French food giant Danone rallied a raft of other companies with net-zero targets to launch the Livelihoods Carbon Fund in 2011. The investment strategy drew support from Schneider Electric, Crédit Agricole, Michelin, Hermès, SAP, Groupe Caisse des Dépôts, La Poste, Firmenich and Voyageurs du Monde to invest in nature restoration, agroforestry, rural energy projects and farmer livelihoods in Africa, Latin America and Asia. For many of the companies, the initiative also directly supports resilience in their supply chains. Livelihoods is now out with its fourth fund, securing €124 million ($141 million) of its €150 million goal. The organization is scaling up the scope of the projects with the goal of impacting 500,000 people and sequestering up to 10 million tons of CO2 over a span of 25 years (see related, “Investors learn to design nature-based investments around natural cycles“).
Success, Livelihoods’ Eric Soubeiran told ImpactAlpha, “means demonstrating that nature-based solutions can deliver multiple outcomes simultaneously: climate mitigation, ecosystem restoration and rural development.”
Community engagement
Livelihoods says that it embeds communities and expertise from local nonprofits, field partners and authorities in the development of its projects to ensure alignment. “Farmers do not plant trees for carbon; they plant them because trees improve livelihoods, resilience and productivity. Climate benefits follow when projects create value locally,” Soubeiran said.
The organization plans to ramp up satellite monitoring and LiDAR for remote sensing technologies to facilitate better project design, monitoring and transparency.
“Communities restore mangroves because they protect fisheries and livelihoods. Carbon helps finance these transitions, but people are the ones who make them happen,” Soubeiran said. “The most successful projects are those where communities see clear benefits and become active participants in the transformation.”
Climate commitments
Livelihoods evolved from Danone’s Fund for Nature, an initiative it launched in 2008 to support ecosystem restoration efforts. Following a large-scale mangrove restoration project in Senegal, the fund rebranded to Livelihoods Carbon Fund and was opened up to the other investors.
Danone in 2015 partnered with American food company Mars on the €120 million Livelihoods Fund for Family Farming to invest in degraded ecosystem restoration and to promote sustainable sourcing from farmers.
