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Stakes are high, time is short: how we can still save European sustainability obligations

By Hélène Bohyn, Policy & Advocacy Manager, and Ana Villalobos Prada, Policy and Advocacy Officer at the Better Cotton Initiative

The European Parliament’s recent endorsement of the Omnibus I Simplification Package threatens to significantly weaken corporate sustainability obligations under the CSRD and CSDDD. What is presented as ‘simplification’ is in truth a dangerous dilution of essential safeguards. By diluting due diligence and reporting requirements, the EU risks sidelining thousands of businesses – alongside the farmers and vulnerable communities they impact – at a time when transparency, accountability, and climate action are more urgent than ever.  

As the world’s largest cotton sustainability standard, the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) sees first-hand how robust due diligence drives real change. It enables companies to identify and address risks like child labour, unsafe pesticide use, and unfair purchasing practices – issues that directly affect cotton farmers, especially smallholders, and their communities. 

Not all hope is lost. With the European Parliament about to start the final stretch of negotiations with the European Commission and the Council of the European Union – the so-called trilogue negotiations – the European institutions have a choice to make: uphold their leadership on responsible business conduct or allow ambition to unravel behind closed doors.

As they approach these negotiations, we strongly urge the European Parliament to reconsider and call on businesses to resist the temptation to lower their standards.  

Who pays the highest price? 

Rather than bringing clarity, the changes approved by the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs have created confusion for companies and rightsholders. Many terms remain vague, making compliance harder and potentially slowing progress on sustainability and human rights protection. As we all know, clarity and ambition are essential to maintain trust and drive meaningful change.  

In the cotton sector, these changes will potentially have significant consequences. They risk removing incentives for brands to address purchasing practices, promote decent living wages, or implement traceability – all issues critical for farmers’ livelihoods and sustainability goals. Voluntary reporting and strong due diligence remain, however, critical for credibility, competitiveness, and climate resilience. Companies that will become out of scope must, therefore, remain resolute and not step back. 

Better Cotton Initiative’s position is clear 

  • Due diligence is non-negotiable: BCI will continue to uphold rigorous due diligence standards aligned with UNGP and OECD’s Guidelines, regardless of legislative changes; 
  • We will remain engaged: BCI is committed to working with EU institutions to advocate for a strong, ambitious due diligence framework;  
  • We call for renewed ambition: We urge EU leaders to restore the integrity of the CSDDD and CSRD and ensure companies remain accountable for their impacts. 

Unless it is meaningful, there is no due diligence  

The revised directive limits companies’ ability to proactively engage with suppliers. It removes contractual assurances, restricts information requests to small businesses, and allows companies to avoid penalties if data is unavailable.  

The erosion of such important pieces of legislation requires action. At the Better Cotton Initiative, we will work with and encourage our members and partners to advocate for a due diligence framework that remains proactive, inclusive, and risk-based.  

Companies must be empowered – and required – to engage meaningfully across their supply chains, including with smallholder farmers. We call on EU institutions to restore provisions that enable early risk identification and stakeholder consultation, ensuring due diligence drives real accountability.  

Climate action, not just goals  

The changes recently approved also weaken requirements for climate transition plans, allowing companies to disclose goals without demonstrating how they will achieve them.  

BCI calls on stakeholders to push for climate transition plans that go beyond mere disclosure. These plans ought to include concrete steps aligned with the Paris Agreement, such as setting measurable targets for Scope 3 emissions – and outline concrete actions across their supply chains, supporting regenerative agriculture, investing in low-emission logistics, and transitioning to renewable energy. Ambition must be matched by implementation. 

EU-wide civil liability is critical 

The removal of EU-wide civil liability undermines the ability of affected communities to seek justice across borders. Farm-level actors – including smallholder cotton farmers – are often the first to experience the impacts of unsustainable practices, yet their voices are rarely heard in corporate decision-making.   

BCI urges EU institutions to reinstate a unified civil liability mechanism to enable access to remedy for rightsholders, provide legal certainty for companies operating in multiple jurisdictions, and ensure consistent enforcement of human rights and environmental standards.

Civil society and farmer collectives must also be meaningfully engaged in shaping, implementing and monitoring civil liability frameworks to ensure that sustainability efforts reflect lived realities, protect rightsholders, and drive accountability across the value chain.  

