Alexis Morgan
Global Water Stewardship lead WWF International
It's all in the Ecosystem
Companies need to look beyond what is immediately visible and start accepting that everyone is part of a landscape, or broadly an ecosystem. That's where biodiversity strategies and action plans come in. Subir Ghosh had a threadbare conversation on the subject with Alexis Morgan, Global Water Stewardship lead at WWF International.
When it comes to discussions on environment in the fashion industry, most confine arguments to just effluent discharge, water consumption, power consumption, etc? Why is there no talk of biodiversity?
There is a natural logic to focus on what's immediately within in your control. You think of your family before you think of your extended family, your extended family before your community, and community before country, etc. It's no different for businesses as they think about their owned/direct operations and what they control. What I have seen-and it's true of the apparel sector but beyond that as well-is they start within their operations and with things that they control related to the environment. They start with energy and carbon, move to maybe water and pollution, and as time goes on they move into additional expansive issues. They also move down the value chain. They go from their own direct operations and then start to about tier I, II, III, IV suppliers. The apparel sector has many tiers, and a lot of industries are more vertically integrated than the apparel sector. The IT sector is similar.
A lot of direct biodiversity impacts like habitat removal tend to occur further back in commodity sourcing and raw material extraction. There's a bit of a disconnect there, and for a very long time there was an overall lack of understanding. While there has been an understanding on impacts- like say that of effluent discharge-on humans and wildlife… what I think there's less of an understanding on is that business is fundamentally dependent upon biodiversity for how it operates. In other words, biodiversity provides goods and services, and business operations are dependent upon them. That awareness is changing. We are starting to see that increasingly not only from companies we are working with, but also from capital markets that are starting to ask those questions. The whole space of ecosystem services has been fairly important in raising that bar of awareness on biodiversity and wildlife.
And how many of these would be cotton farmers?
In the cotton space right now, regenerative agriculture is a minor percentage of cotton procurement. It's a better form of production. Organic, Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), Cotton made in Africa (CmiA), etc, I think represent roughly a little over a quarter of the total cotton production. It might be a bit higher and approaching 30 per cent. So, about a third of the cotton production market is in better form, but out of that only maybe 1-2 per cent is in regenerative agriculture. That's not to say that within BCI and the others there aren't approaches around high conservation value. Programmes can be overlaid into the other forms of cotton production as well. I don't think we can rely just on standards to address this, and I don't think even if we got the whole world into regenerative agriculture that would necessarily solve the problem around cotton. We're going to need to layer on additional solutions and some are going to be regulatory, some would probably be market-based, but we need to think about how we restore working landscapes and get biodiversity back onto working landscapes.
Could you tell us about your interaction with the textiles and apparel industry?
There's no question sustainability is an issue and growing. We do a fair bit of work with H&M as an example, and it's interesting even just to see their former chief sustainability officer now becoming the CEO. We are starting to see such patterns emerge. As that happens, sustainability gets a higher and higher profile. What's also interesting is that within sustainability the shift in the apparel sector is that we have more and more companies that say: help us with science-based targets on carbon, addressing water issues, maybe some of our material procurement, what sorts of standards we should use, etc. What's also now beginning to happen is that they're coming to us asking to help them with developing a biodiversity strategy that's quite new. What is shifting is the awareness of biodiversity and the fact that there is a need for biodiversity targets, biodiversity strategies, and thinking that through at a corporate level. That's only just started to come on to the radar in the last few years. It's not to say that they haven't been working on dimensions of biodiversity-because I think they have-but explicit biodiversity strategies are increasingly on the radar of a lot of the partners that we work with now.
Could you give any specific example that you might have noticed?
At a more State/government level, there is an appreciation and a better understanding that largescale ecosystems are critical to maintaining the economy. A good example is that of China. China has come to an appreciation that if you're going to mitigate floods and flood risks to the economy downstream of the Yangtze, then deforestation in the upper section of the river is problematic. The biodiversity and ecosystem services of those forested areas are critical to downstream areas. Similarly, in places like Kunshan in China, the idea of sponge cities and restoration of wetlands gained importance because those wetlands hold water during flood events; if you don't, then you can have massive supply chain interruptions. Players like Apple are beginning to invest in such approaches and thinking about how they can operate within and beyond a city. If they don't and their supply chains get interrupted, that's problematic since they would have promised release of the latest iPhone or something. Such places need more biodiversity based solutions. The Chinese government has put hundreds of millions of dollars into ecosystem restoration in the upper parts of the Yangtze. We are seeing similar challenges in places like Chennai as well. As wetlands dry out, there's an appreciation that those wetlands are critical to holding and slowing water during monsoons. It's critical to rely upon biodiversity in those places and appreciating that those wetlands are critical. There's a growing appreciation for those sorts of things.
