Fashion and Biodiversity: Are Corporate Strategies Fit for Purpose?

In recent years, sustainability has climbed steadily up the fashion industry’s agenda. With mounting pressure from regulators, investors, and increasingly conscious consumers, many companies have made bold commitments to reduce carbon emissions, enhance water stewardship, and eliminate hazardous chemicals. Yet, when it comes to biodiversity, corporate action remains limited, fragmented, or insufficiently integrated into broader environmental strategies.

This article explores how leading fashion companies are beginning to address their biodiversity impacts, the persistent gaps in current approaches, and how frameworks such as the Science Based Targets for Nature(SBTN) and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) can support a more systemic and robust response.

Biodiversity: The Overlooked Impact and Companies’Actions

From deforestation and habitat loss to water pollution and soil degradation, the fashion industry’s impacts on nature are both profound and far-reaching. Its reliance on natural raw materials - such as cotton, wool, leather, and viscose - creates direct links between the sector and biodiversity outcomes on land and in freshwater ecosystems. Yet biodiversity has long been a blind spot in fashion’s sustainability journey. That is beginning to change.

Several frontrunners are starting to align their strategies with emerging nature-related frameworks. Kering, for example, parent company toGucci, Saint Laurent, and Balenciaga, has committed to becoming positive by 2025, pledging to regenerate and protect an area six times the size of its land-use footprint. In 2024, Kering became the first fashion company to have its targets validated by SBTN. Other industry players are following suit. Companies including LVMH, H&M, and L’Occitane participated in the SBTN pilot and are expected to set targets that span land, freshwater, ocean, and ecosystem integrity in the years ahead.

Beyond goal-setting, companies are beginning to take concrete action aligned with SDG 15 (Life on Land) and the objectives of theKunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. A key focus is establishing deforestation-free supply chains. Many leading brands now have policies inplace to prevent sourcing leather from cattle ranches linked to Amazon deforestation and to ensure cellulosic fibres are derived from sustainably managed forests. Investment in next-generation materials is also emerging.H&M and Inditex, for example, have jointly invested over $30 million in a biotech start-up developing lab-grown cotton designed to drastically reduce land and water use, thus contributing to the reduction of habitat and species loss.

Efforts to support sustainable agriculture are also growing. Programmes such as the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) and organic cotton certification aim to reduce pesticide use, preserve soil health, and protect pollinators. Both H&M and Inditex have already achieved 100% sourcing of cotton from sustainable sources (BCI, organic, or recycled), and are exploring regenerative farming techniques to further restore soil biodiversity. Meanwhile, Kering’s Regenerative Fund for Nature supports a wide range of projects - from regenerative cattle ranching in South America to organic silk farming inAsia - while LVMH has partnered with UNESCO to safeguard five million hectares of biodiversity hotspots through its “Mega Biodiversity” initiative.

Fashion’s supply chains, stretching from farms and forests to tanneries and dye houses, often obscure the most severe nature impacts. However, tools such as the Open Supply Hub and the Higg Index are helping brands trace their suppliers and assess ecological risks. Brands like Nike, Kering, and Inditex are increasingly requiring their suppliers to meet biodiversity-related standards, such as sourcing deforestation-free leather or reducing chemical pollution in dyeing processes.

Sustainable material standards and certifications are also vital in driving nature-positive sourcing. Certifications such as the OrganicContent Standard (OCS), Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Global RecycledStandard (GRS), and Better Cotton help ensure responsible production practices. Kering mandates all its brands to use 100% certified responsible gold in jewellery and sustainable cashmere in knitwear, supported by its internalMaterials Innovation Lab. These standards often provide co-benefits: organic farming supports pollinator health, regenerative methods improve soil quality, and recycled fibres reduce emissions and landfill pressure.

Room for Improvement

Despite growing momentum, biodiversity continues to beside-lined in most corporate sustainability agendas in fashion. Where actions are taken, they are often isolated and lack integration into a comprehensive nature strategy that can guide the company’s overall direction. As a result, biodiversity considerations remain peripheral rather than central to business planning and decision-making.

