Your Excellency Battsetseg Batmunkh, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mongolia,
Ms. Yasmine Fouad, Executive Secretary of the UNCCD,
Colleagues and friends.
My thanks for the invitation to speak at this event on sustainable fashion, organized by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in beautiful Ulaanbaatar. My thanks also to Mongolia for hosting the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP17) and for their commitment to healthy land.
I am pleased that Fashion4Land, launched at COP16 last year, is focusing on this important issue. This fashion and textile industry is, of course, hugely important to economies and livelihoods across the world, employing hundreds of millions of people, most of them women.
But clothes are being thrown away faster than ever. By 2030, the fashion industry is expected to generate almost 150 million tons of textile waste annually. Land degradation. Widespread pesticide use. Plastic pollution. Deforestation. Exploitation of workers. These are all endemic issues in an industry that must reform.
Friends,
The solution is to focus on circular economy approaches that integrate circularity in designs, and that value reuse, repair and recycling. But for this transformation to take hold, we need transparency and we need harmonized standards.
Standards guide companies to measure, verify and disclose environmental performance and impacts in a credible way. They are essential to raise ambition for the transition to more sustainable products and production systems and to build trust.
There are standards in place. But they are not harmonized. Nor are they combined with the growing number of certification schemes and reporting frameworks. This causes confusion and fragmentation, which is holding back uptake.
Most of the worlds top fashion brands dont even disclose how many clothes they make in a year. And disclosure and application of standards is further limited beyond direct suppliers. Fewer than 10 per cent of brands disclose their fiber processing suppliers, leaving major blind spots on biodiversity, land use, chemicals and water
Greater harmonization of standards would drive more sustainable design and production. And it would help businesses stay competitive by reducing compliance burdens, improving comparability and clarifying sustainability requirements.
This is why UNEP is working with governments towards a more coherent approach across the value chain. The UNEP-facilitated Global Textile Policy Dialogues are focusing on Extended Producer Responsibility, sustainable product design frameworks, behaviour change instruments, enabling trade systems, and standards and their interoperability. I invite you to engage in these dialogues.
The Textiles Implementation Programme of the Global Framework on Chemicals (GFC) is carrying out a deep dive into the role of existing standards in reducing the sectors pollution through chemical footprinting and Digital Product Information Systems. I invite you to be part of the first International Conference of the GFC, in Geneva this November, to learn more and showcase your commitment in this space.
Friends,
The fashion industry indeed must reform. It can reform. By working together, consumers, industry and governments can support durable fashion, reduce our fashion footprint and still provide affordable clothes for the many people struggling to make ends meet.