The wetlands are one thing, and there is this ongoing pandemic. Do you think that people would learn lessons from the pandemic and use those broadly for disaster preparedness?
Because we are still in the midst of the pandemic, it's too early to say. One would hope that there are real lessons to be learnt out of the pandemic on how collective action is beneficial and preparing for these sorts of things. There's no question about preparedness and learning lessons from previous incidences. But the question is whether there's political will-people's memories are sometimes very short and political will is incredibly short, and even corporate memory is sometimes too short. So, will people say that was awful, we never want to see that happen again, and so we're going to build a system to prevent such occurrences? That's the question. On the one hand, since 1992 (the Rio Summit) we have been taught this lesson over and over again, and we don't seem to be learning anything.
At the same time, I see massive shifts in the apparel sector and others too. H&M and PVH have just over the past year released €500 million Euro bonds to finance (environmental) improvements. Most of that is focused on carbon right now, but I think we are only inches away from those kinds of corporate-issued bonds. Similarly, we are starting to see revolving lines of credits issued by companies for their value chains to put in solutions. The world of finance is rapidly shifting towards putting their money where their mouth is. What they're starting to do is issue their own financial vehicles like corporate bonds to finance these things (environmental projects). I think what we're going to see very soon is corporate bonds being issued for biodiversity conservation. We are already seeing some of those.
On the question of biodiversity strategies and targets. It's easy to implement targets related to emissions or water pollution or power consumption. But how does one quantify a biodiversity target?
It's a very good question. We began asking that ourselves a while back. It's an interesting challenge because biodiversity occurs at all sorts of different scales. The entire universe of a microorganism might be just one square foot; the range of a tiger can be hundreds and hundreds of kilometres. Then, there's a farmer's field within a giant landscape across many fields. How you then set targets becomes quite complicated. What we have started to think is that you need to think about biodiversity in context and making sure that you have got the right kinds of targets for the right issues in play in those locations. You shouldn't be setting targets related to reforestation in a savannah. You don't want to reforest a desert. But we do see those sorts of things happen sometimes.
You must make sure that you're thinking about appropriate habitats and species issues for the place that you are in. As you make sure that you've got appropriate measures in the appropriate location-which we describe as more contextual approaches. The same thing applies to water. You don't want to focus on scarcity when water flooding and overabundance is the problem. You want to make sure you are focused on the right issue. So, focus on the right sorts of issues with respect to biodiversity too. Then the question is: what's the level of precision that we should be getting to appropriately quantify (things)? What does nature need in that place specifically in terms of the numbers to get it back to a viable level?
We have started asking the question under the broader network of science-based targets. We began to ask this question on science-based targets for carbon: on a global level, where are we trying to get to as humanity? How much carbon can we put into the environment? What's the role of business in that? How do we divide that up so that everybody sets targets that contribute to the collective whole? That's where the whole principle of science-based targets and for carbon emerged. We started asking that same question on sciencebased targets for other things. What is the science based target for water if you look at a (river) basin? How much is needed for river systems? How much is usable by economic players and how do you divvy that up? The same applies to biodiversity-in a given biome or area how much biodiversity is there, how much is usable versus what needs to remain untouched? How do you think about the responsibility of business to restore, or use parts of that biodiversity, and what is each person's responsibility divvied up within that area? That's what we are looking at in the science-based targets network and beginning to ask that question about what is the appropriate target you should set for biodiversity and what does that look like when it's a shared responsibility in a given geography.
Suppose an apparel manufacturer comes to you and says that he/she would like to do his/her bit in biodiversity. What would tell him or her to do?
