Modern slavery & fashion’s complicity: 7 ways you can help

Image by Johannes Krupinski

Did you know that 1 in 200 people in the world work in slavery-like conditions? It’s staggering, I know! Advocacy groups cite fashion as one of the top five industries implicated in modern slavery.

What modern slavery is

Modern slavery is described by new laws and labour rights organisations as the exploitation of human beings for commercial gain. Practices like unsafe work conditions, debt bondage, human trafficking, forced labour, excessive & unpaid overtime and involuntary servitude are some of the makings of modern slavery. Activities like these are the target of emerging laws determined to end these practices. There are roughly 40 million people in slavery today. Data from the UN states that modern slavery garners over $150 billion in profits and is the second-largest criminal industry in the world. SDG 8.7 is a pledge to end modern slavery, with the goal of reducing the number of people affected by 10,000 every day.

Uyghur Region, the modern slavery capital of China

According to a coalition of more than 180 human rights groups, many of the world’s biggest retailers and fashion brands are complicit in modern slavery conditions being perpetrated on millions of people in the Xinjiang region of Northwestern China. In this region, cotton and yarn are produced through an enormous system of detention and forced labour using approximately 1.8 million Uighur and other Turkic Muslim people. Made of enslaved factories, farms and prison camps, it’s said to be the largest confinement of an ethnic and religious minority for forced labour since World War II.

China is the biggest cotton producer in the world and its Xinjiang region produces 84% of the country’s cotton. It is believed that this cotton can be found in one-fifth of cotton products worldwide, including PPE exported to many countries.  

Image by Trisha Downing

Fashion supporting slavery

G20 countries imported $US127.7 billion of fashion garments identified as at-risk products of modern slavery. 40% of all fashion industry textiles use cotton. Global fashion brands source so extensively from Xinjiang despite these abuses. Chloe Cranston, business and human rights manager of Anti-Slavery International has said there’s a high likelihood that every high street and luxury brand runs the risk of being linked to what is happening to the Uyghur people. A coalition of human rights groups says that brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Gap, Adidas, Calvin Klein, C&A and Muji have been identified as brands sourcing from the region or farm factories connected to forced labour.

Modern slavery in the West: The Boohoo story

There is an estimated 1,400 to 15,000 modern slaves in Australia today, an estimated 100,000 to 400,000 in the US and about 130,000 in the UK.

It came to light in July 2020 that Boohoo (a UK online fashion conglomerate), had been engaging in modern slavery practices in their factories in Leicester, UK. Workers were being paid £3.50 an hour against the legal minimum wage requirement of £8.72 for workers aged 25 and over. The discovery was made during the localised lockdown period owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. The company was putting employees at risk by working in factories that did not have social distancing measures in place.

Undeterred by the injustice, an estimated 643 influencers were still spruiking the brand’s apparel during the height of this scandal in the first 2 weeks of July. The brand’s share prices have now rebounded and more influencers are back to promoting their hugely discounted clothing. With all of this, the brand has enjoyed rare financial success in the time of the coronavirus crisis. Amid the row of modern slavery and poor work conditions, the company’s profits have soared by 51% in September this year.

COVID, the excuse of fashion brands

When the COVID-19 pandemic began this year, big fashion and apparel brands engaged in one of the biggest corporate unethical dealings. They refused to pay for products they asked suppliers to make. According to a recent report, “Unpaid Billions”,  authored by the Worker Rights Consortium and Centre for Global Workers’ Rights, this has resulted in $16 billion missing from the apparel supply chain, which is owed to suppliers. The report states that $1.6 billion of this amount represents garment workers’ unpaid wages. Millions of garment workers have lost their jobs and become extremely destitute because of this circumstance. Mainly in countries like Bangladesh, India, Myanmar and Cambodia. The fashion industry for years has been rife with slavery conditions of human rights abuses and exploitative practices. The Global Slavery Index estimates that 58% of people in slave labour are in the major cotton or garment-producing countries of the world such as China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan. The refusal of big brands to pay for orders and using the COVID pandemic as an excuse, has made bad situations unimaginably worse for workers.

Slavery is not the stuff of human nature

Human beings are born with the innate ability to think, analyse and choose. And with the freedom to develop themselves and the freedom to ennoble their environments. These are embedded in human nature. Enslaving human beings is, therefore, an abomination onto the human race. Freedom is a fundamental right, always. No one has the right to enslave another human for profit or any other reason. Its unnatural and absolutely incompatible with the human spirit and it does not befit humankind. Where slavery is enforced, it’s a real scourge on collective humanity. We should have systems that protect the sanctity of human freedom by ensuring everyone is insulated from conditions that make slavery possible.

