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The United Nations might not seem like a natural bedfellow for fashion, but its role in the sector is fast growing as the threat of climate change becomes more urgent. On Monday evening, model and sustainability consultant Amber Valletta presented the intergovernmental organisation with the Environmental Sustainability Award at the 2022 CFDA Fashion Awards.
“The UN Sustainable Development Goals have served as the compass for our industry,” the CFDA tells Vogue Business. “As the world gathers for COP27, we honour the global leadership of the UN and celebrate its work to positively navigate and mobilise our global sector to accelerate actionable efforts.”
As UN deputy secretary-general Amina J Mohammed accepted the CFDA award in New York, her colleagues were convening in Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt, for the COP27 climate change conference. Reflecting on the two events, Mohammed says there is much more to be done to achieve the organisation’s ambitious climate change goals — and fashion will play an important role in uniting people behind some of those efforts.
The latest reports from Textile Exchange paint a bleak picture of fashion’s efforts to slow production and switch to more sustainable materials. The global non-profit says taking action now could still turn the situation around.
“The creative world has not been given the same investment as science and technology, but it has the same — if not more — dividends to reap,” she tells Vogue Business. “People will continue to wear clothes and be influenced by others in the fashion industry. They want to be happy and feel good, to explore their cultures and identify with different movements. That’s part of our social fabric.
“The challenge is how to engage with fashion and creativity in a way that provides meaningful employment, improves the environment, and has an inclusive economy with gender equality and human rights at its core.”
The UN’s contributions to fashion focus on systems change, a big picture approach that covers consumer behaviour, alliances between rival luxury houses, and pledges to push the sector towards net-zero emissions. Its three flagship programmes are the UN Conscious Fashion and Lifestyle (CFL) Network; the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action (led by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change); and the UN Sustainable Fashion Alliance.
While the UN has the vision, it relies heavily on industry insiders to put it into action. “The UN has the message, but we’re not the best messengers,” says Mohammed, who was instrumental in the development of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “We become very technical and acronym-y, so we need interaction and engagement with the industry so they can do the messaging when the penny drops.”
It has gathered a broad community of supporters in the fashion industry. The CFL Network is a joint initiative between the UN Office for Partnerships and the Fashion Impact Fund, in collaboration with the Division for Sustainable Development Goals, part of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Since its foundation in 2019, the network says it has garnered 884 commitments to the SDGs from 154 members in 60 countries. This includes the CFDA, New York designer Mara Hoffman, Swarovski and non-profit Textile Exchange.
Meanwhile, the Fashion Charter, established at COP24 in 2018 and renewed at COP26 in 2021, counts over 200 fashion companies among its signatories, from luxury behemoths Kering and LVMH to secondhand site The RealReal and fast fashion giant Primark. Each has pledged to pursue energy efficiency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support lower impact materials, among other commitments.
The thread of collaboration continues with the Sustainable Fashion Alliance, a UN working group that aims to share knowledge and resources between textile industry stakeholders.
Uniting these efforts are the SDGs, adopted by UN member states in 2015 as a common framework for progress. The 17 goals form a holistic definition of sustainability, including responsible consumption and production; reduced inequalities; quality education; and life below water. Applying the SDGs to fashion requires a fine balance of stakeholders and their interests, says Mohammed. “We need to engage the target audiences not just at the periphery, but at the point of action. At the same time, we can’t lose the profit, because that keeps people going, or the innovation and beauty of the fashion industry, because that is what engages people in the first place. This is not an add-on, we’re talking about making the SDGs an integral part of a financing framework for an economy.”
More urgency is needed, and there’s worry over distractions. In the seven years since the SDGs were adopted, the world has changed immeasurably, with Brexit, war in Ukraine, and the global energy crisis taking hold in the last year alone.
“The attention span of the world has drifted,” says Mohammed. “None of the other commitments from COP26 in Glasgow have been met, in fact some are flatlining or receding. We are losing global attention in the wake of these crises, but we’re also losing trust. The kind of investments needed to solve these issues might be happening in one part of the world and not in others, so people feel the inequalities and lack of solidarity. The fact that the world has made it either/or [solving sustainability or addressing other global crises] is not helpful — we should be doing all of it.”
The fashion industry, she says, will play an important role — and will remain a keen focus for the UN in 2023 and beyond. “Fashion speaks across all generations and borders. It’s a powerful way of bringing people together.”
Moving forward, the UN would like to see stronger action on water ocean plastic, zero carbon materials and child labour. The key is for people to understand how the products they make and buy impact people and places they may never see, says Mohammed. She highlights water efficiency as a clear example: fashion uses 93 billion cubic metres of water per year, according to the UN — enough to meet the needs of 5 million people — while 40 per cent of the global population experience water scarcity, per the World Bank.
While Mohammed gracefully accepted the CFDA’s recognition of the UN’s achievements in promoting and encouraging positive change in fashion, COP27 remains front of mind. The conference, which runs until 18 November, could represent a turning point in efforts to tackle global warming in a meaningful way — but only if leaders engage and follow up on their promises, she says.
In 2015, the Paris Climate Agreement bound world leaders to limit global warming to 1.5°C, but fashion is on track to miss this target, and many countries have already exceeded it. A report published by the UN ahead of COP27 shows that efforts to curb emissions have been insufficient, and the window of opportunity is narrowing. “We’re going into COP27 with the 1.5°C pathway on life support,” says Mohammed. “The fact that world leaders have turned up is a good sign, but the silver lining is very dim. This is Africa’s COP, it’s the implementation COP, and it will be a rude awakening for many.”
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