What we often do with companies is this-first you need to have a sense of where your value chain sits. Understanding transparency within the value chain is critical. Where are your tier I, II, II or IV suppliers? If you don't have a sense of that then you don't know where you're impacting biodiversity. That's critical as a starting spot. Once you have a sense of where your touch points are then there is the question of where the material are-both impacts and dependencies on biodiversity in those parts of the value chain. Where are you heavily impacting biodiversity, and where are you heavily dependent on biodiversity? That's where a lot of the most impactful parts of the apparel value chain sit-in wet processing and fibre extraction/ processing. Those two are typically where the biggest impacts are on biodiversity. Those are often the places where you would want to dig deeper. There you need to understand where you are sourcing your cotton from, or the cellulosic fibres from. Once you have got that, there's the question of what the actions are you going to take in those places, both in the operation as well as outside of the operation. What are the requirements that you are putting in maybe around net zero or zero liquid discharge, whatever the case may be? There are things you put in a facility, and it's also about what the facility is doing outside of that operation.
We are starting to think about programmes where they can engage in collective action platforms; towards ecosystem restoration beyond where you're sourcing from and also activities at a landscape level; and how to engage in broader restoration and protection activities for biodiversity. That's because your farms or your sourcing fibre areas are dependent upon those other ecosystems. You need to think about your responsibility within that (sphere). That's typically the process we will walk through with companies- think about what you are doing inside as well as outside of that operation. That will move to issues of collective action and perhaps even advocacy for legislations where the government can take on a stronger role. It's ultimately not the company's role to manage a landscape by itself; it's an actor but it's the government that needs to play a role in creating good policies and enforcement.
Biodiversity is a huge canvas. There is the question of depletion of forests and felling of trees for the extraction of cellulosic fibres. There's oceanic pollution. Also, habitat degradation because of anthropogenic pressures. What do you say to that?
Those are three good touch points. The frontline of biodiversity loss is the fibre for the most part. It's not to say that there's no impact in wet processing and other parts of the value chain, but if you're going to focus on habitat loss and a lot of the big biodiversity issues, then fibre is the place to start. The three primary fibres in the apparel sector are polyester, man-made cellulosics and cotton. As people start recognising the microfibre challenge in polyester, a lot of people are starting to look to cellulosics as a replacement even though polyester numbers keep growing. There are issues around deforestation, on cellulosic sourcing-basically the source fibres, whether those are bamboo or other forest products.
There are some interesting developments in the cotton sphere around regenerative agriculture that are beginning to emerge-stackable benefits around how you can begin to think about creating not only benefits for cotton production, but also in terms of improving soil moisture retention, sequestering carbon and creating habitats. We are looking to create multiple benefits in these landscapes simultaneously. In the cotton realm that's beginning to happen-thinking about how we restore biodiversity in working landscapes.
Some of the approaches that are being explored in regenerative agriculture are beginning to touch upon that. The last thing I would mention on the polyester side-in terms of microplastics, maybe less so microfibres-there are issues in the apparel sector both from the shedding of microfibres and also from dyes. Many dyes have plastics and binders in them that create the same microplastic pollution in freshwater sources and ultimately oceanic sources as well.
There's some work we have been doing, and one thing I am starting to look at is use of satellite imagery and remote sensing to think about how we can scale some landscape level biodiversity solutions and link up the financial mechanisms to broader scale landscape restoration projects. If I look back-I have been at this for 20 something years-while the problem continues to grow in many ways, the scale of solutions has been ballooning on the other side. It's not all linking up quite yet, and I think the ability to use new digital technologies to link up the different systems is what we did not have 15-20 years ago.
There are these issues like: how do you connect farmers in rural India so that they can start receiving payments via blockchain or digital/ cell technology. The larger scale solutions can be deployed on landscapes so that you create incentive mechanisms for farmers in restoring a wetland on their landscape or put back some forest on the landscape. Right now, the only incentive they have is to convert every single square inch of that land into crop, and when they do that it erodes biodiversity, it erodes the ability for that landscape to provide services. But the farmer has no incentive to move it back into a "non-productive" form unless you give them incentives to restore forests, restore wetlands. We haven't had the ability to do that particularly well and so what is really exciting for us at this point is that we're starting to get into an environment where there's an ability to provide incentives to large farmers, small farmers, people who are land stewards, to create incentive mechanisms for them to do (landscape) restoration. We are approaching that zone in a way we've never been able to historically.
This article was first published in the April 2021 edition of the print magazine.
Published on: 06/05/2021
DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
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