Burning
issue: how fashion's love of leather is fuelling the fires in the Amazon
Fashion
Beef and
soya aren’t the sole culprits – our demand for shoes, belts and handbags is
driving rainforest destruction. It’s time for consumers to wake up
Lucy Siegle
Thu 29 Aug
2019 12.27 BST Last modified on Thu 29 Aug 2019 12.28 BST
Smokes
rises from the Amazon on August 27, 2019.
Devastation … an Amazon blaze this week.
Photograph: Joao Laet/AFP/Getty Images
The level
of destruction is almost impossible to fathom. About 41,000 fires have been
recorded by scientists in the Brazilian Amazon since January, with more than
half of those in the past three weeks – hence the apocalyptic headlines. Every
minute, the equivalent of a football field and a half of the so-called lungs of
the Earth is incinerated.
The
rainforest isn’t just totemic, we know that the future stability of the climate
rests on preserving it. To be an onlooker to this burning triggers the type of
overwhelming anxiety that probably won’t be soothed by wearing a “save the
rainforest” T-shirt like we did in the 1980s. In fact, that’s the last thing we
should be doing, because the Amazon burn is very much a fashion crisis,
connected to the leather your shoes are made from and the bag on your shoulder.
We need action.
Earlier
this week, the fashion industry made a move, as LVMH, the world’s top luxury
goods firm, pledged €10m to fight the Amazon burn, adding to the $20m pledged
by the G7 with President Macron as frontman. “Protecting the environment is not
just about words and speeches or signing declarations of principle,” read the
statement accompanying the LVMH pledge by CEO Bernard Arnault and director Yann
Arthus-Bertrand, adding: “It also requires taking concrete collective actions
when dangers arise in order to provide resources for local specialists and work
together to save our planet.”
Except that
the industry should have done far more far earlier – and has for years been
tacitly driving destruction. The causes of this are often far away from the
actual forest.
This has
been evident for a decade. In 2009, Greenpeace published Slaughtering the
Amazon, a report that should have – and nearly did – change everything. The
report concluded that the demand for leather was fuelling the destruction of
the Amazon in its own right, not just accidentally as a by-product of beef.
Researchers found cattle ranchers were clearing rainforest illegally despite
laws protecting it, including Brazil’s “forest code”. One hectare of rainforest
was being lost to ranches every 18 seconds. Through a murky supply chain,
Brazilian beef companies were supplying leather to leading global fashion
brands and retailers, across price points and across retail markets.
Complacency is a contagion and this one has
spread to us, as fashion consumers
To add
insult to injury, the whole venture was underpinned by state-funded banks. In
effect, while former president Lula made speeches about saving the “lungs of
the Earth” (the Brazilian Amazon stores 80-120bn tonnes of carbon and produces
20% of the planet’s oxygen), the state was sponsoring its wholesale
destruction.
In the
aftermath of the report and on the trail of a nascent sustainable fashion
movement, I found many stories on the ground in Brazil. In 2012, I travelled to
cattle-producing states with agro-forestry researchers to meet ranchers. The
researchers were trying to persuade them that there was greater economic value
in saving the rainforest biome than in destroying it. They very nearly
succeeded.
Two things
were stunningly clear to me from the outset. While the Amazon is more closely
connected to iconic species of megafauna – including jaguars, tapirs and all
manner of large, wildly coloured birds – the whole country is really about the
cow, specifically the Nelore, an Indian import with folds of skin collecting
around its neck. From 1993 to 2013, the Brazilian herd grew 200% to more than
60m cows. Everywhere you looked as evening fell across treeless ranches, you’d
see their forms silhouetted against the dusty backdrop.
The second
was how deeply ingrained the slash and burn model of agriculture was in
ranchers. This was a hangover from the 1970s when across the country government
posters urged prospectors to head to the Amazon and settle the land. The
quickest way to gain land rights? Chop the trees, burn them, put cattle on the
land. Never stop. Keep pushing forwards into the rainforest. This is the deeply
held ethos that Bolsonaro has been able to tap into.
But back
then, all was not lost. Ranchers could often be persuaded to stop burning to
produce leather for a concerned and engaged fashion market that wanted to
promote leather goods that were certified as zero deforestation. In 2013, Gucci
launched a collection of bags produced through a pilot project with ranchers
and NGOs at Paris fashion week.
On a wider
level, things changed after the Greenpeace report as environmental groups
pressured publicly listed conglomerates to delink their supply chains from
Amazonian destruction. In 2011, an agreement between one of Brazil’s biggest
meat companies, JBS, and others was signed with federal prosecutors. They
agreed not to buy cattle directly from embargoed or illegally deforested areas.
