The Nature-Positive Future of Fashion: From Reduction to Regeneration

What does a truly nature-positive approach could look like in fashion and how companies can begin transitioning from reducing harm to generating biodiversity gains?

While the industry has made progress on climate and waste, its relationship with nature remains largely extractive. Current biodiversity efforts, though encouraging, are often fragmented, narrow in scope, and disconnected from systemic business change. A nature-positive future will require more than offsets, certifications, or isolated pilot projects. It demands a transformation in how companies operate, source, design, and define value.

What Does “Nature-Positive” Mean for Fashion?

Nature-positive is not simply about doing less harm, nor should it be understood solely through the traditional mitigation hierarchy, which calls for avoiding harm where possible, reducing unavoidable impacts, restoring what has been degraded, and regenerating natural systems. A truly nature-positive fashion industry does not stop at mitigation. It reimagines its operating model to be regenerative, equitable, and place-based.

This is why we apply the ART³ framework from the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN), which expands the traditional hierarchy by adding two crucial components: regeneration and transformation. The framework comprises five core actions: Avoid, Reduce, Regenerate, Restore, and Transform.

This reflects a fundamental shift in ambition and responsibility. ART³ recognises that halting biodiversity loss means not only preventing new damage, but also actively regenerating ecosystems, supporting just transitions for communities, and transforming the economic models that drive ecological degradation.

Applying ART³ in Fashion:

Avoid: Eliminate sourcing from high-biodiversity-risk areas and phase out materials linked to ecosystem destruction, even if they are legal or certified.

Reduce: Minimise land-use pressures, chemical pollution, water consumption, and other ecological impacts across the supply chain.

Regenerate: Implement nature-based solutions, such as agroecological practices, that restore soil health, support pollinators, and enhance ecosystem functions, especially in regions degraded by intensive agriculture.

Restore: Rehabilitate ecosystems affected by previous sourcing decisions, such as reforesting lands cleared for fibre production or cleaning polluted watersheds affected by dyeing and finishing.

Transform: Redefine value creation by prioritising quality, durability, and ecological performance over overproduction and volume-based growth. This includes embedding circularity into business models, aligning procurement criteria and KPIs with nature-positive outcomes, recognising Indigenous Peoples and local communities as rights-holders, and adapting sourcing strategies to local ecological and cultural contexts.

A fashion sector that goes beyond mitigation becomes a force for regeneration. It revitalises ecosystems, empowers communities, and builds resilience across the value chain. Biodiversity becomes not just a risk to manage, but a system to restore, respect, and sustain.

Beginning the Journey: Introducing Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD)’s LEAP Approach

To operationalise this vision, companies first need to understand where they interact with nature. While this may seem a daunting endeavour, the TNFD has developed the LEAP approach to help companies assess and disclose their impacts and dependencies on nature, and to identify and manage related risks. LEAP stands for: Locate your interface with nature, Evaluate dependencies and impacts, Assess risks and opportunities, and Prepare to respond and report.

When used well, LEAP enables brands to move from generic sustainability efforts to science-based, place-specific action.

Nature-positive strategy is no longer just about compliance or risk mitigation, it is a future-proof investment in business resilience, innovation, and long-term value. In a world increasingly shaped by climate shocks and ecological degradation, fashion brands must confront the fragility of their extractive business models. Nature-positive supply-chains offers a compelling alternative, helping companies build more resilient landscapes, secure raw material availability, and reduce their exposure to disruption. Regenerative practices such as soil restoration and improved water management not only stabilise supply chains, they also lay the foundation for meaningful environmental recovery.

At the same time, consumers are demanding more than surface-level claims. In an era of greenwashing scrutiny, brands that demonstrate real, place-based impact will build deeper trust and emotional resonance. Storytelling rooted in ecological repair and community regeneration is no longer a communications strategy, it is a brand differentiator.

Early adopters of nature-positive approaches also stand to gain a competitive edge as regulatory frameworks like TNFD and the EU CSRD come into force. Companies that act now will be better prepared to meet disclosure obligations and attract investor confidence in a world where nature risk is becoming financially material. These efforts also unlock new partnerships with regenerative suppliers, Indigenous land stewards, and restoration initiatives, opening pathways for innovation, collaboration, and shared impact.

Ultimately, this is a call to move from intention to transformation. Nature-positive fashion is no longer a distant ambition. It is the next chapter of sustainability, one where fashion redefines not only what it produces, but how, where, and why. This is not about doing less harm. It is about regenerating the very systems on which the industry, and life itself, depends on.

Contact us at isadora.ferreira@naturemetrics.co.uk or pippa.howard@naturemetrics.co.uk to discuss our approach in more detail and we would be delighted to support you moving forward.

‍