Image by Jonathan Sebastiao

Actions that have sparked change  

Brands - Nearly the entire global apparels industry is tainted by forced Uyghur and Turkic Muslim labour, according to Chloe Cranston. The executive director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, Omer Kanat has said “Global brands need to ask themselves how comfortable they are contributing to a genocidal policy against the Uyghur people. These companies have somehow managed to avoid scrutiny for complicity in that very policy – this stops today,” The End Uyghur Forced Labour coalition insists that the global apparel industry must eradicate all materials and products connected with the forced labour of Xinjiang in less than a year. The coalition is made up of more than 70 anti-slavery organisations, Uyghur rights groups and labour rights campaigners.

US House of Representatives - In September this year, the US House of Representatives passed the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act (H.R. 6210). The bill is created to put an end to forced labour of the Uyghur Region in corporate supply chains. When executed, it will establish the legal presumption that any products arriving at US ports manufactured in or through the Uyghur Region were made from forced labour, unless it can be proved otherwise. If not, they will be barred from entering the US.

Petitions – Remake created a #PayUp petition campaign at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to demand fashion brands pay money that was owed to garment workers. It resulted in $22 billion being unlocked to garment workers. This money saved the lives of millions of workers experiencing food and housing insecurity.

Tech – In some cases, tech might be used to monitor conditions of modern slavery. For instance, a drone was used to record ariel footage as evidence of Uyghur brutality with hundreds of Uyghur men blindfolded, shackled and being transported.

To map forced labour patterns and predictions, the University of Nottingham, UK has used artificial intelligence with satellite imaging. In South Asia for instance, it can be used to map brick kilns in places considered to be hotspots for debt bondage and forced labour.

How we can create change

1. Ethical Clothing Australia (ECA) is an accreditation body focused on ensuring that local textile, clothing and footing workers are being paid appropriately, receiving all their legal minimum entitlements and working in safe conditions throughout the entire supply chain. Shop with ECA accredited brands here. Find ECA accredited ethical manufacturers here.

Find other global ethical clothing accreditation bodies here.

2. Worker Rights Consortium is an independent labour rights monitoring organisation. They hold corporations accountable and protect worker rights. Use WRC’s COVID-19 Brand Tracker to see which brands are acting responsibly towards suppliers and workers.

3. Support the coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region. The Coalition is a group of civil society organisations and trade unions united to end state-sponsored forced labour and other egregious human rights abuses against people from the Uyghur Region. Join their call to action here.

4. Write directly to fashion brands (social media, email and direct mail) insisting they no longer use materials sourced from modern slavery. Also request full transparency in their supply chain. Find a letter template from Freedom United here.

5. Sign a petition (or two). Here are several petitions you can sign to help make a difference: Freedom United, Change.org, Payup Fashion, Oxfam, Labour Behind the Label, and Traidcraft Exchange.

6. Organisations can fill a form to endorse the call to action on human rights abuses in the Uyghur Region. Find the form here.

7. Lobby your local, state, regional and federal governments to create policies that will end modern slavery locally and internationally. A good example is the legislation made by the US House of Representatives. International trade agreements are an area to focus on that have major implications on modern slavery in multiple countries.

Considering slavery is very much against the essence of humanity, are we also complicit when we remain silent in the face of modern slavery or when we purchase products made from conditions of modern slavery?

♥ Nina Gbor

Instagram: @eco.styles

https://fashionjournal.com.au/fashion/an-expert-weighs-in-on-tackling-modern-slavery-in-the-fashion-industry/?fbclid=IwAR2wisIW4DVUM-ZTRNycR4AgfzxPfcD04tmsbZ4gXDEW4KRxLHZdN2N7Y2k

https://theconversation.com/fashion-production-is-modern-slavery-5-things-you-can-do-to-help-now-115889

https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/findings/global-findings/

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/boohoo-leicester-factories-modern-slavery-boohoo-leicester-factories-modern-slavery-investigation-coronavirus-coronavirus-fast-fashion-a9602086.html

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/23/virtually-entire-fashion-industry-complicit-in-uighur-forced-labour-say-rights-groups-china

https://www.workersrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Unpaid-Billions_October-6-2020.pdf

https://www.commonobjective.co/article/modern-slavery-and-the-fashion-industry

https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/chilling-video-shows-chinese-police-transferring-hundreds-of-blindfolded-shackled-prisoners/news-story/67a3f1742b261c6dc78334ff16b6d775

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/how-ai-and-satellite-imaging-tech-can-put-an-end-to-modern-slavery/

https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/chilling-video-shows-chinese-police-transferring-hundreds-of-blindfolded-shackled-prisoners/news-story/67a3f1742b261c6dc78334ff16b6d775

Are style and verbal communication two sides of the same coin?

I was ruminating on verbal communication and it suddenly struck me how much communicating with our words is so similar to communicating with our personal style. Whether it’s professional or personal interactions, the need for authenticity has never been stronger. Moreover, communicating in these two ways can be uplifting or destructive.