Many companies – especially mid-sized retailers and brands – will no longer be required to conduct due diligence or report on sustainability risks. This is dangerous. Voluntary reporting and strong due diligence must not become a loophole for inaction.  

What else can we do?   

With final negotiations approaching, we urge stakeholders to act decisively by: 

  • Contacting MEPs to raise objections and push for stronger safeguards;  
  • Engaging with national governments involved in trilogue negotiations;  
  • Coordinating with civil society and industry coalitions to amplify concerns and propose constructive amendments; 
  • Using media and public platforms to highlight the risks of dilution and the need for ambition. 

Those committed to responsible business conduct can mitigate the reduced legal requirements by continuing to apply robust due diligence aligned with international standards, engaging proactively with suppliers, investing in traceability, and amplifying stakeholder voices, especially at farm level. 

The stakes are high, and time is short. If no objection is raised in the European Parliament’s plenary, final negotiations could begin as early as 24 October.  The EU must not retreat from its leadership role. We all need to act before the ambition is lost – and with it, the opportunity to build a fairer, more sustainable future.

Read BCI’s statement to the press: BCI warns against ‘dangerous dilution’ of EU corporate directives

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BCI warns against ‘dangerous dilution’ of EU corporate directives

The approval of the European Commission’s Omnibus I proposal by the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs, accepting controversial changes to key sustainability directives is of great concern. These changes, namely to the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), threaten to significantly dilute business reporting and due diligence obligations. 

Warning against the impact of the EP’s endorsement of the changes, Hélène Bohyn, Policy & Advocacy Manager at the Better Cotton Initiative said:  “What is presented as ‘simplification’ is in truth a dangerous dilution of essential safeguards. The European Parliament’s endorsement of the changes significantly weakens legal pressure for corporate accountability and risks dismantling the transformative power of the CSRD and CSDDD – landmark frameworks built to protect human rights and the environment. We strongly urge the European Parliament to reconsider and call on businesses to resist the temptation to lower their standards.” 

Photo Credit: Better Cotton/Baran Vardar. Harran, Turkey 2022. Cotton field.

More about the EU’s sustainability directives: Omnibus Or Not, Due Diligence Is a Must: Policy Breakdown

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Bridging wage gaps in Pakistan: It starts with data  

By Sahar Haq, Senior Social Impact Coordinator, and Amanda Noakes, Senior Decent Work  Coordinator at the Better Cotton Initiative 

What wages are actually paid on cotton farms in Pakistan?  This is a vital question for the improvement of wages and decent working conditions  in the sector – and one to which the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) has been seeking the most reliable answers. With support from the ISEAL Innovations Fund, between July 2024 and April 2025 BCI launched a pioneering Wage Transparency pilot across Pakistan, in Punjab and Sindh provinces, in search of that missing information. 

While low wages have long been recognised as a persistent challenge in cotton production, the extent of the gap between actual wages received and established benchmarks for minimum and living wages had not been systematically quantified until now. Through the pilot, BCI developed and tested a new wage sampling approach, collecting baseline wage data from the farms involved. The initiative aimed to understand how wages are set, paid, and distributed – specifically,  for permanent , seasonal, hourly-rate , daily-rate and output-based workers, as well as sharecroppers. 

Our new report offers unique insights into the project, with information from over 2,000 farmworkers and 200 farmers, covering nearly 25% of smallholder producer units across the country.

Beyond its immediate application, the project aims to contribute to broader sectoral learning and cross-initiative collaboration. By sharing its findings, BCI hopes to support and collaborate with other stakeholders navigating wage measurement challenges in low- and middle-income agricultural contexts, to explore solutions together.

This milestone marks a big step forward in the Better Cotton Initiative’s mission to promote decent work, including wage improvements, and sustainable livelihoods, including income improvements, for farmers and workers.  

BCI’s Programme Partners in Pakistan, Sangtani Women Rural Development Organisation (SWRDO), CABI Pakistan, WWF Pakistan and Rural Education and Economic Development Society (REEDS), participated in the pilot to develop the farm-level wage sampling tool.  

