The Good Cashmere Standard promotes Biodiversity

Protecting the environment that the cashmere goats, the herders, and their communities call home and keeping the grazing areas ecologically intact is one of the main goals of The Good Cashmere Standard®. Therefore, GCS promotes the protection of natural vegetation, responsible land use and the peaceful coexistence of people, cashmere goats and wildlife. A key principle is that goat farming must not have any negative effects on biodiversity or the environment.  This applies in particular to soils and biodiversity.

The standard aims to enable herders in Inner Mongolia to preserve their approach to grassland land use. Conserving biodiversity is crucial to this goal since Inner Mongolia’s grasslands are as ecologically unique as they are fragile. Climate extremes and water scarcity are prevalent, and climate change is exacerbating the danger of droughts and desertification. By threatening the cashmere goats’ natural environment, including its biodiversity, these factors put their herders’ livelihoods at risk as well.

To conserve and regenerate the biodiversity of the Inner Mongolian grasslands, The Good Cashmere Standard® follows a multifaceted sustainability strategy that supports cashmere herders through measures including:

• Protecting the biodiversity of grazing areas and surrounding land by promoting the peaceful coexistence of people, cashmere goats, and wildlife
• Maintaining and increasing the health of pastures through sustainable agricultural management
• Strengthening the foundations of grassland biodiversity by protecting natural vegetation
• Enabling the sustainable cultivation of feed crops, while protecting Inner Mongolia’s endemic biodiversity, by minimising the use of fertilisers and pesticides
• Preventing fertilisers and pesticides from being used in a way that damages the biodiversity of the cultivated and surrounding areas, whether in farmyards, pastures, or crop fields

To reinforce these measures, the standard also defines clear and comprehensive criteria regarding the conservation of biodiversity. Compliance with the criteria is regularly monitored by independent auditors, and fulfilling the standard’s criteria on biodiversity is a requirement for receiving its verification certificate, which is valid for twelve months.