They might seem like random and disparate elements, but you can draw parallels between your words and your style when you look at them from the same angles. With these two aspects, the idea is to ensure our communication has a more positive effect. I often write about style so this time we’ll look at these parallels more through the lens of verbal communication.

It’s usually more straightforward when we communicate with our words. However, even though we don’t realise it, we communicate with our clothes too. Experts say within the first few seconds of meeting you, people form a long-lasting first impression. And your outfit plays a big role in this because it’s communicating something about you.

You know the saying, ‘if you don't have anything nice to say then don't say anything at all’? (They probably should have put that in the fine print when social media was invented.) The more I think about it though, another concept hits home which is if you don't really mean what you say then you probably shouldn’t say it at all. Purposeless and excessive talking can sometimes either be needlessly time-consuming or can cause miscommunications. On the other hand, when communication is born out of purpose, it can be healthy and more constructive.

Translate this notion into a clothing personal style context and it might sound like, ‘if you don’t need it, then don’t buy it.’ Garments that don’t reflect your personality, lifestyle, character or body shape should have no business on your body because they can miscommunicate who you are and present a false impression. Personal style that stays true to who we really are can bring about harmony within ourselves and communicate the right signals about us. Much like using excessive words, buying too many clothes because they’re trendy or affordable causes waste which is neither good for you nor the environment. Simply put, don’t waste your words and don’t waste fashion.

Letting all your communication resonate and align with your inner truth, will very likely equate to speaking less. And this might not be a bad thing. Social norms are designed in such a way that we’re expected to fill the air with words all the time. Otherwise, we might be doomed to go through dreadful and painfully awkward moments of silence. We’ve all experienced situations where we may have felt pressure to converse when in fact, we didn’t have anything to say. A simpler example is when we utter the word, ‘thanks’. Do you really mean it when you say it, or does it just mindlessly slip through your lips? In other words, do you genuinely feel a sense of appreciation when you use it?

Speaking mostly with intention and purpose is a powerful stance that gives your words more weight and value. So that when you do speak, there’s more effectiveness and hopefully an upbuilding quality to conversation. For this reason, perhaps an awkward silence need not be awkward after all. What if we turned those awkward silences to golden moments of connection where we’re comfortable enough to be present with each other in our silence? What if in these moments we turned the vibe from awkward to chill by smiling more, showing empathy and kindness even with our eyes? This should be a mood. I reckon it’ll feel strange at first. But it’s okay because we’ll get to listen more and add to our wisdom. The effort will be worth the reward of feeling a better sense of balance and alignment both internally and with the outside world. This could mean less pressure, less anxiety and more authenticity.

In the language of style, intention and purpose look like deliberately wearing clothes that express yourself as opposed to following a trend because you feel you have to. The pressure to dress for your age or peer group can conflict with how we actually mean to present ourselves. This can feel awkward and people can sense it. What if we ignored peer and overconsumption trends in favour of a personalised wardrobe that was almost as unique as a fingerprint? Much like those golden moments of silence I described earlier, it would mean feeling less pressure to conform to a mere social expectation. So, whether it's your words or your style, let your communication have meaning and purpose. They can both have tremendous value if applied in the right way.

Authenticity stems from letting go of the fear of opposing norms and expectations for the sake of just being yourself. Once we’re able to navigate the waters of everyday life without the social pressure to say meaningless words for the sake of it, we’ll have more peace. Likewise, when we stop acquiring excessive amounts of clothing that does not always represent us, we minimise ecological problems.

Be it through style or words, our communication has the power to spread harmony or cause pain and disaster for ourselves and others. Therefore, communicating authentically might just be the superpower that brings more fulfilment into our lives.

STYLING

The black and gold military jacket paired with the red VW print top and red vintage patchwork skirt is a tailored piece over a playful outfit. Finished off with a pair of mint sneakers. Might be fair to say it expresses a playful nature coupled with a formal streak? What do you think?

Outfit sourced from:

Black & Gold Military Jacket - Marketplace

Red VW Print Top - South Melbourne Community Chest Op Shop

Red Vintage Patchwork Skirt - Red Cross Op Shop

♥ Nina Gbor

When you pivot in the right direction, good things can happen

Recent happenings have shown me that when you move towards a bigger purpose, life can take your mission a little further than you anticipated…

With a few of my recent articles on topics like how we can mitigate the impacts of climate change on women and banning secondhand clothing, I’ve been pivoting into my background in international development. I still love my work in style and sustainable fashion. The deeper I go, the more I see intersections between the social and environmental issues of sustainable fashion and issues of international development. Widening the scope of our conversations towards development means broadening horizons that will hopefully bring more holistic solutions to issues.  