The road ahead: beyond transparency  

As BCI works to promote decent work and more sustainable value chains, wage transparency is an important tenet of our work, in line with our new Decent Work Strategy.  

By establishing a reliable and scalable wage sampling tool, we have laid the groundwork not only for improved data collection but also for meaningful action to support wage improvements across cotton-producing communities.  Ultimately, this initiative for us is about more than data – it is also about driving change.  

To find out more, click here for the full report  

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Better Cotton Initiative Marks World Cotton Day With Launch of Innovative Product Label

The Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) has launched an innovative product label for the fashion and textile sectors which allows retailer and brand members to provide consumers with greater clarity about the origin and percentage of BCI Cotton in their products. 

The new label, launched on this year’s World Cotton Day, will enable retailers and brands to claim with confidence that their products contain physical BCI Cotton, certified by a third-party body, that has been traced from its country of origin. The label is expected to gradually arrive in stores in the coming months. 

Nick Weatherill, CEO at the Better Cotton Initiative, said: “In a time of increasing scrutiny around sustainability claims, global trade pressures, and shifting Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) priorities, transparency and accountability are more critical than ever.  

“As we celebrate World Cotton Day, our new label reaffirms our commitment to both, as part of our mission to drive measurable impact and continuous improvement in sustainability across the cotton sector.” 

Alongside the launch of the new label, the organisation has announced that as part of a refreshed brand identity, it will call itself the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), a move that provides more clarity to both its institutional identify and the cotton it sources, now to be called BCI Cotton. The new label and brand come as the Better Cotton Initiative publishes its 2024/2025 Annual Report, highlighting the impact of its programmes over more than 15 years in driving environmental, social, and economic improvements in cotton farming. This impact includes: 

  • Improving incomes for more than 650,000 licensed farmers;  
  • Reducing synthetic nitrogen use per kilogram of cotton produced across 2.15 million hectares of land, supporting 700,000 farmers;  
  • Championing women in cotton by training more than 575,000 female farmers or workers as part of capacity strengthening activities;  
  • Reducing the volume of synthetic pesticide applied per hectare for more than 788,000 licensed farmers. 81% of our licensed farmers do not use Highly Hazardous Pesticide (HHP).

Nick Weatherill added: “These results represent real change in cotton farming communities around the world. Both our new label and annual report are more than updates, they are evidence of our steadfast determination to catalyse and scale sustainable practices in cotton production. We are proud of our progress but also recognise there is much more to do. Time is of the essence, and with our multistakeholder membership and network of field-level partners, I’m confident we will rise to the challenge.”

Notes to Editor

  • To align with the organisation’s label launch, Better Cotton has now rebranded to the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) to clarify to new audiences the scope of its work.  
  • The change makes a clearer distinction between the organisation and its commodity, both formerly known as ‘Better Cotton’. The cotton sourced through the Better Cotton Initiative is now called BCI Cotton.  
  • For more information and interview requests, please contact Chris Remington ([email protected]).   

Label Launch  

  • The new label reflects that farms, suppliers, retailers, and brands have been certified against either our field-level standard or our Chain of Custody Standard.  
  • Farm certification is assessed against BCI’s field-level standard and the organisation’s Principles & Criteria, while supply chain certification is assessed against BCI’s Chain of Custody Standard.  
  • The label is optional for certified BCI Retailer and Brand Members and can only be used on products which contain a minimum percentage of 30% Physical BCI Cotton (cotton sourced through our traceability programme), while the remaining 70% cannot contain any other source of cotton, only other materials. Physical BCI Cotton refers to cotton that has been traced back to its country of origin using the organisation’s traceability solution. 
  • Besides Physical BCI Cotton, the Better Cotton Initiative also operates a mass balance chain of custody model – a system widely adopted by sustainability initiatives to scale impact. Under this model, cotton from certified farms may be mixed with conventional cotton in the supply chain, meaning that the physical origin of the cotton in a specific product cannot be guaranteed. BCI’s previous mass balance product label, which indicated a brand’s support for BCI even if there wasn’t BCI Cotton in the product, is being discontinued.

