For the good, from the ground up.
Nature provides the leather in our shoes and handbags, the cotton in our T-shirts and jeans, and the wool and cashmere in our sweaters.
But making these materials comes with a high environmental cost — leading to deforestation, water pollution, biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions.
The good news? There is a better way. By adopting farming practices that work with nature, we can protect nature and our climate, while supporting the people who grow and produce these raw materials.
That’s the idea behind the Regenerative Fund for Nature. The fund supports innovative approaches to agricultural production by working with nature, not against it — starting with the fashion industry — to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture while helping local communities thrive.
2024 Annual Report
We are pleased to share the 2024 Annual Report for the Regenerative Fund for Nature. This report highlights the remarkable progress and positive impact the Fund has achieved in the past year.
1 MILLION HECTARES
The fund aims to transform fashion supply chains by shifting 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of farms and grazing lands to regenerative agriculture spaces by 2026.
4 FASHION MATERIALS
The fund focuses on the fashion commodities with the highest production volumes and impact on nature - leather, cotton, wool and cashmere.
100,000 PEOPLE BENEFITTING
The fund currently benefits 100,000 farmers, ranchers, and herders around the globe.
13 PROJECTS IN 8 COUNTRIES
What is regeneration?
Regeneration is about restoring and revitalizing nature hand in hand with local communities — especially through the way we steward and manage land. It starts with collaboration: listening to and co-creating the vision of local communities, assessing the environmental, social, and economic context of the land and making decisions together.
In productive land use systems, regeneration means using practices that restore soil health, support biodiversity, improve water cycles, build climate resilience and strengthen local livelihoods. It’s not a one-time fix, but an ongoing process that evolves with the land and the people who steward it. The goal is to create landscapes that can renew themselves — generation after generation.
At its heart, regeneration is a mindset shift. It means looking beyond short-term outcomes and focusing on long-term well-being — for people, nature and the climate. It’s about building trust, shared values and lasting relationships that make real, lasting change possible.
Regenerative Fund for Nature principles
The Fund tracks its impact using a set of core principles, which were updated in 2024:
Monitoring and evaluation
Measuring the fund’s impact is critical to ensuring lasting results. In 2024, the team launched a Monitoring and Evaluation Framework to track progress across the fund’s six core principles: soil health, biodiversity, climate, water, livelihoods and animal welfare. This framework translates the fund’s principles into clear measurable outcomes — using indicators, metrics, proven methods aligned with industry standards and best practices.
The “Regenerative Fund Measurement and Evaluation Framework” was designed to intentionally align with established measurement standards such as Science Based Targets for Nature (SBTN), Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting (WVBA), European Animal Welfare Indicators (AWIN) and Welfare Quality protocols, Textile Exchange Regenerative Outcomes Framework (TE ROF) and One Planet Business for Biodiversity (OP2B). By aligning with industry practices and global standards, the fund can connect the efforts of the private sector, field operations and international standards and frameworks to drive broader integration across corporate industries.
Current projects and grantees
To reshape the fashion industry’s relationship with nature, the fund issues grants to implementation partners, farming communities, project leaders and non-governmental organizations that are implementing regenerative approaches:
The Good Growth Company develops scalable models that connect landscape restoration with more sustainable supply chains. Over three years, the project has supported the development of a Rangeland Regeneration Toolkit, tested across over 342,000 hectares, integrating community organization, ecological science and sustainable business practices to promote rangeland regeneration and long-term livelihoods for Mongolian herders.
In India’s Satpura-Pench Tiger Corridor, Wildlife Friendly Enterprise Network works with COFE, SRIJAN and WWF-India to transform cotton farming — the backbone of the local economy. By introducing Wildlife Friendly® fiber certification and promoting regenerative practices, the project is helping create a corridor that connects protected tiger reserves through farmland and forest. This approach supports endangered species, helps reduce human-wildlife conflict and boosts economic livelihoods.
Established in India in 2022, Organic Cotton Accelerator (OCA) is working to shift conventional cotton farming toward organic and regenerative practices — recognizing the potential of organic agriculture to benefit both people and the planet. OCA projects are testing innovative techniques such as using biochar — a carbon-rich soil enhancer that also helps store carbon —for carbon credit payments, making bio-based pesticides from local materials and helping farmers plant multiple food crops in the same field to improve soil health, while diversifying their income.