What I’ve learned from this new experience is that when you take steps in the right direction, life can throw opportunities at you that put your goals on steroids. So it’s essential to keep seeking growth and new ways to bring positive change in the world. Because you might meet others that carry the same volition. And this might be how we can all make things better. By following the internal compass that leads us to a greater purpose, then joining forces and growing communities aimed at changing the status quo.

Now this does not mean you’ll stop seeing my stylish outfits (like this one). Style as far as I can tell will always be part of my wheelhouse.

STYLING

I’m wearing another colourful preloved ensemble but this time I put on PANTS! My wardrobe is all skirts and dresses, so pants are a rarity! Styled them with a random, cute, t-shirt I found in an op shop which I guess is a tourist souvenir from Hua Hin Province in Thailand. In the previous photo I topped the look with a blue vintage Shanghai China silk ‘Peony’ coat.  

Outfit sourced from:

Blue Vintage Shanghai Silk Peony Coat – Hand-me-down

Arty Pants - Suitcase Rummage Vintage & Preloved Market

Colourful T-shirt – Salvos Stores Op Shop

♥ Nina Gbor

Climate change has the biggest impact on women but how can we fix it?

Image credit: Information Age

For both palpable and less obvious reasons, women are crucial to the survival and thriving of our species on multiple levels. From past millennia to date, women have been a perpetual force in upholding family units and communities. And a force that contributes significantly to powering economies. In fact, if we’re serious about creating positive change on a global scale, we need to empower many more women. Yet, of the billions of people in the world living below the poverty line, 70% are women. Based on the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is evident that people who economically and socially are most vulnerable and marginalised experience the greatest impacts when it comes to climate change. Women fall into this demographic. If we continue to allow this to happen, climatic catastrophes will prove even more fatal for humanity. Therefore, avoiding further climate breakdown by protecting women and the environment is imminent.

Climate change bears its brunt mostly on the bottom 2 billion people on the planet. Even though the poorer half of the world’s population generates just 10% of emissions, the Global South suffers at least 75% of the costs of climate change. Wealthy countries in the Global North by far have always been the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. According to the Director of Feedback, Carina Millstone, “citizens living in the countries with the lowest per capita consumption of resources consume two tons of materials per person per year for their food and shelter; while those living in countries with the highest per capita consumption use 60 tons of materials per capita per year.”

Women in the Global South are disproportionately impacted more than any other demographic. For instance, UN figures indicate that women make up for 80% of people displaced by climate change. Tasks such as household chores, family care giving, fetching water and gathering energy sources like charcoal and firewood for heating and cooking, and of course agriculture make women more vulnerable when disaster strikes. Disasters such as flooding, droughts, deforestation, coastal storms, extreme and unpredictable weather patterns, soil erosion, etc displace women usually through life or death circumstances.

Image credit: Nandhu Kumar

When it comes to the susceptibility of women in the Global South, social, cultural and economic factors such as differential roles, lack of credit and poor infrastructure are also to blame. Access to decision-making, tech, training and extension services that would enhance their capacity to adapt to climate change are insufficient or non-existent. Moreover, as a result of continuous impacts of inequality, colonialism and racism, women from the Global South and women of colour in some regions experience an even heavier burden when it comes to climate change. And finally, women in the world have less access to agricultural land.  The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) stated that around two-thirds of the female workforce in the Global South is involved in agricultural work. However, they own less than 10% of the land despite leading the world's food production by 50 - 80%. Before we explore ways of fixing these issues, let’s have a more holistic, in-depth look at some of the specificities around climate disasters that impact women:

Extreme rain and droughts - With rising temperatures, there has been and there will continue to be more floods in some areas and droughts in others. Flooding drowns food crops and droughts dry them up. This leads to food scarcity which is the precursor to other issues such as poverty through livelihoods being destroyed, malnutrition and starvation.

Food scarcity – Girls and women have a greater susceptibility to malnutrition and vector-borne diseases which are made more prevalent by climate change. And they’re more likely than boys to get less food during times of food scarcity. These food shortages cause communities to go to war over shrinking food resources.

Image credit: Guardian.co.uk

Life security – Women face heightened safety risks during times of war, conflict and disasters with issues like domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking and other human rights violations. With limited access to information and limited movement outside their homes, women are 14 times more likely than men to die during disasters, according to reports by the African Development Bank.

Lack of socioeconomic power - Women in the Global North are also affected by climate change. With less socioeconomic power, women overall experience more poverty than men. It, therefore, becomes harder for them to recover from disasters that have affected jobs, infrastructure and housing. An example is Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA in 2005. The city had a high level of poverty amongst its African American residents. They were most affected by the hurricane flooding. Scientists predict that as sea levels rise from climate change, low-lying cities like New Orleans are at risk of flooding.

