This article first appeared in our COP29 special issue of My Green Pod Magazine. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox
It’s no secret that the last couple of UNFCCC Conference of the Parties – or ‘COP’ – meetings were heavily scrutinised before they took place.
Last year the sceptics were mostly proved right when leaders of the UAE, including COP28 president Dr Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, used the event in Dubai to schedule meetings aimed at brokering new oil and gas deals with other delegates.
COP29 (11-22 November 2024) is being held in Azerbaijan, and the incumbent president – Mukhtar Babayev – is yet again a fossil-fuel industry veteran. Azerbaijan itself relied on oil and gas for 92.5% of its export revenue in 2023.
It is worth assessing the fashion industry’s progress regarding the Paris climate agreement, signed at COP21 in 2015, to limit global warming to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels.
Earlier this year, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed that the critical 1.5ºC global heating threshold had, for the first time, been breached for 12 consecutive months.
With talk of sustainability now a common theme among fashion brands, how does the sector as a whole measure up? To cut a long story short, pretty terribly.
We are consuming resources at 1.75 times the rate supported by our planet.
The fashion industry’s Charter for Climate Action has a mission to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – yet fashion consumption is set to double by 2030.
Fast fashion giant Shein recently increased its revenue by 39%; its emissions, which grew 82% as a result, now exceed those of Paraguay.
H&M makes somewhat conflicting claims of trying to double revenue and halve emissions; in most cases those two targets are mutually exclusive.
It is well known now that no amount of rental, recycling, repairing, mending or shopping for secondhand clothes will keep global warming within the required limits.
As a country we are scheduled to double the emissions required to hit the 1.5ºC target, while fashion alone is expected to pump out four times its emissions target.
Of all British Fashion Council brands – that is British designer brands that show at a fashion week – 3.4% have emissions reduction targets and less than 2.5% of them align with the Paris Agreement. This excludes the well known polluters such as ASOS, Boohoo, Frasers and all of their groups’ brands.
What drastically needs to change is our consumption of fashion.
I don’t really like the word consumption – fashion isn’t perishable, even though people treat it as disposable – much like I don’t like the word consumer, but stick with me for now.
In order to truly shift the dial and live within the remits required to achieve the 1.5ºC target, the planet can afford us just five new items a year.
This was the conclusion of Tiffanie Darke, an industry authority, editor and author.
It may seem restrictive at first but I challenge you to look through your wardrobe now and note how much of it you wear on a regular basis. Reports tell us that on average it is just 20-30%.
Change from consumers can move brands, too; if we require less from them, they may actually start making less for us. Which leads us back to COP.
Can we still take COP seriously? We’re not sure.
What do we need from delegates? Well, let’s say they take a page out of France’s playbook and truly limit fast fashion in a legally binding agreement, effective immediately.
Less advertising would mean we’d buy less. A surcharge making products that are of no greater quality more expensive would mean we’d buy less. If fast fashion brands were to disclose publicly how bad they really are, some of us would buy less.
Group all of that with a growing underconsumption, slow fashion and secondhand fashion movement, and we are actually starting to get somewhere.
For us, the best thing COP could do is limit the volume of fast fashion, for this is the most impactful thing that can happen to the industry.
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