The 2023 progress report was released on Monday by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and the United Nations Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action (UNFCCC).
The charter is a UN Climate Change-organised, industry-led campaign to aggressively move the fashion sector towards a net-zero future by the year 2050. Under CDP’s supply chain initiative, which is only partially third-party validated, the UNFCCC requests data from businesses regarding climate change.
The charter has 99 garment signatories as of today, including manufacturers and companies like Adidas, H&M, Kering, and Inditex.
While there has been some progress, the research indicates that members to the charter are in a better position to take climate-related action because they are required to provide CDP with data on climate. According to the Science Based Goals Initiative, just 10 per cent of the overall garment sector has established science-based targets, while 40 per cent of the charter signatories have. Though some 31 signatories lost their charter certification over the last three years as a result of ‘failure to disclose,’ others merely resigned in favour of ‘other industry coalitions.’
Despite any remaining gaps, the current call is for signatories to reduce emissions by half by 2030 and to commit to achieving net-zero emissions by the year 2050 as an updated, more challenging goal in line with the most recent U.N. climate report.
45 per cent of signatories, or less than half, adhered to the Paris Agreement’s requirements for establishing public climate targets in order to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Around 30 per cent of businesses have ‘committed’ to setting net-zero targets, but less than 2 per cent of them have actually done so. Although indirect operations account for the majority of supply chain effect, only a small number of signatories, or seven, have achieved savings of at least 30 per cent in Scope 3.
The survey claims that fashion is largely open to political influence, with about half of signatories supporting trade associations that lobby on their behalf, as compared to 26 per cent who actively approach decision-makers about climate-related concerns.
Some charter companies did receive special attention in the report, 10 of which — Burberry Group, Inditex, LVMH Mot Hennessy Louis Vuitton, Fast Retailing Co. Ltd., Kering, Puma, Tendam Global Fashion Retail, Lenzing AG, Superdry, and VF Corp. — for making CDP’s “A List” in 2022, despite the fact that data remained generalised.
Sonya Bhonsle, global head of value chains and regional director of corporations at CDP UK. and worldwide, expressed the need for leadership given fashion’s outsized impact. “CDP appreciates the signatories’ leadership in an industry where the stakes couldn’t be higher. Massive production volumes, resulting in millions of garments purchased each year, leave behind a staggering trail of Scope 3 emissions. CDP estimated in 2020 that the upstream emissions of apparel are 25 times that of their own operations. This puts the signatories of the Fashion Charter in a unique position to drive change where it matters most.”
