Loro Piana’s Frédéric Arnault underscores commitment to sustainable Mongolian cashmere at Cop17

The UN-based biennial conference convenes representatives of governments, international organisations, financial institutions and scientists from around the world to find solutions to issues originating from desertification, land degradation and drought.

A landlocked country with immense natural resources and a vast, diverse landscape where arid desert sits alongside fertile grasslands, Mongolia is home to the only Loro Piana mill outside Italy.

Known for its luxurious garments made of precious yarns such as cashmere, Loro Piana, which was founded in the Piedmont region of northern Italy in 1924, sources its raw materials from countries including Peru, New Zealand and Australia. The brand has been sourcing cashmere from Mongolia for over four decades. In 1997, it officially set up its Mongolian operations before opening a manufacturing plant in Ulaanbaatar in 1999. To support Mongolia’s herding communities and cashmere cooperatives, last year the house launched Resilient Threads, a multi-year programme to protect the biodiversity of Mongolia’s Eastern Steppe and safeguard the well-being of its inhabitants.

Created to deal with the challenges posed by climate change, the project is founded upon the One Health principle, a scientific approach that takes into account the interconnected well-being of people, animals and the environment they inhabit.

In its first year, the initiative has led to the establishment of a biodiversity centre, a rehabilitation programme for the Bayandelger red goat, and the Dzud Impact Report – Dzud is a winter disaster unique to Mongolia, hampering animal grazing, feed and water, resulting in livestock loss. A One Health masterclass at the Mongolian University of Life Sciences, in partnership with the Royal Veterinary College and University of Liège, is also in the works. The programmes commit to the training of students and professionals on One Health practices, and the preservation of endangered species of goats that not only provide prized fibres like cashmere, but also staples such as goat milk and meat for the local population.

Driven by local experts, Resilient Threads also involves initiatives such as the One Health Mobile Hub, a travelling clinic offering herders and their animals healthcare services they wouldn’t be able to access without crossing long distances from their remote locations.

“It’s challenging, but it’s rewarding to see these concepts in action after just talking about these things for so long,” said Dr Batkhishig Baival, project lead at Resilient Threads, during a chat at the Loro Piana booth at Cop17. “It’s a learning process, and always evolving also because it requires all of the stakeholders’ engagement and they don’t always agree. The interests of wildlife protection entities, for instance, are often different from [those of the] goat herders, but we always find a [common ground].”