Education – Women are more likely than men to end formal education early in multiple regions. In Africa, female illiteracy rates were over 55% in 2000, compared to 41% for men. This means they are far less likely to get into leadership positions where they can influence climate mitigation policies.  On this matter, environmental scientist Diana Liverman said, "Women are often not involved in the decisions made about the responses to climate change, so the money ends up going to the men rather than the women.” Because women are likely to do more work to secure household livelihoods during extreme weather circumstances, they have less time to access training and education, develop skills or earn income.

Image credit: Yogendra Singh

Disaster survival – An Oxfam report stated that in the wake of the 2004 tsunami, the men who survived the disaster outnumbered women by almost 3:1 in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and India. It was reported that women spent more time trying to save their children, which delayed their efforts to escape the tsunami. They were also less likely to know how to swim than men. The 2004 tsunami was not a climate change disaster, however, due to the rise in sea levels from climate change and the loss of coastal ecosystems, tsunamis are expected to intensify. This, however, serves as an example of how expectations on women to provide family care also has uneven effects during times of disaster.

Life expectancy – A study of natural disasters spanning 20 years found that catastrophic events lowered the life expectancy of women more than men. In countries where women had higher socio-economic power, fewer women, in general, were killed and fewer women were killed at a young age.

Water shortage – When climate changes cause water bodies to shrink, it impacts the lives of those who are dependent on it. In Central Africa for example, 90% of Lake Chad in West Africa has encroached. Millions of people across five nations use Lake Chad as their water source. As the lake shrinks, women have to walk much further to get water for their families.

Image credit: UN IHE Delft Institute for Water Education

Internal displacement and refugees – Many women are forced into displacement from their homes or forced to become cross-border refugees as a result of climate change factors such as rising sea levels in West Africa and drying river basins in Southern and Eastern Africa. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC), adolescent girls and women are refugees at the highest risk of being trafficked for sexual slavery while in transit to a foreign land and of experiencing gender-based violence while in the refugee camps. Women risk assault at the camps when they venture out of the protected environment in search of water and firewood.  

Social vulnerability - Social vulnerability can come from lower wages, financial insecurity and inequality. In East Africa and Pakistan for example, drought and flooding have impacted farming, respectively. Men have a higher chance of relocating for higher wages than women. Women typically are unable to migrate due to family care-taking commitments.

How can we fix the disproportionate impacts from climate change?

The simple answer is to end all activities that perpetuate climate change. As I’ll explain later, indigenous women and communities in the Global South have centuries worth of ecological knowledge on mitigating some aspects of climate damage and implementing environmental restoration. In an equal spirit of partnership and cooperation, perhaps we can combine this traditional, organic and resourceful knowledge with modern technology for broader application to prevent, solve or restore some of the environmental damage. In any case, here are several more suggestions:

1. Imminent zero emission targets

Immediate action is required to protect women made vulnerable by climate change. Emphasis should be placed on protecting people and planet today, not protecting the future. The greatest concern should be for the people that rely on natural resources, the environment and climate every day to survive. Several of the biggest global zero-emission targets by corporations and nations are set to happen by 2050 but vulnerable people do not have 10, 20 or 30 years to wait. Therefore, global zero-emission targets need to accelerate towards present day, not 2030.

We’re currently overshooting the planet’s resources by 60% each year with regards to production and the earth’s ability to absorb and replenish resources that we consume. Our excessive overconsumption is driven by a few rich countries. The 2030 target has a higher chance of succeeding if we start with the 20 biggest greenhouse gas emitter companies in the world, especially with the participation of the US, China and India.

2. Propagate traditional knowledge and wisdom

Despite vulnerability, women should not only be seen as climate change victims. They have proven to be resourceful agents of adaptation and disaster mitigation. Historically, indigenous women and women from the Global South have an organic knowledge of the ecosystem that empowers them to feed their families and uphold communities in the face of disaster and dwindling resources. International geographer, Hindou Ourmarou Ibrahim says Indigenous women have the knowledge of adapting and restoring the forests after a disaster because indigenous people all over the world are very directly dependent on natural resources for food, medicine, education and of course survival. This way of survival has become extremely difficult for indigenous societies in the wake of widespread ecological changes in their environments resulting from climate change.

Indigenous people see themselves as part of the ecosystem with an unparalleled knowledge of the environment developed over centuries where they have depended directly on the forests for dwelling, food, education, medicine, safety, etc. This relationship has advanced their skills in things like preventing and restoring rain rainforests after burning. grandmother in Pacific will know where to get crops after the hurricane to feed her family. In Chad, nomads when they move with cattle, they know how to restore the ecosystem. When it comes to sustainable business practices, the knowledge of indigenous people is a valuable resource and indigenous people are a valuable partner that can protect environment, business.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Sassan Saatchi

 3. Representation

Every societal challenge we face will be better addressed if women and girls participate equally in both diagnosing and treating the problems. Women are best placed to devise responses that are effective and advance their own rights.