Consultants and practitioners working with fashion companies on nature strategies have observed several recurring gaps and challenges:

Lack of Impact Mapping and Ecological Understanding

Most companies have not yet fully mapped their nature-related impacts and dependencies. While many acknowledge their use of water or contribution to pollution, few understand how these factors specifically lead to biodiversity loss - for example, how excessive water extraction affects freshwater ecosystems, or how chemical pollution degrades soil biodiversity and harms pollinators. Without an integrated view of the landscape, biodiversity risks remain invisible, and opportunities for proactive action go unrealised.

Failure to Capture Full Nature Dependencies Across the Supply Chain‍

Companies often lack a comprehensive understanding of how their operations and supply chains depend on and affect natural systems, particularly regarding soil health, species decline, and ecosystem degradation in sourcing regions. These impacts are frequently disconnected from other environmental priorities like water and chemical use, despite being deeply interlinked. A major challenge is the inherently site-specific and multifaceted nature of biodiversity impacts, for example, water pollution affects aquatic species differently depending on the local context, while land conversion may reduce habitat availability in highly biodiverse regions. Many companies still struggle to go beyond Tier-1 visibility, even though critical impacts often occur at the raw material stage, several tiers removed from brand oversight.

Data Access and Interpretation Challenges

Even when companies attempt to collect biodiversity-related data, many face difficulty accessing, interpreting, and applying location-specific ecological information. The lack of standardised indicators and monitoring tools tailored to biodiversity compounds this issue. While climate metrics such as carbon emissions are increasingly tracked and disclosed, equivalent biodiversity indicators are still missing or underdeveloped. Without consistent, site-relevant metrics, companies cannot properly assess their impacts or dependencies, making it difficult to set meaningful targets or track progress across sourcing regions.

Fragmented Governance and Dispersed Accountability

Biodiversity responsibilities are often scattered across teams, with no central leadership or accountability. Consequently, most biodiversity efforts remain confined to short-term pilots or philanthropic projects, rather than being integrated across sourcing, product development, or investment strategies. Without top-level governance, biodiversity risks and opportunities fail to translate into deep, systemic change.

Narrow or Misaligned Interventions‍

Where nature-based actions are taken, they are often designed around single outcomes, such as reducing water use or sequestering carbon, without being grounded in a broader biodiversity or landscape context. Regenerative agriculture, for instance, is frequently approached through a carbon lens, rather than as a pathway to restore degraded ecosystems, support species diversity, or improve farmer resilience. Addressing these requires a more holistic and science-based approach that goes beyond compliance with certifications, focusing instead on the mitigation hierarchy and the co-benefits of environmental goals.

Insufficient Stakeholder Engagement‍

Local communities, Indigenous Peoples, and smallholder farmers, those most directly connected to and affected by biodiversity, are rarely included in the development of corporate nature strategies. Without their input and participation, efforts often fail to reflect the realities on the ground or gain the legitimacy needed for long-term success.

Conclusion

To truly align with a nature-positive future, fashion companies must move beyond fragmented sustainability efforts and adopt integrated strategies that address biodiversity, water, land, and soil collectively. Rather than treating these issues in isolation, they should be embedded within a single, coherent nature strategy that guides decision-making and on-the-ground action.

Regulatory momentum is accelerating. The forthcoming EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and the EU BiodiversityStrategy are placing nature higher on the corporate agenda, making biodiversity risks and impacts not only a moral imperative but a compliance issue. In parallel, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) provides a voluntary but influential framework for assessing and disclosing nature risks and dependencies. These developments signal a clear direction of travel, and companies that begin aligning early will be best equipped to lead, innovate, and build resilience.

In the final article in this series, we will outline what a truly exemplary nature strategy should include and how we at NatureMetrics can support you... moving beyond reducing harm to actively contributing to the restoration of ecosystems and their supply chains, and empowering communities.

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