Ep. 98: Biodiversity in fashion’s supply chain

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 Ep. 98: Biodiversity in fashion’s supply chain

The Textile Innovation Podcast speaks to Katie Fensome of UK conservation consultancy Biodiversify about biodiversity and how fashion businesses can better meet Environmental, Social and Governance targets.

WTiN: Hi, Katie, thank you for speaking with me today. Please, can you give me a bit of background on Biodiversify?

Katie Fensome: Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, so by diversify is a fairly young company were founded in 2018, by our co-founders, Mike Burgas. And Sam Sinclair, who came together during their PhDs with like a common interest in the indicators that are used for making decisions around biodiversity, but also how those decisions are made in the meetings and organisations that are really kind of fundamentally driving biodiversity loss or Biodiversity Management. So since then, we've kind of grown a lot. We're around 20 members in the team now after five years. And we're kind of founded on the principle of making it really great place to work, which is one of the big attractions for me personally. So we have like a slightly shorter work week, we end like, the day around midday to one o'clock on Friday, which is lovely gives people a bit more of a work life balance, and we're all part of a team to really make it a fun and supportive environment to work in where we really collaborate closely together to make our projects really strong as possible.

WTiN: Oh, amazing. That sounds so good. Yeah. You've answered my next question. But can you tell me about your background? And what led you to Biodiversify?

Katie Fensome: Yeah, sure. So my background academically, I studied human sciences at Sussex for my undergraduate and then a master's in environmental change in management at Oxford. And both of those were very intimate interdisciplinary, looking both at natural science and social science of environmental change. And I had a particular interest in agricultural change and the sort of policy and economic drivers of how we manage land, both at the farm level, like the agricultural practices that were used, but also how our economic policies shape a landscape with Habitat connectivity, so the shape of how natural habitat patches remain in the landscape. And they studied that both from like a natural science using GIS, geographical information systems, and remote sensing to look at habitat management and how biodiversity and people would be affected by economic changes. And those questions are quite important for looking at the future of agriculture and how we use the resources. Agriculture is like the single biggest driver of biodiversity loss and a big contributor to climate change as well, especially with habitat loss and deforestation. So I was really interested in those questions, both from the social side. So what would the future of farming look like for people? What does the future of food look like for people and what's the future of biodiversity in nature look like. And I could have gone hard down that academic career path. Like people who get into GIS and remote sensing, they tend to nerd out on maps. And I love maps, that that I had a sense that academia wasn't really for me, I find it quite difficult to look at, reduce the lens that you look at things. And I'm quite interested in the fundamental drivers, of which business is obviously and consumption is the fundamental driver. So I really wanted to move into supporting businesses to play a role in conserving nature and playing their proportionate parts in in protection. So that got me to prefer us, which was my full first full time job in this area where I was working with the food sector clients like PepsiCo and others on their palm oil, no deforestation commitments. And eventually, quite recently, about eight months ago, I came to buy diversify really drawn by Yeah, that collaboration that's at the heart of how we work as a business.

WTiN: Amazing. That sounds so interesting. Would you mind giving the official definition of biodiversity nature and climate and nature?

Katie Fensome: Yeah, absolutely. So biodiversity show. Yeah, there are lots of terms that are moved around in this space. And biodiversity basically, is all living things. It's everything from the species, all the way up to ecosystems and how they interact together. So the diversity of all of these elements and how they interact to get them is life. Basically, when we talk about biodiversity, when we talk about nature is life plus the non-living elements like water, mountains, minerals, climate, weather, all of those elements and how they interact together. Nature and biodiversity. Like those, they do have formal definitions, which is biotic or alone for biodiversity and biotic plus abiotic for nature. But when you sort of see them in the corporate space, they are often used interchangeably. And when nature formally it should include climate, but you do see them sort of moved around a lot. And I wouldn't dwell too strictly on those definitions. And then climate obviously it's this sort of weather over the long term. It's the best Word patterns of, you know how things like temperature and weather patterns are, are kind of averaged out over over 30 -year cycles.

