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The LVMH-owned beauty brand has partnered Unesco on a five-year training and support project for beekeepers, it has announced. The project will focus on global beekeeper training, setting up bee farms and offering technical support, with the work carried out in collaboration with the Observatoire Francais d’Apidologie (OFA). The initiative will also assess the impact of pollination on local ecosystems.

According to LVMH, eight beekeepers will be trained in Unesco pilot biosphere reserves across Ethiopia, Rwanda, Cambodia and China in the year 2020. A further 20 will be trained per year over the subsequent four years, in biosphere reserves in 10 additional countries.

“This partnership marks a new milestone for our efforts to safeguard bees – the symbol of Guerlain – and we are delighted at this opportunity to work closely with experts from the Man and Biosphere programme and the OFA,” Laurent Boillot, chairman and chief executive officer of Guerlain, said in a statement published by LVMH.

“A group such as ours, whose activities are intimately linked to the resources offered by nature, simply cannot ignore biodiversity issues,” added Antoine Arnault, head of communications and image at LVMH.

The project is part of LVMH’s partnership with Unesco’s Man and the Biosphere Programme, which was signed last May.

(Related: Paris’ urban rooftop hives hope to preserve honeybees)

(Photo by Boris Smokrovic on Unsplash)