Annual Report  

  • BCI’s new annual report covers field-level activities from the 2023-24 cotton season.  
  • BCI Cotton now accounts for 23% of global production, up from 22% in the previous annual review.   
  • Around 1.4 million licensed farmers produced 5.6 million metric tonnes (MT) of BCI Cotton across 15 countries, while more than 1.63m cotton farmers received training.  
  • The reduction in licenced farmers since the past season stems from the conclusion of the organisation’s strategic agreement with the Cotton Made in Africa (CMiA) initiative.  
  • Despite this, BCI’s market share has increased in the past season because of production volume increases in countries like Brazil.  

About   

The Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) is the world’s largest cotton sustainability organisation, supporting farming communities to survive and thrive, while protecting and restoring the environment. BCI convenes a global multistakeholder network of farm-level organisations, brands, government bodies, civil society and industry organisations and supply chain actors to promote the supply and demand for cotton produced with sustainable practices. Over the past 16 years, BCI has aligned more than a fifth of the world’s cotton with our farming standard, channelled €200 million to cotton-growing communities and helped supply chain actors towards their sustainability goals.  

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Better Cotton Enhances Due Diligence and Decent Work Approaches in Uzbekistan

Woman working at a cotton field in Uzbekistan. Photo credit: Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Agriculture

Better Cotton, the world’s largest cotton sustainability initiative, has announced significant progress in the delivery of its Uzbekistan programme, including the adoption of stronger and more refined approaches to due diligence and decent work activities. 

Katerina Gorbunova, Head of Better Cotton’s programme in Uzbekistan, said: “In collaboration with our Programme Partner, the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), we have strengthened the programme’s framework and the services we offer to accelerate change across the country’s cotton sector.” 

Better Cotton’s Uzbek programme has strengthened in-country verification of licensed clusters by building the capacity of independent civil society groups and third-party auditors, plus implementing an updated due diligence methodology to ensure more robust and local oversight.  

This new-and-improved approach includes in-depth interviews and questionnaires with both cluster management and workers. It also consists of checks on financial health, ethics, and governance, providing a more comprehensive view of risk and performance across participating enterprises. The insights generated through this process are used to inform targeted interventions. 

Decent work-related actions have also evolved in light of Better Cotton recently becoming a certification scheme. The organisation now conducts preliminary assessments of newly onboarded clusters before the season begins to determine their readiness for certification  and if requirements are not met, audits are postponed to the following season.  

For clusters with active licences, second party checks by qualified Better Cotton staff are conducted to identify potential decent work-related issues and, if necessary, trigger a more comprehensive examination by external labour rights monitoring organisations.  

Since August 2024, Better Cotton and GIZ have expanded training to cover not only innovative and regenerative agricultural practices, but also social sustainability and decent work principles following recent changes to Uzbek labour laws.  

This effort deployed a cascading training methodology to target cotton cluster management on the basis that they can subsequently educate workers, who can then support their peers.  

Gorbunova said: “The Uzbek cotton sector has tremendous potential to be a leader in the production of more sustainably produced cotton. This can only be achieved through collaboration, robust and transparent processes, and perseverance. Better Cotton is uniquely positioned to help unlock this potential and will continue to engage stakeholders across the country to make our vision a reality.” 

Paul Schumacher, Cotton Project Manager at GIZ Uzbekistan, added: “Today, sustainable agricultural methods, trade facilitations and decent work are no longer parallel efforts, they are parts of one sustainable system. With the right networks and shared effort, as we created within the frame of Better Cotton, we turn individual action into systemic change.” 

   

Notes to Editors     

  • Better Cotton Programme Partners work with farming communities at field level to ensure they are producing cotton that meets the Better Cotton Standard. 
  • Uzbekistan’s ‘cotton clusters’ are private companies with vertically-integrated production capacities that are awarded land grants on the condition that it is used to produce and process cotton. 
  • Clusters employ thousands of workers, meaning that a top-down training approach can streamline onboarding and boost staff autonomy. 
  • Uzbekistan is the sixth largest cotton-producing country in the world. 
  • Better Cotton completed its transition to become a certification scheme in February 2025. As such, third-party bodies will fulfil decent work monitoring as part of their auditing requirements, supplemented by remaining Better Cotton second-party checks. 

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Better Cotton Continues Expansion in Africa with Benin Programme Launch

Photo Credit: Better Cotton. Better Cotton COO, Lena Staafgard, sat alongside Maurel Adonon, representing the Permanent Secretary of the AIC, Luc Abadassi.