The UN has emphasised the need for a gender-sensitive approach to climate issues. And the 2015 Paris Agreement has specific provision for the inclusion and empowerment of women. Despite this, there is only a 30% representation of women in the average global and national climate negotiating bodies. A research study by the Proceeding of National Academy of Sciences found that only 20% of the scientists that authored the IPCC report were female identifying. It concluded that “the scientific community benefits from incorporating scientists from all genders, including women from the Global South. Therefore, intersectionality across multiple and diverse barriers such as race, nationality, disciplinary affliction and language are crucial to progress.

Image credit: Marc Cooriolesi

4. Policy and decision-making

Policies must be designed to include outcomes that improve the living conditions of women most affected by climate change. On the matter, Former President Jimmy Carter and Karin D. Ryan said, “… women are far too often excluded from decision making at all levels of environmental policy making.” “We have to think bigger, act quicker, and include everyone.” People in leadership positions need to actively do more to ensure girls and women are in leadership positions under equitable circumstances and with gender-responsive outcomes under the climate movement.

Women of the Global South, being the most impacted must also have full participation in top-level decision-making.  The priorities and needs of women must be reflected in planning, development and funding. Fundamental gender issues should be an intrinsic part of policy formation, for instance, equal access to credit resources, training services, tech and education. 

Women should also be part of the decision-making process at national and local levels when it comes to resource allocation for climate change initiatives, gender-sensitive investments in projects for mitigation, sustainable development, capacity-building, technology and adaptation.

In Fiji for example, at the community level, groups constituting and lead by women have enhanced the resilience of market vendors against floods, drought and cyclones.

5. Access to education & tech

In 1856, at a time when the work of female scientists were neither acknowledged nor respected, Eunice Foote managed to become the first scientist to lay the foundation of what we know as the greenhouse gas effect, by highlighting the connection between excessive carbon dioxide and increased atmospheric temperatures. The story of Eunice Foote is a symbolic reminder that many intelligent girls and women just need education and opportunities to enable their capability to contribute to creative solutions that will end the crisis. By ignoring the need to educate women and girls in the Global South, we may have lost countless solutions to the crisis that we will never know of. And we will continue to miss out on potential solutions if we do not take action on this matter. This need to invest in education for this demographic is an urgent matter.

Image credit: Girls Not Brides

Clean energy technologies should be devised and implemented in consultation with local women to reduce harmful emissions whilst aiding their economic productivity and security. Provision should be made for rural communities that don’t have electric power to gain access to affordable renewable solar micro grid energy. This is way more cost effective than coal plants. Access to tech and services can help farmers end food insecurity in their communities. In some instances, tech can potentially broaden the application of the indigenous, ecological climate initiatives.

6. Socioeconomic factors

40% of the poorest households in the world are headed by women. The idea that ending climate change has to undermine the living standards and ambitions of the world’s poorest people is a fallacy. As climate change and poverty are interwoven, we should aspire to have practical solutions to both issues simultaneously by refocusing on the living standards of women in the Global South. According to economic anthropologist, Jason Hickel, there's about 700 billion dollars in debt floating around the global South that needs to be cancelled.

Unsustainable sovereign debt restricts many developing countries from providing adequate support in climate crises. These governments are forced to divert funding from social services to maintain debt repayments to their international creditors. Widespread debt cancellation across the South is needed to get rid of unpayable debts that basically chain global South nations to their creditors instead of directing resources towards environmental restoration and disaster mitigation to save lives and livelihoods. Widespread application of this effort will require the influence and cooperation within the IMF, the World Bank, the Paris Club and the G20.

On a different note, initiatives and bodies that fund climate projects should make efforts to work around social, cultural and economic obstacles that prevent women from receiving such opportunities. A good example of gender-sensitive approach to operations and policies is the Green Climate Fund’s gender policy.  

7. Economic degrowth, decoupling and redistribution

Currently we’re overshooting our planet’s biocapacity by about 60% each year with regards to the earth’s ability to absorb our waste and replenish resources. Excessive overconsumption and the constant pursuit of material economic growth by nations hoping to increase their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is mostly responsible for this. This overshoot is of course accelerating environmental degradation, obliterating biodiversity and furthering climate change which is in turn affecting women.

Perhaps we can stop measuring our economic success by GDP because it doesn’t take ecological damage into account. For instance, the loss or damage to biodiversity, land, trees and other resources. Nor does GDP include domestic contributions largely done by women. If it did, perhaps poverty levels for would be reduced and women might be in better financial positions.  

What if GDP calculations included environmental preservation factors and levels of poverty eradication as a measure for economic success. An option on this pathway might be to look at models for degrowth and decoupling. Economic anthropologist, Jason Hickel talks about ditching our addiction to GDP growth through absolute decoupling of GDP from material use.

