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London, UK—The Responsible Jewellery Council on Tuesday celebrated its 15-year anniversary with a virtual event including key global stakeholders. It also launched its Roadmap to 2030 and Beyond (“Roadmap”), and requested members to nominate candidates to join a special Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Taskforce. Image: RJC executive director Iris van der Veken

Leading jewelry organizations from around the world came together for the virtual event, including CIBJO, ISEAL, The World Diamond Council, RMI, IRMA, The Plumb Club, The World Gold Council, and GIT. 

RJC chair David Bouffard opened the event, commenting, “15 years have passed since that historic moment in London when 14 organizations came around the table to establish a standards organization for the whole jewelry and watch industry. Now with over 1300 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 jewelry and watch industry.” 

The Roadmap to 2030 and Beyond was established to support members and stakeholders to understand the RJC’s path to realize 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 for the jewelry, gem, and watch industries. 

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 


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 behavioral change, and to report performance more comprehensively. This coincides with the United Nation’s call for the ‘Decade of Action’.” 

The RJC has also revised its performance monitoring framework, now linking to the priority SDGs and key provisions of the Code of Practices 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. 

Following the decision to establish an SDG Taskforce, the RJC is inviting members to nominate candidates by January 22, 2021. Members may submit their nomination via online form, demonstrating how they meet the taskforce participant criteria. The RJC will also invite two external experts (NGO and academic) to join the taskforce. Those nominations close on February 5, 2021.