Better Cotton has launched a new programme in Benin to support the production of more sustainable cotton in West Africa.

The programme will aim to engage more than 200,000 smallholder cotton farmers in order to embed sustainable farming practices, improve livelihoods and help them adapt to the effects of climate change.

As Better Cotton’s presence across Africa continues to grow, so too does the movement towards more sustainable cotton production. There is incredible appetite for change on the continent and we’ll work with partners new and old to leverage that.

The Interprofessional Cotton Association of Benin (AIC) will serve as a Strategic Partner for the Better Cotton Programme. The AIC manages both farming and cotton ginning bodies and more broadly facilitates relations with the sector’s stakeholders across Benin.

As Strategic Partner, the AIC will lead the establishment and implementation of an impactful Better Cotton Programme and help drive engagement with the country’s farming communities and other stakeholders.

The start of a Better Cotton Programme in Benin is a matter of national initiative supported by the entire cotton sector and managed by the Interprofessional Cotton Association. The implementation of this programme will help our valiant producers strengthen their resilience by introducing more sustainable production practices.

The agreement was formalised at a multistakeholder meeting in Cotonou, Benin, on 8 October where both organisations met to discuss the opportunities and challenges in cotton farming and agriculture more broadly.

Benin is Africa’s second largest cotton producing country after Mali. In the 2022/23 season, it produced more than 580,000 metric tonnes (MT) of cotton, according to government figures.

Better Cotton operates programmes across Africa in Mozambique, Egypt, Mali and Côte d’Ivoire.

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Better Cotton Collaboration in Spotlight at Global Fashion Summit

Photo credit: Lisa Ventura/Better Cotton

Better Cotton will spotlight its efforts to trace cotton in Uzbekistan at this week’s Global Fashion Summit, which gets underway today in Copenhagen until 28 June.

Tomorrow, from 16:00-16:30 CEST, Better Cotton Chief Executive Officer, Alan McClay, will take part in a panel discussion centred on an ongoing pilot project in the country’s cotton sector, which has been led by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).

On the Innovation Stage of Copenhagen’s Concert Hall, McClay will be joined by Olivia Chassot, Economic Cooperation and Trade Division, UNECE, and Mirmukhsin Sultanov, First Deputy Chairman, Uztextileprom. Zofia Zwieglinska, International Fashion Reporter at Glossy, will facilitate the discussion.

The session will explore the pilot project’s aim of tracing Better Cotton through the vertically integrated operations of Navbahor Tekstil, a company based in the city of Navoi. In this endeavour, the UNECE established a digital platform capable of logging the movement of Better Cotton from a licensed farm through the ginning, spinning, weaving and manufacturing processes.

Uzbekistan’s recently privatised cotton industry is organised under vertically integrated businesses known as ‘clusters’, creating an operating environment that is conducive to tracing cotton.

As the world’s sixth largest cotton producing country, Uzbekistan is of strategic importance to Better Cotton, which launched a programme there in 2022, as it vies to scale the availability of more sustainable cotton, protect and restore the environment, and support local communities.

Beyond its work in Uzbekistan, Better Cotton has bold ambitions for the traceability of cotton globally and will later this year launch its own system to unite supply chain actors in data exchange.

Better Cotton’s traceability solution will enable Retailer and Brand Members to verify the country of origin of the physical Better Cotton within their products, meeting the industry’s need for supply chain transparency.

I’m excited to participate in this week’s Global Fashion Summit, discuss Better Cotton’s role in the pilot and outline its broader ambition. This pilot has been a collaborative effort and will go some way in informing the development of our own traceability system. Traceable materials and transparent supply chains are of utmost importance to leading retailers and brands, and we’re well-positioned to support their goals.

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Better Cotton Impact Targets: Q&A with Nisha Onta, Regional Coordinator for Asia at WOCAN

Photo Credit: BCI/Vibhor Yadav Location: Kodinar, Gujarat, India. 2019. Description: Cotton community harvesting cotton.
Photo Credit: Nisha Onta, WOCAN

Millions of women around the world dedicate their lives to cotton production, and yet their representation and contributions aren’t fairly reflected within the sector’s hierarchies.