Degrowth means a planned economic shift from ecological overshoot to significant reduction in resource use in the Global North economies. The idea to reduce and maintain global resource use at sustainable levels. This post capitalist model means less focus on material growth. With regards to decoupling, economies that can detach environmental degradation while sustaining economic growth and minimising the amount of resources such as fossil fuels and water are described as decoupled. The focus is on growing the economy without the corresponding environmental pressure. It can also be explained as the "equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level" (Schneider et al., 2010). Models like these would diminish the pillaging of natural resources and hence, the negative environmental domino effect on women.

Another solution could be to evolve past capitalism and eradicate poverty simply by redistributing existing yields of economy from the wealthy nations, institutions, or individuals to the poor. We wouldn’t need to plunder the earth for more resources for economic growth to do this. Yet still, it would bridge the poverty divide and give women a fairer chance at thriving in climate damage circumstances and disasters.

♥ Nina Gbor

References:

1. https://www.wecaninternational.org/why-women

2. https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/august-2016/women-grapple-harsh-weather

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51u4JECraLQ

4. https://www.brookings.edu/research/girls-education-in-climate-strategies/

5. https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/womenin-shadow-climate-change

6. https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/03/08/power-structures-gender-make-women-vulnerable-climate-change/

7. https://www.pnas.org/content/115/9/2060

8. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43294221#:~:text=Women%20are%20more%20likely%20than,when%20flooding%20and%20drought%20occur.

9. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/HRAndClimateChange/Pages/GenderResponsiveClimateAction.aspx

10. https://time.com/5739622/women-girls-climate-action/

11. https://www.dw.com/en/climate-induced-sea-level-rise-to-worsen-tsunami-impacts/a-45730449

12. http://thesustainabilityagenda.com/episode-56-interview-dr-jason-hickel-author-divide/

13. file:///C:/Users/ninag/Downloads/9719.pdf

14. https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-11-26/climate-change-worse-women/11735842

15. https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/oxfam-international-tsunami-evaluation-summary_3.pdf

16. https://www.greenbiz.com/article/why-economic-degrowth-ethical-imperative

17. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652610000259

Banning secondhand clothes by the Global South; a blessing or a curse for local fashion industry?

Photo courtesy Lauren Fleischmann.

I’m beginning to wander if the Global South is the new landfill for Western countries. Do you ever think about what happens to your clothes when you’re done with them? And when you donate to thrift stores, do you think about where your clothes will eventually end up after they’ve been re-used? I probably wouldn’t, however, walking into a thrift store at age 15 in an African country was the eureka moment that forever changed my life and how I perceived secondhand (preloved) clothing.     

Photo courtesy Prudence Earl

Thrift stores and fashion waste

Fast fashion is often poorly made, low quality, mass-produced clothes made from synthetic textiles. They are a major pollutant and can often end up in landfill not too long after manufacture. Fast fashion overconsumption is the primary reason why fashion is one of the most polluting industries in the world. Because they are not always sellable, charity thrift stores are forced to dispose of them, which can have a devastating impact on their budgets.  Australian charitable recycling organisations are spending approximately $13 million per year sending unusable donations to landfill. The other option is to send them to emerging countries in places like Asia and Africa. The British charity shop, Oxfam, declared that a minimum of 70% of secondhand garments donated to them ends up in Africa. 

Secondhand clothing from the Global North to the Global South

For decades, countries in the Global North such as Australia, the U.S., the U.K. have been sending unwanted secondhand clothes to countries in the Global South. Most of these clothes are the leftovers that op shops (thrift stores) cannot sell. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2016 – 17 for instance revealed that Australian exports 93,502,966 kilos of “worn clothing and other work textiles articles”. Direct exports from charities accounted for two thirds of this figure.

Photo courtesy M. Yusuf / Voice of America

My personal experience

One of my first and most memorable thrift store experiences was in Nigeria at age 15. Like other preloved stores in Africa, they too received secondhand clothes from Western countries.  It was the day my career in sustainable fashion began. I loved finding vintage and contemporary fashion treasures and relished the opportunity to play dress up with an eclectic range of garments at thrift stores. However, a sense of unease gradually began to stir within me because of a couple of things I observed. These imported, affordable clothes were stifling the growth of the local fashion industry. Secondly, there was so much stock that it was visibly polluting the environment. At the end of their life cycle, these clothes would end up in mountains of trash near residential areas, along with other household trash. Landfills were rarely an option in these communities.

Banning secondhand clothing

In 2015, East Africa imported $151 million worth of apparel, mainly from the U.S. and Europe. Countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda have been phasing out secondhand apparel with the intent of an eventual total ban. They believe secondhand clothing undermines their dignity and the development of nascent textile industries in their nations. Despite being major cotton producers, a significant portion of the population within countries such as Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Mali depend on secondhand clothes. African countries have been exporting raw materials and less often, finished products.  According to the McKinsey Consultancy, within a decade, East Africa could have the capability to export garments (as finished products) worth up to $3 billion annually.