The Brazilian meat companies hurried to register the ranches that they sourced
from into a Rural Environmental Registry that could be confirmed by satellite
imagery. In October 2009, just 2% of JBS’s purchases were from registered
properties. By 2013, that figure was 96%. A later study by US geographer Holly
Gibbs showed these initiatives had worked and that zero deforestation
commitments could be effective.
What a
tragedy then, that 10 years on we are witnessing the destruction of the Amazon
and dismantling of these precious agreements. A recent Guardian investigation
found cattle ranchers who were seemingly breaking the embargo linked to big
meat companies.
Perhaps no
system, however tough, could have withstood the determined assault on the
Amazon by Bolsonaro, who is making good on his promises to slash environmental
protections whatever the cost.
But it is
hard not to wish that it had been made more difficult for him. Truthfully, the
fashion industry has remained complacent about leather from the Amazon and,
outside of pilot projects, has failed to commit to zero deforestation supply
chains in a big way. The €10m pledged earlier this week by LVMH could have been
spent to great effect over the past decade on monitoring and enforcement.
If the current crisis in the Amazon does one
thing, I hope it wakes us up to the true cost of Amazon leather
Complacency
is a contagion and this one has spread to us, as fashion consumers. The global
production of footwear was up to 23.5bn pairs by 2018, accounting for 55% of
all leather production. Almost nobody asks where the cows are from, never mind
requesting certified zero-deforestation leather.
Brands
swear that their leather is from Europe rather than 6,000 miles away in the
Brazilian Amazon. I find this unlikely. If all the shoes professing Italian
heritage really were from Italian cattle, cows would drink from the Trevi
fountain and chew the cud in Piazza San Marco. If the crisis in the Amazon does
one thing, I hope it wakes us up to the true cost of Amazon leather.
More
conscious
Buying
consciously from the Amazon means supporting brands that are Amazon-first,
putting the ecology and people of the biome above profit and volume. Here are
our top brands investing in the Amazon rather than exploiting it:
The
Brazilian Amazon is the only place on Earth where rubber trees grow in a wild
state. Environmentalist Bia Saldanha moved her family to the Chico Mendes
reserve in Acre (named after the activist murdered in 1998 for his work) many
years ago and works with 20 seringueiros families rubber tapping wild trees
sustainably. Two or three times a week, the seringueiros collect 12kg of wild
rubber primarily destined for the soles of Veja trainers, made in Portugal in a
fair-trade factory. In 2018, this collaboration preserved 90 hectares of
forest, says Saldanha.
Auá
Jair
Bolsonaro has also declared war on the 400 indigenous communities who inhabit
the rainforest. These groups, according to Fiona Watson, director of research
at Survival International, possess “vast and acute botanical and zoological
knowledge … and protect some of the largest and most biodiverse forests on
Earth”. Auá is a southern Brazilian brand that works with artists and indigenous
communities to develop collections where all are equal partners, with the
avoidance of cultural appropriation – one of fashion’s biggest pitfalls – in
mind. The Auá team, which includes an inhouse anthropologist, negotiate the
terms of use of patterns and designs from indigenous communities.
Osklen
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Osklen is
one of Brazil’s most established sustainable fashion brands. The company was
founded by a former doctor, Oskar Metsavaht, in 1988 and is known for
pioneering sustainable fabrics. The brand’s motto is “as sustainable as
possible, as soon as possible” – he refuses to wait for certification bodies to
catch up. An early avoider of cattle leather on environmental grounds,
Metsavaht has pioneered the use of skins from the pirarucu fish found in
Amazonian rivers and lakes. Olsken bags from pirarucu are sold all over the
world, generating a new income source for the area. Olsken’s sustainable
practices and materials are being studied by the Federal University of Rio de
Janeiro.
Bottletop
The
London-based accessories brand has an enduring relationship with Brazil. The
classic Bottletop bag is made from ring pulls (recovered from Brazilian
landfill), handpainted in an atelier in Itapua that works to fair-trade
principles, and then linked together with leather that is certified
zero-deforestation. The brand also produces Together wrist-bands, promoting the
UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
What can we
do?
In response
to the Amazon fires and an Extinction Rebellion protest outside the Brazilian
embassy in London last Friday, a promise of match-funding has been made to the
tune of $350,000 for the Climate Emergency Fund. To join the surge and donate,
visit this website.
Greenpeace
wants you to sign a petition to tell the government to suspend trade talks with
Brazil until the fires are out and the Amazon and its people are protected.
Plant
trees: Offest.Earth is fundraising for a protest forest, in the name of
Bolsonaro, “tree enemy number one”. So far 4,000 trees have been planted.
Donations can be made here.
Donate to
Cool Earth via its website.
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