An initiative that WWF has launched aims to raise an initial $10 million to help fund deforestation-free sourcing of hides. It says this will just be the start.

Campaign group World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has formally unveiled an initiative called the Deforestation-Free Leather Fund. Its aim is to collect an initial $10 million over the next three years from companies in the leather sector to fund initiatives that will support traceability, sustainability and resilience in the leather supply chain.

Projects that the new fund will finance will target places that, according to WWF, are at higher risk of environmental degradation. The solutions will accelerate what it calls “deforestation- and conversion-free sourcing from those regions”. These projects will, initially, be in Brazil, but the possibility exists of expanding the work to other beef-producing countries in South America in the near future. 

“While leather is a by-product of the beef and dairy industries, it still carries responsibility for embedded impacts and emissions in the supply chain,” says WWF’s senior director for beef and leather supply chains, Fernando Bellese. “Companies that use leather, including those in the fashion, automotive and furniture industries, have unique leverage within the supply chain to encourage and support more sustainable practices by influencing beef and tannery operations.”

WWF has said it is already working to secure contributions to the fund from brands, retailers, leather processors and finished product manufacturers. The fund will enable these contributors to deliver “deforestation-free commitments”, it says, and send “strong market signals” to livestock farmers and meat companies. It aims to use the initial $10 million to tag 1 million head of cattle in the first three years and help the regeneration of at least 15,000 hectares of land. Another aim is to help small- and medium-sized farms “to transition” in their own operations, resulting in the recovery of a further 30,000 hectares of degraded land.

Value-driver

Accessories group Tapestry is one of the first companies to make a financial commitment to the Deforestation-Free Leather Fund. This commitment is in addition to the Tapestry Foundation’s four-year, $3 million philanthropic grant to WWF in 2022, which has already led to the development of a system to enhance traceability in the leather value chain (see World Leather, February-March, 2025).

Speaking about the new Fund, Tapestry’s vice-president for ESG and sustainability, Logan Duran, says: “We believe strongly in the importance of sustainability in leather manufacturing, and this commitment reaffirms that belief. We invite other companies, within and outside our industry, to join us in these efforts.” 

Mr Duran adds that one of the reasons Tapestry looks on the Deforestation-Free Leather Fund as “a positive development and a value-driver” is the support it will provide in meeting regulatory requirements, including the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).

Leather connections

A native of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, Fernando Bellese worked for many years in the leather industry before joining WWF. He held various roles at JBS Couros for eight years, ending up as its marketing and sustainability manager, ultimately basing himself in the US. In 2019, he moved to become the chief sustainability officer at another leather manufacturing group, PrimeAsia. He stayed in that role until 2022, when he moved to WWF. Years after moving north, his love of Brazil and its landscapes remains strong.

“Tropical forests and natural eco-systems are critical to our wellbeing,” he argues. “They work as an important carbon sink, helping the fight against climate change. They support water availability and, in general, balance in the natural world.” But he says that in areas in which deforestation occurs, all of these factors suffer. “We are seeing more extreme weather in South America,” he continues, “with droughts and floods happening at the same time. For the sake of nature, and for the sake of human beings, we need to address this sooner rather than later.”

WWF figures suggest that, between 2001 and 2023, the world lost 430 million hectares of tree cover. The figure for Brazil alone was 68 million hectares over the same period, an area greater than that of the whole of mainland France.
“Agricultural commodities have a strong connection to deforestation,” Mr Bellese says, “and cattle production is the top driver for it. But we also need to see that another part of this story is that the demand for food is continuing to increase and cattle production is part of that equation.”

Using, again, WWF figures, he puts the increase in food production that the world needs to achieve between now and 2050 at 70%. Cattle production, as a part of the response to growing food demand, will need to go up by 20% over the same period. What this tells the former JBS executive is that organisations like WWF need to work with the livestock farming and meat sectors. He believes this can help beef production become more efficient and more sustainable, without any need to clear new areas of forested land.

