Kering has officially opened its first Water Resilience Lab in Italy’s Arno Basin, the first step in a broader plan to build water resilience across its operations and supply chain. The lab is part of a strategy Kering set 18 months ago to become “net water-positive” by 2050, with measured net-positive water impacts in 10 priority water basins by 2035. According to the group, no other fashion company had developed a dedicated water resilience strategy when Kering began, and there was no blueprint to follow.
The Arno Basin was chosen because of the local expertise tied to Kering’s suppliers and because the region has the governance and stakeholders needed to support the lab’s approach, according to Marie-Claire Daveu, Kering’s chief sustainability and institutional affairs officer. Daveu said most of fashion’s strategic raw materials depend on water, not only during the growing phase for natural fibers such as wool, leather and cotton but also in later processes including washing, dyeing and tanning. She said supporting the regeneration of key basins where the industry and its suppliers operate is necessary for business continuity and long-term value creation.
The region’s flood history shaped the strategy. In 1966, the Arno burst its banks in Florence, causing the city’s most destructive flood, killing dozens of people, displacing thousands and destroying millions of rare books and artworks. More floods followed. In 2023, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni declared a state of emergency for the worst-hit areas during Storm Ciarán, which caused an estimated €1.89 billion in damages. Prato-based supplier Beste Group, whose headquarters sits on the bank of the Bisenzio river, had bought a machine worth around €7 million the month before; it was destroyed in the flood, insured for only 60% of its price and cost several million euros to replace. Production stopped for three weeks.
Rachel Kolbe Semhoun, Kering’s head of sustainable sourcing and nature initiatives, read about those losses in Vogue Business, a moment that set off a chain reaction leading to the group’s water strategy. She noted that Beste had done everything right inside its factory but was still flooded, describing it as an example of how no single actor can create resilience alone and how collective investment in better natural infrastructure upriver would have helped.
The lab brings together public institutions, businesses, academia, the scientific community and financial actors. Partners in the Arno Basin include Conservation International, co-founder of Kering’s Regenerative Fund for Nature; environmental consultancy Etifor; the University of Florence; multiple levels of local government; the Northern Apennines River Basin Authority; and local land reclamation authorities ANBI Toscana and ANCI Toscana. Daveu said it was important for the lab to build on work already done by public authorities in the region, amplifying existing efforts while filling gaps and creating new models.
The roadmap rests on three main pillars: creating governance structures that allow all stakeholder groups to be heard; developing a financial model that incentivizes change without relying too heavily on philanthropy; and building a portfolio of nature-based and industrial projects with strong business cases for different stakeholders to implement. Future climate risks are central to the plan. By 2030, Tuscany is expected to see more than 50 days of heat stress each year, leaving communities vulnerable to water scarcity and other water-related risks. Kering says that if 48 million cubic meters of water can be retained in the Arno Basin, future flooding will be drastically reduced, with each cubic meter retained avoiding approximately €157 in flood damage.
The lab has identified six intervention points where it says investment can generate the greatest impact: Villa Petriolo, Ombrone/Bisenzio, Altopascio/Lake Sibolla, Pisa/Era Basin, Usciana/Pescia River and Arezzo/Chiana Valley. The roadmap draws on methodologies including volumetric water benefit accounting, which allows companies to quantify water stewardship impacts in consistent and comparable units, and Science-based Targets for Nature, of which Kering was an early adopter. A basin-specific methodology developed by the University of Florence provides the scientific basis for quantifying risks and outcomes.
Daveu described the lab as a robust start but said fine-tuning is needed before it becomes a reliable and replicable model for other brands. She identified a key limitation as the lack of recognition of the role nature-based solutions play in mitigating risk and building long-lasting resilience, adding that the lab will address this by innovating governance and the financial model to move beyond philanthropy and make nature-based resilience a viable investment. Proving the return on investment for water resilience initiatives will be critical, she said. Until now, such investments have largely been funded by philanthropic foundations and developed in silos, limiting their potential impact. Daveu said philanthropy will never be enough to support the investments needed for real resilience, and that coordinated efforts and a viable financing model for nature are necessary to bring investors to the table.
Sources: Vogue.