The quick style corporations have used cotton from farms linked to environmental destruction within the fragile Cerrado savanna, says environmental group Earthsight
Quick style giants H&M and Zara have used cotton from farms linked to large deforestation, land-grabbing, corruption and violence in Brazil, a report by the environmental group Earthsight mentioned Thursday.
Primarily based on satellite tv for pc pictures, courtroom rulings, cargo data and an undercover investigation, the report, titled “Vogue Crimes”, discovered the businesses sourced “tainted cotton” farmed within the fragile Cerrado savanna by two of Brazil’s largest agribusiness companies, SLC Agricola and the Horita Group.
Regardless of abuses linked to its manufacturing, the cotton had been labelled as moral by main certification scheme Higher Cotton, exposing “deep flaws” within the oversight program, mentioned the British environmental group.
The Cerrado, essentially the most biodiverse savanna on Earth, has been disappearing at an accelerating charge as Brazil’s large agribusiness trade has more and more turned to the area in current a long time.
Earthsight traced a minimum of 816,000 tonnes of cotton exported from 2014 to 2023 to farms run by SLC and Horita, which “have a protracted document of courtroom injunctions, corruption rulings and thousands and thousands of {dollars} in fines associated to clearances of round 100,000 hectares of Cerrado wilderness,” it mentioned.
The cotton in query was farmed within the northeastern state of Bahia and shipped to eight Asian clothes producers whose shoppers embody Sweden-based H&M and Spain-based Zara, the report mentioned.
Brazil, the world’s high exporter of beef and soybeans, has additionally emerged as a serious cotton producer lately, now second solely to the US.
However that has contributed to environmental destruction within the Cerrado, the place “a ruinous mixture of corruption, greed, violence and impunity has led to the blatant theft of public lands and dispossession of native communities,” Earthsight mentioned.
Higher Cotton mentioned in a press release it had performed an impartial audit of the “extremely regarding points raised” within the report, and that it might present a abstract of the findings.
Zara mother or father firm Inditex and H&M mentioned they took the allegations severely, and urged Higher Cotton to launch the auditors’ findings.
The Brazilian Cotton Producers’ Affiliation (ABRAPA) mentioned it had labored with the growers in query to supply data and proof countering the report’s allegations.
“Sadly, these have been largely disregarded,” it mentioned in a press release.
“ABRAPA unequivocally condemns any practices that undermine environmental conservation, violate human rights or hurt native communities.”