This entire discussion connects to leather, of course, because the leather industry’s ties to cattle farming and meat and milk production are unbreakable. For Fernando Bellese, this means that the leather sector, while not the cause of deforestation (because no farmer anywhere raises cattle to produce hides), needs to have a voice in the deforestation discussion. “More and more consumers are asking companies to decouple their products and materials from deforestation and other environmental impacts,” he says. Suppliers, he explains, can help their customers understand the whole supply chain more completely so that they can answer consumers’ questions and doubts. At the same time, a collaborative attitude can help brands and finished product manufacturers fulfil the regulatory responsibilities that governments are, increasingly, placing at their front doors.

Half the battle

What he refers to as the good news is that there are ways in which manufacturers of leather can adopt and demonstrate this helpful attitude, work with their customers and build the best partnerships possible. One of the aims of the Deforestation-Free Leather Fund will be to help companies achieve this, he explains.

He continues: “With sustainable leather production, for clarity, we are really talking about the upstream side, where the raw materials come from, more than what companies do inside tanneries. It’s about how we can move to more sustainable supply chains. We want to know that those materials are coming from farms that are working responsibly and are not connected to deforestation.”

Technology is available to deliver traceability requirements, but he acknowledges that this is only half the battle and that convincing farmers to adopt the technology is just as important. The answer is an old one. “We need to start showing that there is value for farmers who adopt traceability. It can be hard to convince them; a traceability project will mean work and investment for them.”

Benefits to farmers include using the technology to increase production efficiency. This will allow them to supply the necessary increase in beef more affordably (and, as mentioned, without using more land). In addition, Mr Bellese quotes United Nations figures that suggest raising two head of cattle per hectare instead of only one could reduce the emissions calculation for beef (and, by extension, for leather) by up to 70%.

Walk the walk

His conviction is that the fund can accelerate supply chain improvements and “send a signal to upstream partners” that performing well will be good for them.  Clear signs that there is support for them and that there will be commitment to keeping that support going will help them. He thinks there is justified criticism that customers “in the most demanding markets” have appeared keen on raising the bar, on being strict about what they need from suppliers and on pointing the way forward. But they have appeared less willing to walk at least some of the road with those partners. Taking part in the Deforestation-Free Leather Fund will be one way of showing that their commitment to those suppliers is strong. 

And it is within this, he argues, that companies that make leather can use their “unique leverage” to accelerate change. This shows itself in the ability that leather companies have to maintain close connections with upstream suppliers, often helping them stay on top of the changing regulatory requirements. He insists this is true, in spite of leather makers having only a 1% share of the revenue that comes from the slaughterhouse. Their customers, brands and retailers, are often too far away from the world that the raw material emerges from, he suggests, making it hard for them to recognise which projects and initiatives can make the biggest difference. 

Opportunities for circularity

This remoteness is not part of Tapestry’s relationship with leather, Logan Duran argues. He talks of the accessories group as a finished product company that “leans into the intrinsic qualities of leather”, its durability, longevity and “the quality associated with it”. But Tapestry’s cold analysis of its own supply chain also shows leather to be its highest-volume and highest-impact material. It is this insight that led the group to try to take a strategic, long-term view of the consequences of its preference for putting leather into its products. It embarked on this with an eye always on what Mr Duran calls “the opportunities for circularity”.

Results of this work so far include taking to 99% the proportion of Tapestry leather in 2024 that came from tanneries rated gold or silver by multistakeholder body the Leather Working Group. In 2024, it mapped beyond tier two almost 75% of the raw materials it uses. One of its goals for 2025 is to achieve 95% traceability and mapping of these materials. One conclusion it has drawn, the vice-president for ESG and sustainability makes clear, is this: “The best thing we can do from an environmental perspective is to keep products in use for as long as possible.”

Fernando Bellese knows the Deforestation-Free Leather Fund will not solve all of the issues in the livestock-beef-leather value chain, but he thinks it can, at least, help the sector move in the right direction. “We want companies to commit for three years,” he concludes, “but we hope the fund will run for much longer. We hope it will run until deforestation is no longer a hot topic.”

WWF wants the Deforestation-Free Leather Fund to send “strong market signals” to livestock farmers and meat companies. Credit: Carlos Egocheaga/WWF Peru

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