Brand Watch: Fashion begins to wake up to its impact on nature

Gucci products are displayed in the window of a store on Old Bond Street in London, Britain. The luxury brand’s parent company Kering has agreed to pilot new Science Based Targets Network guidelines. REUTERS/Neil Hall Acquire Licensing Rights

August 2 - H&M, Carrefour and Kering (which counts labels such as Gucci, Alexander McQueen and Yves Saint Laurent among its portfolio) are among a group of 17 companies that have agreed to pilot the new guidelines from the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN), which were formally launched in May.

Adopting a similar approach to the climate-focused Science Based Targets initiative, the SBTN’s guidelines lay out a series of principles for establishing bona fide goals for reducing corporate impacts on marine and territorial ecosystems. Each company had pledged to announce their respective targets before the end of this year.

Unlike the other companies in the pilot, however, the three participating apparel companies have the benefit of a new primer designed specifically for the fashion sector. Developed by the sector-led Fashion Pact, in conjunction with the Cambridge Institute for Sustainable Leadership and the environmental charity Conservation International, the 30-page primer promises to assist fashion brands to “address nature loss, no matter where they are on their sustainability journey”.

Underpinning the advisory framework is a five-step management process: to assess (ie identify material impacts and dependencies on nature); interpret and prioritise (define locations for action); measure, set and disclose (determine relevant baselines and targets); to act (i.e. develop “grounded action plans”); and track (i.e. reporting against progress).

The verdict of the Fashion Pact is that the SBTN pilot itself marks an important milestone in the integration of nature and its protection into corporate policies and business strategies. At present, only about a dozen of the organisation’s 61 members even have a biodiversity strategy.

“This really helps to set the industry on a path (that promotes) an ambition on measurable actions that have the potential to become a global standard,” says Eva von Alvensleben, the Fashion Pact’s executive director and secretary general.

A worker hangs pieces of leather to dry. The SBTN calls on companies to map their supply chains against a list of high impact commodities, including leather. REUTERS/Ammar Awad Acquire Licensing Rights

The case for such action is indisputable. As the Fashion Pact concedes, the $1.5-trillion apparel industry is currently responsible for contributing to the depletion of nature and, as a consequence, a reduction in the environmental services and raw materials on which the industry itself relies.

With the sector predicted to grow by one third over the next four years, those impacts and associated business vulnerabilities will only increase unless targeted action is taken, says von Alvensleben.

“The fashion industry is highly dependent on natural ecosystems, and biodiversity is the glue that holds these ecosystems together,” she states.

One ecosystem is not the same as another, however. Obvious as this point may be, the huge differences in animal, plant and microbe life from one place to another has presented a stumbling block for both global standard setters and international brands.

The SBTN’s solution is to call on companies to map their supply chains against a list of eight “high impact” commodities. The apparel sector is exposed to all eight, but three hold particular relevance: cotton, leather and cellulose, which derives from dissolved wood pulp and is used to create regenerated fibres such as viscose, lyocell and acetate.

Participating companies are then required to cross-check the source of their supply of these commodities with areas at risk of deforestation, marine pollution or other forms of biodiversity depletion.

The process is designed to determine the high-risk geographies that individual companies should prioritise, explains Virginia Borcherdt, programme coordinator for sustainable fashion at Conservation International.

Wood chips stacked at a factory for making pulp, which is used in the production of viscose. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov Acquire Licensing Rights

“Prioritisation can be a challenge, right? Companies have a lot of priorities to manage when it comes to being a positive force for people and planet (so) this guidance gives a general framework for how to start assessing your impact, prioritising and garnering resources,” she states.

An onus clearly lies on companies to drill down into the specific issues at play in their designated priority areas, she adds. Only when the specific risks are properly understood, can meaningful interventions be designed and implemented.

Here, data promises to play a critical role. Even at the initial mapping stage, the availability of geo-located information on both nature hotspots and commodity production offers a level of visibility that would previously have been impossible.

Trase offers a case in point. A partnership between the Stockholm Environmental Institute and the UK non-profit Global Canopy, Trase offers a set of online tools that bring together disparate, publicly available data to create a “wall-to-wall map” of where commodities such as soy, palm oil, timber and beef are driving forest clearance. Similarly, the Fashion Pact has developed its own benchmark risk analysis.

When it comes to traceability, however, Borcherdt is cautious about the perfect becoming the enemy of the good. “You don’t need full visibility to take action now ... We know where the greatest needs are for prioritising nature so companies shouldn’t delay.”

It's wise advice. For all the extensive preparatory work and consultations done by both SBTN and Fashion Pact, companies’ ability to accurately measure and manage their impact on biodiversity remains far from an exact science.

As Nicole Rycroft, executive director of Canopy, aptly notes, biodiversity is not as “KPI friendly” as carbon. As a result, she argues, “biodiversity has slipped through the cracks (despite) the incredible overlap between carbon-rich landscape and biodiverse landscapes.”

A Blue-crowned Motmot in Peru's southern Amazon region. Only a fraction of the Fashon Pact signatories have a biodiversity strategy. REUTERS/Enrique Castro-Mendivil Acquire Licensing Rights

In a sense, the development of SBTN in parallel with SBTi marks an attempt to right this historic imbalance between climate and nature in corporate management strategies.

But neither SBTN nor the Fashion Pact has a monopoly on corporate guidance on how best to measure and manage impacts on biodiversity. Running alongside the SBTN framework, for instance, is the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, which is set to publish its recommendations in September.

Related sector-level initiatives are also under way. In July the brand-led Textile Exchange released a new management framework to judge the outcomes of corporate efforts to promote regenerative agriculture, often cited as a key solution to the protection and restoration of biodiversity, and explicitly references SBTN’s methodology on nature-based risks in its own framework.

The step-change required in the fashion industry is illustrated by the latest Fashion Transparency Index report, which says that despite the industry being exposed to high deforestation risk, particularly in their Brazilian cotton and leather supply chains, just 12% of the 250 brands it assessed published a time-bound, measurable commitment to zero deforestation, 3% fewer than last year, and only 7% publish measurable progress towards achieving zero deforestation.

By comparison, one third of the companies (198 in total) that submitted information to CDP’s latest Global Supply Chain report at least estimate their contribution to deforestation or land conversion. Of these,148 assess the deforestation footprint of their entire commodity chain.

The hope of the Fashion Pact is H&M, Carrefour and Kering can kick-start that change by not only setting clear nature targets, but demonstrating meaningful action to deliver on them, and that the rest of the industry will follow their lead.

Having a commonly agreed science-based methodology and a comparable set of performance metrics should act as a “huge accelerator”, says von Alvensleben.

“We need to work collectively to avoid the risk that we had in other areas where everyone is doing their own thing and we’re not making progress at the scale and the speed needed.”

Oliver Balch is an independent journalist and writer, specialising on business’s role in society. He has been a regular contributor to The Ethical Corporation since 2004. He also writes for a range of UK and international media. Oliver holds a PhD in Anthropology / Latin American Studies from Cambridge University.