WTiN: And so how does the company work with textile manufacturers and fashion brands? And how and why would brands come to you?

Katie Fensome: Yeah, it's a really good question. So we, I would put our work into three main categories. One of them is sort of the strategy and collaboration working closely with companies to understand who they are as a business, what their culture is, who the decision makers are in the company, what their pressure points are for kind of implementing more sustainable practices as a company. That is, yeah, this is a strategic and collaboration element that we do with companies, then there's the analysis and the targets at the corporate level to look at, you know, what are your impacts, we can do that in qualitative ways. So sort of looking at, you know, non quantified ways to assess risks over the value chain, but also quantified ways. And they can draw into Target. So we do SP tn, science based targets for nature piloting, for example, we've been doing this a lot recently with caring and others. And then the third bucket, I would say, is sort of the direct action on the ground. So we have a team of people who focus on systematic conservation planning, so facilitating multiple parties with their kind of interests and priorities with how we manage land. We do that any UK. And we also do impact programmes support for some of our clients abroad as well. We're especially focusing on sort of biodiversity monitoring and existing impact programmes at the moment.

WTiN: Biodiversify has worked with Primark and Kering, for example, two major fashion names. So using them as an example, could you talk a bit more how you worked with them? And how you would tailor a package for a textile or fashion company?

Katie Fensome: Yeah, absolutely. So I'll start with Kering partly because Kering was one of our earliest partnerships back in the days when Salman might founded the company. So with caring, they've been two broad pieces of work. One of the earliest was in collaboration with caring and CISL, we developed the fashion strategy primer for the sector, which was the first guidance for the fashion sector and how to develop a strategy for biodiversity in nature. And then that moved on more recently to supporting them very closely on their SBTs piloting. So for for listeners who aren't familiar, like the science based targets for climate, they, they've been working very much in nature for the last few years. And they released their first guidance last year and started they're piloting gearing were accepted as one of those pilot companies. And our our team has been supporting them very closely on on that process to set science-based targets for nature, inland, and freshwater first, which is the guidance that's been released. And that's been a really, fascinating learning curve. Like it's this, as, as I mentioned, we work very closely within the team. So we're hearing a lot coming out of that team who work on that about the challenges of using the data sets that exist and and what those targets would mean in practice for a company to set. And then for Primark, for this Primark, that's really exciting piece of work as well, because we work across that full suite of elements, we work with them more on the strategy and the analysis. So we started out I think it was around three years ago, doing a review of the whole value chain and the risks to biodiversity across the value chain. And that was before kind of the strict guidance was coming out of the CSRD and policies and frameworks about materiality, but it did follow that materiality lens of looking at all the different drivers of biodiversity loss across the whole value chain, and that, somewhat unsurprisingly, it pulled out cotton production, raw material production at farm as one of the key risks to the company. So they buy a lot of synthetics and cotton, obviously, for biodiversity. As I mentioned earlier, agriculture is quite a big driver of biodiversity loss. So we focused on that as one of the key risks and then since then, we've been working with them on their pomoc sustainable cotton programme in India to support biodiversity monitoring on the ground in their farms. So they have this huge programme that's been going on for about 10 years working with over a quarter of million farmers now to train them on on more sustainable practices. And we were building on the biodiversity element that programme basically working very closely with local partners as

WTiN: I've definitely heard it and been spoken about a lot in recent years. So that is amazing. And going off that how do you use science? And what are your personal main research areas? 

