Fashion businesses must recognise the intrinsic worth of biodiversity if they are to become truly sustainable.
With the knowledge that apparel supply chains are directly linked to soil degradation, deforestation and waterway pollution, how can companies mitigate the impact of converting natural ecosystems to resources and integrate this aim into sustainability strategies?
Biodiversity loss was ranked by the World Economic Forum’s 2020 Global Risks Report as one of the top five threats facing humanity over the next decade. This phenomenon represents a seismic negative externality as the global population of 7.6 billion, which represents 0.01% of living things by weight, has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of all plants.
Failing to incorporate biodiversity protection into strategic decisions opens organisations up to long-term exposure and fails to acknowledge the Sustainable Development Goal #15, to protect life on land. The interconnectivity of the environment and natural ecosystem services has an estimated annual value of USD $46 trillion according to ecological economist Robert Costanza in 2007. This means that organisations must work diligently to pay the true cost for the value that nature provides for the production of goods and services.
Integrating biodiversity into business strategies
Fashion organisations are transitioning from business as usual by accounting for their scope 1-3 emissions and water footprint. They are now devising and integrating new tools to measure and subsequently protect biodiversity.
Kering has made progress assimilating the biodiversity impact of its supply chain operations through the introduction of Environmental Profit and Loss (EP&L). This form of natural capital accounting seeks to measure the true cost of operations on ecosystem services.
Fashion house Stella McCartney has already benefited from the consistent use of EP&L. Through the use of this tool, the brand was able to identify that its impact was most highly concentrated at the raw material stage. As a consequence, between the years of 2013 and 2016, the label drove a reduction of 35% of their average environmental impact per kg of raw material. What’s more, the luxury conglomerate has open sourced its methodology so that other industry players can undertake similar measurement protocol.
Dr Katrina ole-MoiYoi, sustainable sourcing specialist for Kering says “We can’t bend the curve of biodiversity loss alone.” It’s clear, ole-MoiYoi notes, that the fashion industry’s challenge in tackling this will be to unite competitors to collaborate in order to transform production and create a win-win scenario for all involved.
The announcement of the Kering For Nature Fund earlier this year solidifies the company’s commitment to produce mindfully and protect natural landscapes. The fund, which is aimed at supporting the fashion industry’s transition to regenerative agriculture, has pledged to protect one million hectares of irreplaceable habitats outside of its supply chain and to garner a net positive biodiversity impact by 2025.
Radical collaboration to preserve ecosystems
The need for radical collaboration to create a roadmap for biodiversity protection is a sentiment echoed not only by businesses, but by not for profits such as Canopy, an organisation leading the charge on a global deforestation-free economy. The group works to alleviate the deforestation of over 150 million trees annually caused by the production of manmade cellulosic fibres such as viscose, rayon and modal for garments. Under Nicole Rycroft, founder & executive director, Canopy have worked with over 320 brands to create a blueprint for how fashion suppliers can revert away from harmful deforestation, encourage landscape conversation and adopt next generation circular fibres. Tangible evidence includes Canopy’s annual Hot Button Ranking Report which verifies and signals to the market which suppliers are creating viscose that does not pillage endangered forests.
“Business as usual is no longer an option, we must stretch and explore different ways of doing things and incentivise stakeholders into collective action for next generation solutions,” Rycroft says.
Building a robust set of standardised biodiversity impact metrics for fashion companies to use has proved challenging. This, is in part due to the nature of global supply chain operations which tend to be opaque. The lack of transparency surrounding secondary and tertiary tier supply networks means that not all organisations are fully aware of each location responsible for the production of garments.
However, the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) have worked to bridge the current knowledge gap between land use and tangible biodiversity loss through the introduction of the Institute’s biodiversity impact metric. This calculates land areas used in production with yield data, along with the degree of intensity of land used and relative importance for biodiversity of that specific area. For example, it takes into consideration the rarity of species dwelling in a given habitat and evaluates the history of the intensity of cotton farming on a specific piece of land.
Dr Gemma Cranston, director of the business and nature team for the CISL sees that the calculations are highly valuable to organisations looking to identify and map their risks. Cranston says, “by identifying which raw materials incur the biggest impact, it allows them to prioritise their interventions and work directly with farmers or through certification bodies to reduce their overall imprint on biodiversity”.
As with Kering’s EP&L, the CISL biodiversity impact metric stands to be one tool among many to account for use of natural capital. In tandem, organisations should also align their corporate sustainability strategies and environmental targets to external frameworks such as science-based targets for nature. Textile Exchange are encouraging members to do so through their newly launched Biodiversity Benchmark programme as a tool for the textile industry to understand their dependencies on nature across materials sourcing strategies and subsequently chart a pathway to delivering positive outcomes in a bid to protect the environment.
A senior advisor to Conservation International, Helen Crowley, believes incentivising organisations to conserve will restore and bend the curve of biodiversity loss. “Reinvestment in natural capital must be made if we are to account for the negative externalities that currently occur throughout global supply chains.” Crowley concludes.
A call for an economic system that effectively values biodiversity
The future preservation of ecosystems calls for a collective sense of responsibility, stewardship and collaboration between parties in sharing key data gathered through the aforementioned natural capital accounting tools. Insights collected by leading players can be shared with decision makers in order to harness a new nature economy which the World Economic Forum predicts could generate up to $10.1 trillion in annual business value. Most recently, the comprehensive Dasgupta Review commissioned by the UK Treasury has set out a new framework and recommendations on how our economic system must evolve to account for nature in decision making. Dasgupta notes “The use of GDP is based on a faulty application of economics because it measures the flow of money, not the stock of national assets. Introducing natural capital into national accounting systems would be a critical step.”
Some quotes from this article have been taken from statements made during the University of Cambridge’s webinar on ‘The business of nature: building biodiversity into your strategy’.
If you enjoyed this article, read about Environmental, Profit and Loss here.
Discover how sustainable cotton can work to protect biodiversity here.
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