It’s with this in mind that Better Cotton recently launched its 2030 Impact Target for Women’s Empowerment. Over the coming years, we aim to reach one million women in cotton with programmes and resources that promote equal farm decision-making, build climate resilience, or support improved livelihoods. What’s more, we commit to ensuring that 25% of field staff are women with the power to influence sustainable cotton production.

To achieve this, we’ll collaborate closely with leading organisations to create the environment for field-level change. Here, we speak to Nisha Onta, Regional Coordinator for Asia at WOCAN, to understand the topic’s complexities and obstacles preventing women from advancing their careers in cotton. Nisha is amongst four keynote speakers at this year’s Better Cotton Conference, taking place in Amsterdam from June 21.

Historically, what have been the barriers to access to training for women in sectors such as cotton farming? 

There are a lot of research findings which show that the major barrier for women to access training are time poverty, access to information and restrictions on mobility.

Time poverty simply means there is just not enough free time in the lives of women to add more training to their schedule. It is called the ‘triple burden’ of women. Women are responsible for productive, reproduction and communal roles. Therefore, in order to make sure we want to invite more women to train, organisers will have to provide childcare facilities, the timing of the training has to be reasonable for them and the training should address the triple burden so it is not adding to their already packed schedule of responsibilities.

Access to information is also critical, there are many instances that women are simply not aware of the availability of training or resources. Therefore, the usual mode of communication, such as sending training schedules to local representatives and news in the media might not reach the women we are trying to train. Perhaps using local women cooperatives and other mediums that are accessible to women could increase their participation.

Mobility issues can be due to cultural issues or simply the issue of infrastructure. If the training is scheduled for the evening but local safe transport is not available, for example. In some communities, women may not be allowed to travel to participate in trainings, then the organisers will have to use different strategies to convince the head of the households to give permission for the women to attend.

How influential will the provision of training for women be to increasing their representation in decision-making roles? 

Ensuring that there’s capacity for women to participate in decision-making is critical to increasing their representation. If the system is not designed to include women in leadership positions, no matter how much training is available, they’ll never have equal opportunities. Therefore, a systematic rethink is required to create the space for women to participate and influence the cotton sector they contribute so much to.

How important will support from organisations like Better Cotton be to enabling this shift within the sector? 

Organisations like Better Cotton can be catalysts to advance gender equality in the cotton sector. Better Cotton’s vast network touches millions of farmers around the world and this infrastructure will be important to driving changes at the field-level. Better Cotton’s Women’s Empowerment Impact Target will serve an important purpose to the sector if we’re to see women afforded the chances that have historically been set aside for men.

By 2030, what infrastructural changes would you like to see within agriculture to better support women? 

There needs to be the space for women to voice their opinion and influence the sector’s development through decision-making positions. There has to be more direct resources such as trainings, credit and grants for women led business.  These changes will inspire and impact future generations across agriculture and may also encourage the creation of more women-led businesses in the cotton value chain.

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Better Cotton Offers Input on US Federal Trade Commission’s Green Guides

Photo Credit: BCI/Seun Adatsi. Location: Kolondieba, Mali. 2019. Description: Aerial view of a field in a cotton farm.

Better Cotton has submitted feedback to the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as part of an ongoing review of its Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims (Green Guides).

The FTC is a bipartisan federal agency of the US government that champions the interests of American consumers. Its Green Guides framework was launched in 1992 to ensure that product sustainability claims made by companies are accurate and substantiated, with guidance updated intermittently to best reflect a modern context.

The guidance made available to companies covers general principles that apply to all environmental marketing claims, including information on how consumers are likely to interpret particular claims and how these can be substantiated, and how marketers can qualify their claims to avoid deceiving consumers.

As part of this latest review, Better Cotton has submitted feedback to ensure that the document considers an agricultural context and what constitutes progress at field-level.

Notably, one of the six components of the Better Cotton Standard System (BCSS) is our Claims Framework, through which we provide support to eligible members to communicate their commitment to Better Cotton in a clear, transparent and credible way.

The ability for Better Cotton Members to communicate about their financial investment in Better Cotton to consumers strengthens their commitment to our farm-level programmes which seek social, environmental and economic improvements for cotton farmers and farming communities.

