By focusing on fashion's impact on land, we can promote more sustainable practices that protect the environment, conserve biodiversity, generate sustainable livelihoods, and ensure that land remains productive for generations to come, says a report by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
- The pioneering publication—Fashion & Land: Unravelling the Environmental Impact of Fibres—produced by the UNCCD explores the role of the fashion industry in driving environmental change, particularly in relation to land.
- The production of raw materials for textiles carries the risk of significant negative impacts on land, such as degradation, soil erosion, overgrazing, desertification, deforestation, freshwater depletion, pollution, waste, biodiversity loss, carbon emissions and climate change.
- According to the UNCCD, up to 40% of the world’s land is degraded, and degradation is continuing at an alarming rate.
- An area equivalent to four football fields of healthy land becomes degraded every second, adding up to at least 100 million hectares each year.
- Generally, it is much more cost-effective to prevent it from happening where possible than to reverse the consequences. Restoring soil lost through erosion is a slow process.
LAND IMPACT CAN NEVER BE SEEN IN A VACUUM but as part of a broader picture, linked to social, economic and environmental factors, especially since fibres are often closely linked to people and their livelihoods.
- As all fibres have their respective benefits and challenges, it cannot be argued that one fibre should replace another completely.
- Ultimately, producing and consuming less but better, and moving towards a more circular fashion industry can help ensure that fibre production does not literally cost the earth.
TEAM: Lead author: Rebecca Jiménez, Zoï Environment Network; Editor: Xenya Scanlon (UNCCD); Copy editor: Stephen Graham; Graphic designer: Carolyne Daniel (Zoï Environment Network); Contributors: Louise Baker, UNCCD, Paola Deda, Liliana Annovazzi-Jakab, Florian Steierer – UNEC; Bettina Heller, Claudia Giacovelli, Rachel Arthur — UNEP; Una Jones (Sustainable Fibre Alliance), Zara Morris-Trainor — Sustainable Fibre Alliance; Natalie Ernst — Better Cotton; Alex Musembi — Africa Collect Textile; Julia Kozlik — PEFC; Victoire de Pourtales — 91530 LE MARAIS; Otto Simonett, Viktor Novikov — Zoï Environment Network.
WHAT THEY SAID
You may wonder what a UN treaty to combat desertification, land degradation and drought signed by 196 countries and the European Union has to do with something seemingly as remote — and, for some, as trivial — as fashion. The simple answer is that our clothes come from the land. And, more often than not, they return to the land. The answer to “who are you wearing” is unequivocal: land.
— Xenya Scanlon
Chief of Communications, External Relations and Partnerships
UNCCD
By 2030, the fashion industry is expected to use 35% more land – much of it to grow materials for cheap and throwaway fashion. But we can choose that shirt or those jeans more carefully. Those choices do not diminish our quality of life. On the contrary, they improve it.
— Ibrahim Thiaw
Executive Secretary
UNCCD