The quandary of African countries

In opposition to the East African clothing ban, the Office of the United States Trade Representative in 2017 threatened to remove four East African countries in the list of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act. It gives preferential trade benefits to African countries for the purpose of lifting trade and economic growth across sub-Saharan Africa. Part of the weight behind the American opposition was the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association (SMRTA), a band of 40 used clothing exporters with 40,000 American jobs within it. SMRTA said that the clothing Americans threw away would end up in U.S. landfills and damage the environment in the U.S.

Authorities in African countries viewed the threat as an example of a Global North country bullying countries in the Global South that are trying to cultivate a more self-sufficient, thriving economy. Situations like this place emerging countries in a dilemma over balancing protectionism with the perils of damaging their diplomatic connections and relationship with the global economic network.   

In a country like Nigeria, even though the government has technically banned secondhand clothing, the rules are not thoroughly being enforced. The conundrum is that it has not yet established a foundation of infrastructure and facilities that will empower local businesses to compete with Western fast fashion, particularly secondhand imports.

Image courtesy Wong Maye-E, Associated Press, The New York Times.

Textile pollution

And then there’s the issue of pollution. Many textile recycling businesses and charities take pride in their zero-waste status by shipping all leftover clothing to developing countries. In some regards, this notion is akin to the SMRTA principle which believes African nations should accept their unwanted clothing to keep them out of American landfills and to protect the U.S. environment from damage.  All of these Western organisations seem to have no issues with sending over their ‘trash’ to pollute African environments and fill up African landfills (or lack thereof).

Toxic groundwater

Beyond just littering the environment and the trash dumps in emerging countries, synthetic textiles release toxic groundwater when it rains. They are not biodegradable. The buildup of chemicals that come out of these synthetics after years of rainfall produces toxic ground water that leaks into the soil, damaging its fertility and natural ecology.  

Moreover, when toxic ground water stays at the surface of the ground, it evaporates with the chemicals into rain clouds which becomes acid rain. Acid rain pours back down again and spreads over a much wider surface area, repeating the soil damage process.

Water is of course a life source used by people in the local communities for household and agricultural purposes. Toxic groundwater and acid rain flow into local water bodies and can be hazardous to people who depend on it. Acid rain also contributes to the extinction of specific species because it can cause health problems or death when ingested. It changes the pH levels of water bodies which impacts marine wildlife.   

Another landfill solution to the problem of oversupply

I’m not entirely recommending they should suddenly stop shipping secondhand clothes to Africa, Asia and other places. It’s just not environmentally sustainable for those countries to have synthetic textiles in their landfills and trash dumping areas. It’s polluting the environment in emerging countries who did not create the pollution problem in the first place. Yet they’re having to deal with the repercussions. At the end of the day, countries in the Global South have become another landfill for countries in the Global North. And this is not a solution to the problem of oversupply and overconsumption. Furthermore, it contributes to climate change.

Where jobs are concerned, it curbs the creation of new jobs in poorer countries of the South that are attempting to build a thriving manufacturing economy by establishing local fashion industries.

Photo courtesy Association for Free Research and International Cooperation.

What can be done

Less fast fashion equates to less waste. Addressing the issue at the root cause by minimising the oversupply and overconsumption of fast fashion will have a positive domino effect.  As a consumer, before you purchase any garment, think about how many times you’ll use it and how long you will keep the item. If it’s short term, then consider hiring, renting or borrowing instead.

Countries that do not need to import secondhand clothing can decide if and how they will move forward in developing their own textile and clothing manufacture industries. In the latter, governments will need to address issues such as the requirement for local manufacturers to have access to sufficient funding, raw material, energy and liveable wages. In addition, garments should be made from natural textiles that also cater to the entire range of consumer budgets.

To be fair, some of the secondhand recycling organisations send clothing to help impoverished communities that cannot afford clothing. This is certainly admirable and a highly appropriate way of re-purposing these clothes. However, what if we made this a short-term strategy whilst we applied our focus on developing sustainable long-term systems to ensure those communities became economically independent within a specific time frame? This way we can break these cycles of poverty, end dependency and uplift global communities.

♥ Nina Gbor

Instagram: @eco.styles

References:

1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-17/australian-op-shopping-waste-costs-millions-for-charities/10383490

2. https://afric.online/7730-second-hand-clothes-a-threat-to-african-textile/

3. https://www.nacro.org.au/data-on-australian-exports-of-used-clothing/

4. https://ecowarriorprincess.net/2020/02/second-hand-clothing-threat-africa-textile-industry-not-all-bad/

5. https://manrags.com.au/circular-economy/the-solution/greenhouse-gases/

6. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/world/africa/east-africa-rwanda-used-clothing.html