In Pakistan, OCA is implementing a three-year project across Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan, aiming to support conventional cotton farmers in transitioning to organic and regenerative practices across 10,000 hectares. The project focuses on improving seed availability, farmer training, and securing market commitments from brands. It will replicate successful approaches from OCA’s India programs, emphasizing soil health, biodiversity conservation and reducing synthetic inputs.
Launched in summer 2024, this project aims to improve soil health by reducing synthetic inputs — such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides. This can improve crop yields, while also restoring degraded land around cotton farms to create new wildlife corridors and reduce human-wildlife conflict. By 2027, the goal is to support over 2,000 cotton farmers with regenerative farming and restore up to 32,000 hectares of degraded land.
Solidaridad works with Creole and Indigenous smallholder cattle producers to promote sustainable management of grazing lands in Argentina’s Gran Chaco biome to promote more sustainable grazing. Established in 2022, the project uses a regenerative silvopastoral production model — integrating trees into livestock grazing areas — to restore degraded landscapes and support resilient livelihoods.
From 2022 to 2024, the project operated on eight pilot farms across 11,159 hectares, managing 5,540 animals, mainly goats. The first phase demonstrated that regenerative models can help protect high-value natural areas while improving farm profitability. The second phase, launched in 2024, expanded to 15 pilot farms and focuses on measuring ecosystem services, improving animal welfare, reducing chemical use, building a regenerative leather value chain, enhancing traceability and supporting the scalability of regenerative farming through local networks.
From 2022 to 2024, Wildlife Conservation Society worked with communities across 300,000+ hectares in Patagonia to shift livestock management practices toward more regenerative outcomes. Age old practices, like using guard dogs to naturally deter predators, were combined with certification systems, ecosystem monitoring and price premiums for regenerative and wildlife-friendly fibers to create a comprehensive landscape-based approach. The project has been extended for three years.
Epiterre works to improve biodiversity and environmental health by increasing fodder crop diversity and demonstrating the ecological and economic benefits of regenerative practices. Partnering with a small-scale cooperative of livestock breeders, the initial objective was to sow 200 hectares of sainfoin, a nutrient-rich forage crop. In 2024, the focus shifted to scaling the project and clearly communicating the environmental and financial benefits of regenerative practices.
Conservation South Africa, a Conservation International affiliate, has launched an expansive and ambitious effort to help rural farmers graze their livestock in ways that allows the land to rest and recover. In 2024, the project expanded to include six grazing associations, aiming to help farmers profitably enter the wool market. From 2021 to 2023, the project improved management on 13,000 hectares and helped two associations gain direct access to the South African wool market, increasing herders’ incomes.
Current partners
Conservation International
Conservation International is working to promote regenerative agriculture as a global solution for people, nature and the climate. By combining science, field programs, corporate partnerships and government engagement, Conservation International is aligning stakeholder commitments and investments in priority landscapes to drive conservation, sustainable production and improved livelihoods at scale. In addition, Conservation International manages the fund and provides technical input into project selection and implementation.
Kering
A global Luxury group, Kering manages the development of a series of renowned Houses in Fashion, Leather Goods and Jewelry: Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Brioni, Boucheron, Pomellato, DoDo, Qeelin, Ginori 1735 as well as Kering Eyewear and Kering Beauté. By placing creativity at the heart of its strategy, Kering enables its Houses to set new limits in terms of their creative expression while crafting tomorrow’s Luxury in a sustainable and responsible way. We capture these beliefs in our signature: “Empowering Imagination.”
Inditex
Inditex is one of the world’s largest fashion retailers -with brands as Zara, Pull&Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho and Zara Home, operating in more than 200 markets through its online platform and stores. Its integrated business model is focused on meeting customer demands through a quality fashion proposition and a unique customer experience. The Group is firmly committed to sustainability, with ambitious goals as using only preferred textile fibers by 2030, achieving net zero emissions by 2040 and promoting nature conservation.