Guerlain’s CEO, Veronique Courtois, Announces $1m Bee Pledge Alongside Program Godmother, Angelina Jolie

Veronique Courtois, CEO of the French heritage perfume, cosmetics and skincare house, Guerlain is on the phone from France where she is set to launch one of the most significant commitments the house will make to date, and it’s not for perfume. It’s for bees. 

In a move which Courtois, Guerlain, and parent company LVMH hope will establish the brand as a serious player towards bee preservation, the 193 year-old house is making a $1m pledge towards the cause to align with the United Nations World Bee Day on May 20th. 

For Courtois, this pledge comes with the recognition that the problem she and Guerlain hope to impact is much bigger than the business she leads, or even the beauty industry as a whole, because preserving bees means preserving the world’s food supply.

“It’s now crucial for people to understand that one-third of the food of the planet won’t be secured if the bees are not preserved,” says Courtois. “Bees are responsible for the pollination of almost 80% of cultivated plants, but the annual honey bee mortality rate is now at 30%.” 

What Courtois points out is an equation where, as the number of people on earth continues to grow, so does the human demand for food, and without a healthy population of bees to continue to pollinate crops there very simply won’t be enough nutritious food to sustain life on this planet. In the US alone, the number of honey bee colonies dropped from 6 million in 1947 to 2.5 million today, an almost 60% decrease.

According to a paper published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “pollination is the highest agricultural contributor to yields worldwide,” and crops which depend on pollination are more valuable than those that don’t because of their nutritional value towards a healthy human diet. Top pollination-dependent foods include tomatoes, carrots, apples, almonds and even coffee, all of which are potential.

A PLEDGE IN THREE PARTS

As part of this $1m pledge, Guerlain has declared three goals: bee protection, bee repopulation and bee education. 

“The first, and most important thing, is education on bees. Most people do not even know we need to protect the bees, even many of my friends, so we have to raise awareness and it’s absolutely crucial to do this,” Courtois says. 

Guerlain, through a continued partnership with the Good Planet Foundation and UNESCO, has designed a program where every Guerlain employee will spend one day of their working life at school to teach children about bee protection. 

“We have created something called Breakfast with Bees and we show the kids what their breakfast would look like without bees,” Courtois explains. “When you see the faces of the kids when they realize they won’t have orange juice, blueberries, or granola, it’s very telling.” 

Part of the preservation strategy includes continued support of the Brittany Black Bee Conservatory. This organization is from the island of Ouessant in Western France whose untouched ecosystem hosts a species of black bees only found there which have remained purebred. Through their support, Guerlain helps fund beekeepers on the island, protects the black bee species, promotes the beekeeper’s work and provides legal support to better protect the bees. 

Guerlain’s pledge towards repopulation is the commitment to help breed 125 million bees over the course of 5 years, and more if they are able.

Although, the part of the bee repopulation strategy for which Courtois is especially enthusiastic is called Women for Bees. A five-year program signed in partnership with UNESCO, Women for Bees will educate 50 women as beekeepers to help create jobs for women while simultaneously working to increase the bee population worldwide.

“70% of the world’s poor are women, and they are the ones who are suffering the most from climate change and biodiversity erosion,” she says. “Which is why we decided to link both. It’s not only to protect more and more bees but also to encourage women to be designers of change.”

The program will train the future female beekeepers over the 5 years starting on June 21, 2021 through designated UNESCO biosphere reserves in countries like Bulgaria, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Slovenia, and Italy.

As part of the program, the women will spend 30 days in Provence each year to deepen their education through theoretical study and practical application of beekeeping, including managing a professional apiary. At the conclusion of the program, the women will be fully trained as professional beekeeper-entrepreneurs and woven into an international network of beekeepers. 

As part of this program, Guerlain has tapped actor and activist Angelina Jolie as the Women for Bees ‘Godmother,’ and in this role Jolie will personally meet each and every participant in the program and monitor their progress. 

“95-99% of our clients are women and most of the leaders at UNESCO are women, perhaps this is why we are more sensitive to the plight of women. Especially that female empowerment is not widespread throughout the world yet, particularly in the UNESCO Biospheres in the developing countries, female empowerment is not there at all,” says Courtois.

“We as women at Guerlain want to help women entrepreneurship, this is very important and this is where Angelina’s support is so meaningful.”

A CENTURIES LONG LOVE AFFAIR WITH BEES

Guerlain is known and desired for their mostly organic and natural ingredients and maintains the highest standards of ethics and sustainability. For example, the L’Essential Natural Glow foundation is made from 97% naturally-derived ingredients while ingredients like bergamot are 100% organically grown. 

Although, the choice of selecting bees as their focus is hardly a surprise. One of Guerlain’s top-selling products is the Abeille Royale range of skin products created with royal jelly from bees which is believed to have significant healing and anti-aging properties.

This relationship to the bee, though, goes back to the very founding of the house by perfumer Pierre-François Pascal Guerlain in 1828 when he created Eau de Cologne Impériale for French Emperor Napoleon III’s wife Empress Eugénie. The handmade bottle featured 65 intricately embossed bees onto the glass, a process which has continued ever since then and has engrained the as a code of the house. 

As the CEO finds herself at the helm of a business that depends on the natural world to create its products, she recognizes Guerlain often stands alone in their ethical practices within the beauty industry. Which is why this initiative is so important to her and to Guerlain, it positions them as global leader within a very complicated business. 

To this point, Courtois says, “We are making a precautionary investment in our future today.”