The Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC) also launched its Roadmap to 2030 and Beyond, and requested members to nominate candidates to join the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Taskforce.

RJC Chairman David Bouffard commented: “15 years have passed since that historic moment in London when 14 organisations came around the table to establish a standards organisation for the whole jewellery and watch industry. Now with over 1,300 members, we are forging confidently ahead on our journey of continuous improvement toward building an even stronger responsible supply chain that promotes greater trust in the global jewellery and watch industry.”

The Roadmap to 2030 was established to support members and stakeholders to understand the RJC’s path to realise the SDGs, the most impactful contributions that members can make to align their operations and reporting to the SDGs, and to provide guidelines to achieve collective long term sustainability goals.

The Roadmap illustrates how the RJC’s strategies (Members First, Partnerships for Progress, Advocacy for Positive Change) relate to the UN’s five pillars of sustainable development (people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships), drive short and medium-term goals and longer-term impacts, and how they contribute to achieving the RJC’s priority SDGs, namely:

SDG 5: Gender equality
SDG 8: Decent work and economic growth
SDG 12: Responsible consumptions and production
SDG 13: Climate change
SDG 16: Peace, justice, and strong institutions
SDG 17: Partnerships for the goals
The RJC has also revised its performance monitoring framework, now linking to the priority SDGs and key provisions of the Code of Practices (COP) standard, to better demonstrate meaningful and measurable progress.

There will be a consultation process with members until 28 February 2021, with a final document expected toward the end of March 2021.

Iris van der Veken, Executive Director of the Responsible Jewellery Council said: “Sustainability is about bringing purpose and people to the next level and measuring progress and positive impact. That is why we have launched the Roadmap to 2030 and Beyond. It is a clear pathway for our members on what we, collectively, want to achieve and includes performance indicators to assess and measure progress, promote positive behavioural change, and to report performance more comprehensively. This coincides with the United Nation’s call for the ‘Decade of Action’.”