Reuters :
Large swathes of apparel-producing areas in Asia will be underwater by 2030, an analysis released on Friday which overlaid maps of rising sea levels onto factory locations showed, threatening thousands of suppliers with submersion unless they relocate to higher ground.
The analysis, produced by two Cornell researchers as part of a paper commissioned by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), warns that the problem of rising sea levels is receiving little attention from those leading sustainability efforts in the sector.
“Rapid increases in sea level rise and heat that will affect many of Asia’s apparel workers directly have received little attention,” authors Jason Judd and J Lowell Jackson of Cornell research centre the New Conversations Project wrote. “It appears some of apparel’s production centres representing a significant percentage of current output will not escape the projected acceleration of the climate crisis.”
While larger, trans-national suppliers may be able to shut down facilities in vulnerable areas and consolidate production on higher ground, smaller-scale suppliers will be most impacted, the paper’s authors said, highlighting the example of Bangladesh – the second-largest apparel exporter.
“We’re worried. This is a real threat. More and more factories are going greener. Still our factories could go underwater,” Shahidullah Azim, vice president of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said of the findings.
