socio-economic, and cultural benefits.”
It said the partnership with L’Oreal would support critical reef interventions, including the deployment of 2 million heat-tolerant corals on the Great Barrier Reef by 2030.
This could lead to direct and indirect economic benefits in excess of A$100 million ($66.3 mln), it said, thanks to the support it would give to tourism and ecological and cultural values.
“Our partnership with L’Oreal will deliver game-changing innovation in how we measure, protect, and restore marine biodiversity, bringing hope to the future of coral reefs and the 1 billion people who rely on them,” Great Barrier Reef Foundation Managing Director Anna Marsden said.
Rachel Barre, director of environmental leadership at L’Oreal, said the investment would finance innovative models to help build resilience for the Great Barrier Reef and support new approaches to their restoration at scale.
The partnership will fund an integral component of the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program, a collaboration with several Australian universities and the CSIRO.
Breakthroughs made by the programme include pioneering new techniques to mass produce healthy baby corals, which the GBRF said could help restore reefs damaged by the impacts of climate change.
The GBRF’s Reef Trust Partnership with the Australian government has committed and co-invested some A$370 mln across 567 partners and 415 projects as of June this year, according to the partnership’s website. Of that, A$80.9 mln has been spent on its Reef Restoration and Adaptation programme.
The €50 mln L’Oreal Fund for Nature Regeneration aims to help restore 1 mln ha of degraded ecosystems by 2030 – capturing 15-20 MtCO2e of emissions by the same date.
The fund announced its first three investments earlier this year, related to biochar, reforestation, and mangroves.
By Mark Tilly – mark@carbon-pulse.com
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