Stand.earth welcomes partnership between Global Fashion Agenda, UNFCCC Fashion Charter

Climate advocacy group encourages broad stakeholder engagement from alliance, with a focus on renewable energy to help industry achieve climate commitments at scale needed

SAN FRANCISCO — Two leading fashion and climate change initiatives joined forces today, March 17, 2022, with the Global Fashion Agenda’s Copenhagen Fashion Summit (recently rebranded as the Global Fashion Summit: Copenhagen Edition) and the UN Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action (coordinated by the UN Climate Change Secretariat) announcing an official partnership to drive the fashion industry’s progress toward the UN Paris Agreement.

In response to the announcement, Stand.earth encourages the new alliance to focus its efforts on facilitating effective collaboration within the sector to achieve a rapid transition to renewable energy in fashion’s supply chain, and to seek broad stakeholder engagement both within and outside the sector, including with NGOs and impacted communities.

“As one of the biggest climate polluters globally, the urgency for action from fashion brands cannot be understated. We hope that this new alliance will help accelerate fashion companies’ transition to renewable energy and materials throughout their supply chains by the end of the decade,” said Muhannad Malas, Senior Climate Campaigner in the Fossil Free Fashion Campaign at Stand.earth. “The new alliance should also encourage increased transparency in the sector to help address greenwashing and prevent false solutions that may exacerbate climate impacts or the burden on racialized communities who are already experiencing the brunt of pollution from the extraction and use of fossil fuels, and fashion’s waste.”

A recent Stand.earth analysis showed that several major fashion companies who are part of the UN Fashion Charter for Climate Action are failing in their efforts to reduce supply chain emissions at the levels needed to meet the 1.5C pathway outlined in the UN Paris Agreement. The analysis combined actual and projected supply chain emissions to paint a picture of fashion companies’ post-COVID 19 pandemic growth. 

UN Fashion Charter updates at COP 26

In November 2021, major fashion brands that signed the UN Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action convened at COP26 in Glasgow and announced more ambitious commitments to address the industry’s massive climate pollution, committing to halve emissions by 2030 (an update on the previous target of 30% reductions by 2030) and achieving net-zero emissions by no later than 2050.

In response to that commitment, Stand.earth applauded the Charter’s additional commitment to phase out on-site coal from the supply chain by 2030, calling it an important step forward. However, the new commitment only applies to on-site coal for boilers and other sources of coal-fired heat or on-site power generation, but it doesn’t include electricity generated from coal — a key source of climate pollution that fashion brands must address if they hope to hit the Charter’s emissions reduction target of 50% by 2030.

Stand.earth also cautioned that the Charter’s new commitment to source 100% of electricity from renewable sources by 2030 only applies to owned and operated facilities (scope 2) and not the supply chain (scope 3), where upwards of 90% of emissions are generated — calling it a major gap.

###

Media contact: Muhannad Malas, Senior Climate Campaigner, muhannad@stand.earth, +1 604 757 7246 (Eastern Time)