Rolex and National Geographic
Perpetual Planet
Assisting key individuals and organizations such as National Geographic to help find solutions to environmental challenges forms part of a commitment Rolex has made to preserving the environment through a campaign called Perpetual Planet. Alongside National Geographic, it embraces oceanographer Sylvia Earle’s Mission Blue initiative and the Rolex Awards for Enterprise.
A long-standing relationship
Exploration is in the DNA of Rolex. It has shaped our timepieces and imbued their design since the founder of Rolex, Hans Wilsdorf, first began testing them under the most extreme conditions of use in the 1930s. Since then, Oyster Perpetual watches have aided explorers from the abyssal ocean to soaring peaks, from untrodden jungle to scorching desert, from the poles to the deepest caverns.
National Geographic has invested in bold people and transformative ideas more than 130 years, pushing the boundaries of exploration to increase understanding of our world and generate solutions for a healthy, more sustainable future for generations to come.
United by exploration
Scientists from National Geographic Society have served as members of the Rolex Awards jury. And today we support some of the world’s boldest and most visionary adventurers: no fewer than 16 Laureates of the Rolex Awards for Enterprise have also been National Geographic Explorers or recipients of grants.
Johan Reinhard, for example, won a Rolex Award in 1987 for his project to preserve the patrimony of the Andean people through high-altitude cultural anthropology, and became a National Geographic Explorer in 1999. More recently, Erika Cuéllar, selected as a Rolex Laureate in 2012, became a National Geographic Emerging Explorer the following year. A conservation biologist, she trains local people to protect the extraordinary biodiversity of the Gran Chaco, one of South America’s last truly wild environments.
Rolex and National Geographic also have long alliances with leading ocean explorers Sylvia Earle, Don Walsh and James Cameron (both of whom have explored the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, the deepest part of the ocean) and underwater photographer Brian Skerry.
Now, through Rolex’s support for Perpetual Planet Extreme Expeditions, we share our experience, resources and our ideals in what may prove our most critical mission yet – a five-year endeavour to document the changes taking place in the Earth’s most extreme, remote and imperfectly understood environments.
Perpetual Planet Extreme Expeditions
Of equal importance to our shared vision is the development of solutions to any adverse changes we may detect. Our partnership will seek proposals from the world’s most adventurous scientists and experts in these isolated regions.
Mountains
Earth’s water towers
Rainforests
Lungs of the planet
Oceans
Earth’s thermostat
Charting change at the top
A planet in balance
Both Rolex and National Geographic have long drawn inspiration from the remote places of our world, the marvels they hold – and from the courage, skill and tenacity which it takes to reach them. In Perpetual Planet we unite all those attributes and seek to serve humanity, and the Earth itself, through the insights the explorers and scientists will gather.