Katie Fensome: That's a really good question. And I think like, fundamentally, science is the bedrock of everything that we do. Like we can't know much about biodiversity without hard science, both natural science and social science through the natural science, through things like the International sorry, the intergovernmental science policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services. They are kind of one of the major bodies for producing the hard science around the state of biodiversity in the causes of biodiversity loss. And we rely on some of the research coming out of that, but also the broad academia in general, to see what the risks to biodiversity on what's causing those. And we also rely on social science in terms of you know, how are decisions made this is really Sam's focus area is, is how are decisions made in corporations and other bodies to take action, or make a decision around conservation. But we are not a research body at heart, like we use research to make decisions and to support companies to make decisions. But we're not always generating primary research necessarily. But we are looking at partnering increasingly with research institutions, because broadly speaking, biodiversity is a long way behind carbon in terms of understanding corporations, role and responsibility in this space. So yeah, we are very much looking at partnership.

WTiN: Brilliant. I'm very excited to hear what will be coming from that in the future. So could you give me some background on the biodiversity landscape analysis that you were a part of?

Katie Fensome: Yeah, absolutely. So this was a report that was commissioned by textile exchange and Conservation International, as part of the programme of funding from Jeff, in partnership with the fashion packs as well. So it's basically three three organisations had some funding from the Global Environment Facility to support the fashion sector to take action on biodiversity. And the landscape report partly came out of that, but also the previous year. So in 2022, textile exchange released a landscape analysis report for regenerative agriculture. And that was very, very successful. I think, similar to regenerative agriculture. Biodiversity is a space that can seem quite kaleidoscopic, and it's like different frameworks, different acronyms, different policies that are very much coming up very rapidly recently. And what he was aiming to do similar to the regenerative agriculture, landscape report analysis, was to kind of synthesise all of that, and just provide a go to resource for people to understand like, how do all these frameworks fit together? What are the acronyms mean? And broadly speaking, what is fashions kind of relationship to nature? And what can they do next? So it's sort of a one stop shop for for all of that to just provide that narrative, basically, of how everything works together.

WTiN: Brilliant. You've probably already touched upon this, but what was the driving factor behind the research? And how has the research been received and are brands willing to get involved? So a lot of questions no one?

Katie Fensome: Yeah, no. So like I said, the driving factor behind it was, I think, just broad confusion in the space or sort of like that feeling of like, there's so much here. Biodiversity is huge. Biodiversity is basically the planet. It's the living element of the planet. And we're losing it at such a high rate. And companies have been aware for a while that there's an increasing expectation from stakeholders and legislation to take action for it. So it was unnecessary to have some kind of consolidation of why that expectation is there. And what specifically is the expectation of fashion? So it provides that go to points? And then in terms of reception and ongoing work? Yeah, absolutely. So I wasn't directly involved in it. It was before my time at bio diversify, or there was involved in other elements of this work with the fashion pact. But my understanding is that companies were very willing, there was so many amazing experts in the fashion sector, like increasingly, you're seeing hires, in brands, specifically focused on nature with nature based kind of careers, or they're moving from other areas, because they're really excited by biodiversity and nature and want to take their career path in that direction. So there are lots of people and you'll see them at you know, textile exchange and other spaces talking quite openly about, you know, the knowns and unknowns of biodiversity. And many of those people were very willing to kind of speak with the leads on that piece of work and offer their ends sights and the report itself. You know, it's got really nice quotes throughout it, representing what people have said in that in that preparation step.

WTiN: And diving a bit deeper, this is quite a big question. But what would your vision for the fashion industry be? And do you believe it is possible to achieve?

