With less than ten weeks until the 2024 Congress begins on November 2nd in Shanghai, China, CIBJO released the second of its pre-Congress Special Reports. The CIBJO Sustainable Development Commission, led by John Mulligan, prepared the report, which explores how jewellery firms may meet the growing requirement to comply with responsible environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles.
Mulligan writes that if the jewellery industry as a whole wants to create and maintain consumer trust, it must avoid fragmented and sometimes contradicting answers. “How then do we strive to encourage and support the global jewellery sector so that it might move in a relatively consistent or broadly convergent manner towards a set of common sustainability objectives?” asks the journalist.
According to Mulligan‘s research, the CIBJO Sustainable Development Commission has been working on solutions to define a sectoral “ESG and sustainability” strategy for jewelry market participants. “It is designed to provide clarity and direction to industry groups and businesses throughout their supply chains. The goal of the resulting guideline document and the resources it refers to is to condense the enormous diversity of ESG themes and sustainability objectives into an organized and prioritized framework that is adapted to the specific demands and features of the jewellery industry,” he says.
“Taken as a whole, this guidance, which is likely to be published by CIBJO quite soon as a Blue Book, should offer a clear set of reference points to enable jewellery companies to focus their resources, efficiently and effectively, on the ESG issues of most relevance to their businesses,” observes the consultant.