Better Cotton is supportive of the FTC’s initiative, through its revised Guides, to establish a common framework through which US companies can ensure they communicate their sustainability efforts in a credible, verifiable and accurate manner.

In doing so, businesses benefit from a level playing field and are empowered to continually pursue bolder sustainability targets with the opportunity to relay such ambitions to an increasingly sustainability-conscious consumer base.

That said, to improve the guidance in its current form, Better Cotton considers that the FTC should continue to include examples of substantiation from a range of methods and avoid limiting substantiation to one standard methodology.

Establishing one single method as the standard methodology for the substantiation of claims such as lifecycle analysis (LCA) or product environmental footprints (PEF) would not be appropriate as, to date, there is no standard methodology available that can cover all relevant impact categories for all product types.

Moreover, LCA raises specific challenges when applied to an agricultural context. If this approach is adopted in the revised Guides, some of the most trusted and widely used sustainability schemes and their labels would effectively be unable to provide environmental marketing claims for their members.

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Better Cotton Impact Targets: Q&A with Tamar Hoek, Better Cotton Council Member and Solidaridad’s Senior Policy Director for Sustainable Fashion

Photo Credit: Better Cotton/Eugénie Bacher. Harran, Turkey 2022. Cotton field.
Photo Credit: Tamar Hoek

Ninety-nine percent of the world’s cotton farmers are smallholders. And whilst production capacities per farmer may be small, together, they represent the bedrock of an entire industry, enabling its global reach.

With the launch of our recent 2030 Impact Target to promote Sustainable Livelihoods, we’re committed to increasing the net income and resilience of two million cotton farmers and workers.

It’s a bold ambition and one we won’t be able to reach without the support of a vast network of partners. In this Q&A, we hear from Better Cotton Council member and Solidaridad’s Senior Policy Director for Sustainable Fashion, Tamar Hoek, about the complexity of this topic and the role Better Cotton can play in supporting smallholders.

In supporting the development of Better Cotton’s Smallholder Livelihoods Impact Target, what issues were you and Solidaridad most keen to see the organisation address and how do you think its target will contribute to achieving this?

We are glad that Better Cotton decided to include net income and resilience for farmers as one of its targets. The livelihoods of farmers and farm workers depend on the price that is paid for the cotton but also on how capable the farmer is of dealing with uncertainties in production. For Solidaridad, the topic of living income has been high on our agenda for years. With the scale that Better Cotton brings, this new target can potentially lead to a higher income for a lot of farmers around the world, which is the first step towards a living income. The target will hopefully lead to appropriate tools for increasing net income, greater awareness in the value chain, best practices and income benchmarks that are needed to eventually scale the improvements.

With the scale that Better Cotton brings, this new target can potentially lead to a higher income for a lot of farmers around the world, which is the first step towards a living income.

What influence would increasing cotton farmers’ net income have on their ability to promote more sustainable agricultural practices and react to shocks and stressors in the market and the environment?

First of all, increasing a net income should give the farmer the opportunity to improve their livelihood, the situation of his/her family and to save for unexpected situations. Then, improvements can allow for payment of better wages and working conditions, the purchase of health and safety equipment, and perhaps investment into more sustainable pesticides and fertilisers. We all know that the price that is paid for cotton is not enough for all of these investments, both socially and environmentally. Therefore, the increase of the price – and with that the net income – is a start that will allow for a lot of improvements that are needed for more sustainable production. (Editor’s note: While Better Cotton strives for the collective improvement of sustainable livelihoods, our programmes have no direct influence over pricing or commercial activities)

Given Better Cotton’s global reach, can you discuss the potential for its Impact Target to address structural poverty which persists in the sector?

Hopefully, Better Cotton will join forces with other organisations in the industry to scale the impact of the target and collectively come to a living income demand for all cotton farmers in the world. Better Cotton will need to lobby with policymakers, local governments and other stakeholders in the value chain to make sure that the right enabling environment is in place to get rid of systemic issues. Addressing structural poverty is ambitious but that will not happen overnight with just raising the net income of a group of farmers and looking at their resilience. It eventually needs a whole value chain to change and, for that, Better Cotton needs to work collaboratively.

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