Katie Fensome: Yeah, I love that question. It's such a nice one to kind of go big. And I like going big, because sometimes you get so caught up in the weeds. But I, so one of the things I think about quite often in biodiversity and supply chain management and sustainable business is the complexity of what we're working at, and how we're all working in a network. And when you push one load of something like whether it's through policy, or you as a business are trying to push one upstream of ESG management, sometimes it's connected to so many things and kind of a spiderweb, that you don't know what other elements it's going to push. And what cascade effects you're going to have. We're sort of operating in complexity is that's the nature of it. So it's hard to have like a single vision of what should happen and what can happen, because there are unintended consequences for every decision you make. Which, hopefully, it's not that. I don't think that means that that shouldn't be or isn't a vision. But I guess broadly, what I would like to see is a clarity amongst companies about what their proportionate responsibility is, and what they should be doing and to work together in order to take action on it. I think what I see at the moment is, and this isn't just in the fashion sector, this is broadly the nature of environmental social governance is that companies can spend a long time looking at the data looking at the analysis looking at like, you know, okay, where are the risks, and that can delay action, what I quite like to see is companies working together to kind of do that research and analysis as quickly as possible. And then to kind of slice up the cake to work together to address where those hotspots are highest, where the risks are highest. We can talk more about where those risks are highest, but it's obviously you know, it's places like agriculture and land use change, deforestation, it's wet processing, and like the pollution pollutants that are involved in creating materials. I would like to see companies working together to in those risk areas and being less concerned about apportioning and sort of you know, specifically is it in my supply chain and just get going on it and then worry about that apportioning and reporting later. Yeah, which which are these basically, it's pre-competitive collaboration. And there are there are significant barriers to that, you know, not least anti trust laws. But I think there are ways that absolutely are ways of working around those laws and requirements to kind of build trust and build engagement. And you are seeing things like that happen. But it needs to happen more, and it needs to happen at scale completely.

WTiN: And as you said, like you've obviously worked closely on the impacts of nature from the fashion sector. And please, could you detail what some of the most concerning aspects of this are?

Katie Fensome: Yeah. So there are the way that we tend to think about biodiversity is it's got lots of different causes. The International Intergovernmental Panel sorry, on biodiversity and ecosystem services, the IPP s, that's a very go to source for how to define biodiversity and its losses. They categorise loss into five broad areas of climate change, land use change, as he has changed invasive species pollution, and resources, like over exploitation of resources. So there are five broad categories of them. And fashion intersects with all of those, it has impacts on all of those five drivers of biodiversity loss across different points of the value chain and in different locations. And it will vary by location and position in the value chain. But picking out a few key ones. land use and land use change is globally, the biggest driver of biodiversity loss and fashion as a sector that relies on agriculture does have a role in that. So as part of this work with a fresh impact, I was involved in a research piece to look at how much land the fashion sector uses. And it's connected to about half of the agricultural land in the world. So 2.4 4 billion hectares of land are connected to the fashion sector that's 50% of the agricultural land, which is Yeah, which is quarter of the overall habitable land in the world because 50% of the habitable land masses is agriculture. So fashion has a really big footprint when you're looking at, like the connection to the fashion sector. But when you take out, you know, just the fashion sectors use of the materials. So for example, looking at, instead of the whole cow, just the part of the cow that goes to leather, and instead of like the whole sheep, just the wool that goes to the fashion sector, that reduces down to about 290 million hectares, but that still big that's bigger than the area of Argentina. So that's a lot of agricultural area that could be used in more sustainable ways using more sustainable practices. And then also, it's it's driving deforestation, obviously, especially in leather and viscose and Latin America and Australia are key deforestation hotspots that are connected to some of the fashion sector materials. Yeah, so that's land use and land use change in the agricultural footprint of the fashion sector. And then I think another area that's really key is pollution and waste. And they have the companies are looking at that through their six circularity targets and their use of more recycled and recyclable materials. So those are really key is to lean into those programmes that you might have already and make sure that they are capturing value chain tears that you might not have included before making sure that you push up to your work processes upstream and even start maybe considering how those materials are used by the consumer to avoid, you know, micro plastic going out. And yeah, and obviously, the massive problem of fashion waste that we have.

WTiN: I know, they're all absolute huge, I did not know that about the land usage. That is some quite shocking statistics. And obviously, like it is, our awareness has been raised so much, but how does biodiversity first, go about raising awareness of these various impacts and providing solutions.

