In the last few years, Swiss watch brand Breitling has made some substantial strides when it comes to sustainability. Just after the end of 2025, it will have made the industry-leading move of having phased out mined stones in favor of lab-grown diamonds from carefully selected suppliers (which are less damaging to the environment, traceable, and support community-based value chains) becoming the first major luxury watch manufacturer to make this transition. It complements some of the other initiatives Breitling has undertaken in recent years, such as launching the world’s first fully “traceable” watch (the Super Chronomat Automatic 38 Origins) in 2022, and its ongoing commitment to sourcing gold from artisanal and small-scale mines. Spearheading many of these changes is Aurelia Figueroa, Breitling’s Chief Sustainability Officer, who recently became a Villars Institute board member.

We want to thank our friends and partners for their great support and active engagement as the Villars Institute celebrates its 3rd anniversary this year and begins its 4th year of programming. You can learn more about our highlights and milestones in the message below. You can also visit our new YouTube Channel, to watch +70 videos to listen to leading experts on a broad range of important topics. Here is the most popular video and be sure to follow our page on LinkedIn to join +7500 members of the Villars community.

It’s safe to say Jade Hameister’s childhood was more adventurous than the average Australian schoolgirl. At the age of 12, she trekked to Mount Everest base camp. Two years later, she became the youngest person in history to ski to the North Pole. By the time she was 16, she had broken a number of other records, including becoming the youngest woman to cross the Greenland ice sheet, and the youngest person to ski from the coast of Antarctica to South Pole, unsupported and unassisted. She is also the second woman in history to set a new route to the South Pole, skiing 600 km and 37-days through the Transantarctic Mountains from the Amundsen Coast.

If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Fix It. The results of an historic scientific health check of the planet were unveiled during Climate Week 2024 in New York, indicating that Earth’s systems remain at risk. This was the first in a series of annual updates on the status of each planetary boundary. “By quantifying the boundaries for a healthy planet, we provide policy, economics and business with the tools needed to steer away from unmanageable risks," said Johan Rockström, PIK Director, Pioneer of the Planetary Boundaries Framework and Co-Founder of the Planetary Guardians. As one of the most resource-intensive sectors, the steel industry sits at the nexus of these boundaries from carbon emissions and freshwater use to air emissions and resource consumption. Notably, iron and steel production accounts for around 8% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, making decarbonizing this sector a core focus in mitigating climate change. To align with global climate goals and achieve a net-zero energy system, the sector needs to reduce its emissions by at least 90% by 2050.

Adolescents represent 16% of the global population of 8.2 billion, yet we give little attention to the opinion of the world’s youth when it comes to issues that directly impact their future. Today’s youth will inherit the worst consequences of global warming and the political decisions of today’s leaders, and on that basis alone deserve to be given a seat at the table.

As the son of student doctors working and volunteering in Africa in the mid-1980s, Thomas Crowther spent his first birthday camping in the middle of the Sahara Desert. It was a foreshadow for a career working in the field of ecology and biodiversity: as he says, “I’ve never had a moment’s thought about what I was going to do with my life. And while I didn’t think I’d become a professor, I knew for sure it would be something nature related.” After doing his post-doctorate at Yale, his research has encompassed estimating the number of trees on Earth and mapping the distribution of soil organisms, while driving major conservation efforts such as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, in a mission to prove our deep reliance on nature. Tom is also the founder of Restor, an online platform supporting thousands of community-led restoration projects around the world, and which in 2021 was a finalist for the Royal Foundation’s Earthshot Prize for providing ecological insights, transparency and connectivity to conservation and restoration efforts across the globe. Tom was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

For the award-winning ecological artist, Thijs Biersteker, art really can change the world. Biersteker collaborated with the Villars Institute on his new work, Memories of the Melted which was previewed at the Montreux Jazz Festival

From pollen paper, to weather-predicting umbrellas, bringing together deep learning from nature and machines can augment human intelligence and show the possibility of systems thinking, and why it matters for our future.

Villars Institute sat down with two leading ecopreneurs who will be leading the flagship course this coming August to learn more about their own backgrounds and what we can expect this summer.