Katie Fensome: So as I mentioned, we kind of work on lots of different elements, we work on this sort of strategic side with companies working with them to help build their internal capacity and internal understanding of the topics and how they can work on biodiversity and incorporate biodiversity targets as a company. And that is sometimes generating new targets, you know, new things that they should be doing new action plans that they should have for engaging with various tiers of value chain. So, you know, as I've mentioned, we've got some programmes working with the TFR with a raw material production to kind of look at how biodiversity is at the moment, biodiversity baselining. And then we'll be moving into sort of more intervention planning as well. And then we're also looking at wet processing, and some of the risks that might be there for biodiversity in wet processing, especially in Southeast Asia where a lot of work processing happens. So yeah, that's the strategy and target setting element. And also the, you know, designing and working with impact programmes on the ground at key risk points. That's a field that like any company that is sort of a consultancy, working for corporations, they need to partner strongly on that element to make sure that you're working with local stakeholders, and everything's embedded in, in local needs and local practices. So we're, we're increasingly working on that element to phasing.

WTiN: And, in your opinion, are there any, like critical adjustments that brands each making their supply chain to be more environmentally friendly? Or is that quite subjective to each to each brand?

Katie Fensome: Yeah, it's sort of a bit of both, like each company, I think does need to go through that process to understand what their specific risks and contributions are. But don't dwell on that so long that you're avoiding action because I think there are some depending on your material portfolio, there are some actions that you definitely should take water efficiency and things are relevant to every single material that you waste is irrelevant to everything. So lean into those harder if you don't develop programmes if you don't already have them. But on that sort of agricultural error, I would say purchase certified material, that's the easiest thing you can do is know that it comes with a cost issue. But buying certified material material that's certified outsource is is really one of the simplest biocide actions that you can take to minimise or sort of at least mitigate slightly your impact on on biodiversity and the raw material production. I think in terms of leadership and really going beyond its it means sort of having a positive contribution in terms of increasing uptake of certification and making sure that you know, farmers are using better practices and avoiding clearance. Not every single company especially the smaller ones would have budget to actively engage in that element. But I think you know, you can do biocide things but you can also contribute positively to increasing uptake of certification and I think that's a two He thinks that Richard considered by companies are amazing,

WTiN: Regulations in the fashion industry, they're coming out, for example, in the EU, we're going to see the introduction of the Green Deal in France is making changes to tax and some pilots will be required to have digital product passports. Do you think all of this is possible? And how much of a change do you predict it will create?

Katie Fensome: Yeah, those three are all really key and are going to have potentially very big impacts, especially the digital product passport, I think is going to have significant implications for how companies track and manage their purchases. And I would also add on to that list, the EU deforestation regulation, which is requiring companies to kind of get rid of deforestation in their value chain, depending on you know, the point of purchase that they have, and the level of control they have over the manufacturer of the materials. That's another one. And then also the CSR D, the corporate social responsibility reporting directive, sorry, that has a specific disclosure requirement around biodiversity, which is also fairly ambitious. So yeah, those I would add those on to that list as well of policies that are fundamentally changing, that have the potential to fundamentally change how companies interact with their purchases, or how they control purchases. And I think if companies were to kind of implement these at the kind of, to the highest degree, I think they have a huge potential to change fundamentally how trade happens across borders, because especially with things like EDR, and if EDR kind of rationale moves into other environmental elements in the future, we're looking at decommodification of the supply chain, because you're moving from like a material kind of being, you know, basically, the only thing you're looking at is price to also looking at other criteria associated with that physical element that you're buying, which is a real big change in how we operate. So yeah, I think they do have the potential to drive change. I think there are risks that come with that as well, obviously, like, there are risks of split market and EU buying all of this, you know, in inverted brackets and the good materials and their sustainable materials going elsewhere and and not fundamentally changing issues, which is why you kind of need that pincer move of engaging with the production base as well. But yeah, I do you know, this, this is something that 10 years ago just didn't happen was having this level of ambition and legislation. And then just last few years, it's radically changed. And time will tell the level that companies will actually implement those and the level of kind of enforcement that will happen. If it's implemented and enforced to its highest degree, I think it will have significant changes and impacts are amazing. And we can hope so.

WTiN: What do you think the main challenges facing brands actually implementing these and getting them to look at what you do in terms of biodiversity? And all of this environmental and sustainability initiatives? Is it like cost implications? Like consumer want? What do you think are the main barriers that are there in Textile and Fashion stopping them from moving forward?

Katie Fensome: I yeah, I would say is cost. I think most things come back to cost, eventually. And it's also sort of this this issue with, like, complexity, and that just the scale of what supply chains look like and trying to pick apart? Where are the risks? And who are the place? Where are the places that we can really take action, which is, again, why we'd like to see companies working together more, there is a sort of an upfront cost to the time spent to establish that trust and establish the forums where you discuss things. But once that trust has been established, and you've got good partners, kind of delivering the agreed outcomes of it, you can really find efficiencies in the action that you take. And you can sort of, you know, you can look at the remit of a shared supply chain and divvy up roles and say, I'll take this part, this part you do this, I'll do this kind of bike shed, kind of, you know, assessment of where the issues are and what the supply chain looks like. You can focus on where your strength is. So if you have like a, you already have like a programme that engages with a lot of suppliers, maybe you can close off a gap that isn't necessarily in your supply chain, but it isn't somebody else's and they in turn can do something else that would support you. Yeah, so I do think cost is for Probably the fundamental barrier, but also complexity and sort of like a stalling because companies aren't sure what to do and where to focus. And they're, like their big menu of options with biodiversity.

WTiN: That makes complete sense. And finally, they have a two-part question to end on. What steps would you like to see the industry making going forward? And what is next for by diversify? Is there anything that you could maybe tell us about?

Katie Fensome: Sure. So I think I think, just to hammer home the point, like next steps I would like to see the industry taking is, is that collaborative thing I would like. So one of the things that's happening in the textile exchange, for example, is that they've set up this community of practice for biodiversity. I would like to see companies really using that as an opportunity to come together and actually take action together, like say, like, you know, we're going to focus on this material in this location and start taking action, though, I think, I'd really like to see that happening more. I think something that we'll see increasingly is full supply chain, traceability, and linking that traceability to the indicators that are needed for CSRD or SB tn. To my knowledge, we don't see that yet, but I expect we'll we'll see that in the not too distant future for those companies that are piloting and testing for traceability along the supply chain, where the material is connected to a blockchain along it. What we'll eventually likely see is biodiversity indicators associated with that data and moving through. I think, when that starts to come out, that'd be very exciting. So what can you remind me what the second part of the question was

WTiN: What is anything that you could tell us about the you're working on next? Like, what is the vision and the next steps for the company? Yeah, to share that with us?

Katie Fensome: Yeah. Yeah. Um, so one thing that we're doing it by diversify is we have come together, brought together a small team of our, of our team mates to develop the fashion hub and kind of push through a fashion strategy. So we're trying to kind of, you know, work together to understand what our priorities at by diversifier and how we can best use our strengths to move the sector forward. And I think, you know, facilitating collaboration and helping companies identify and work together on those key hotspots with biodiversity risk is part of that. And we're just we're a lot of, you know, as consultancy, a lot of the work that we do is behind NDA, unfortunately, but we're seeing quite a big growth in the sector of the work that's coming to us. And that is just builds opportunities. Because the more kind of relationships you form, and the more kind of companies that you're working with more, you can use that to kind of drive forward shared solutions, for example. So yeah, I think that is part of our future. And then working more on the ground with impact and driving impact that that's, I think that's what really drives all of us to do this job is to see changes and see, you know, different parts of the value chain managing things in more sustainable ways. So that the more we get involved in that they're more excited and passionate and sort of, you know, motivated, I think our colleagues will be they will be working more on that as well.

WTiN: Amazing. Very sorry to see what's going come from on that. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. It's been really, really interesting. And thank you. Yeah, I cannot wait to see what comes in the future. Sounds very exciting.

Katie Fensome: Thank you so much. It was really really pleasure.