The Fashion Pact, a voluntary Kering-backed climate and biodiversity initiative for fashion, revealed updates and has named a recent co-chair.

As of Tuesday, Helena Helmersson, chief executive officer of H&M Group, joined as co-chair of The Fashion Pact. She succeeded The Fashion Pact’s cofounder and Kering’s chairman and chief executive officer François-Henri Pinault, after the completion of his three-year term mandate. Helmersson will serve alongside co-chair Paul Polman (reelected for one more three-year term) and Eva von Alvensleben, executive director and secretary general of The Fashion Pact, on the initiative’s steering committee.

Pinault first announced The Fashion Pact alongside French President Emmanuel Macron on the Group of Seven summit hosted by France in Biarritz in August 2019. The Kering chairman will remain on the steering committee. Upon the pact’s formal formation in 2020, Farfetch, Mango, Bally and El Corte Inglés were among the many early signatories, with core goals spanning climate change, biodiversity loss and ocean conservation.

Since then, the Pact has charted buy-in from one-third of the industry, or 63 signatories today, representing greater than 200 brands including Adidas, Inditex, Kering and H&M Group.

“The style industry has the facility to develop into a force for change and I’m proud and excited to tackle the role as co-chair of The Fashion Pact to proceed constructing on the nice work that has been done and jointly work on achieving our goals,” Helmersson told WWD. “Our ambition for the following three years is to scale our current focus areas, corresponding to the present low-impact cotton project and explore the potential to increase its reach to other materials. Moreover, we aim to set industry pathways for measuring and protecting biodiversity.”

Aligned with the Paris Agreement, The Fashion Pact ensures signatories set and maintain science-based carbon emissions reduction targets to thwart global temperature rise. In a 2020 progress update, some 80 percent of signatories said they believed the pact “accelerated” sustainability efforts inside their corporations.

Climate targets include achieving 100% renewable energy across own operations by 2030 and ensuring that 25 percent of key raw materials are lower climate impact by 2025. For ocean conservation, the goals include eliminating problematic and unnecessary plastic in business-to-consumer packaging by 2025, and ensuring a minimum of half of all plastic packaging is 100% recycled content (by 2025, for business to consumer and by 2030, for business to business). For biodiversity, the goals include developing individual biodiversity blueprints by the top of 2020 (which is already accomplished) and supporting zero deforestation and sustainable forest management by 2025.

While DEI initiatives are usually not yet outlined in The Fashion Pact’s goals, the Pact has various joint initiatives to prioritize farmer and supplier stake in the worldwide fashion conversation. One project features a low climate-impact and regenerative farming practices project. The pilot will involve an estimated five to fifteen U.S. farmers with an approximate area of 1,000 to three,000 hectares, and with 500 to 1,000 farmers in India with an approximate area of 1,000 to 2,000 hectares total. More updates are to come back this yr.

In an interview with WWD, Helmersson said she desires to unify fashion toward “tighter regulations” and a “give attention to emissions.”

“The Fashion Pact has already developed leading tools on this area and was one in every of the primary players to initiate this essential joint development. Constructing upon the actions initiated since 2019 and the renewable energy project [Collective Virtual Power Purchase Agreement], The Fashion Pact is now targeting greater progress throughout the worth chain,” said Helmersson.

Currently, 12 Fashion Pact members are signed on to the CVPPA, which advances renewable energy sourcing. Tools like The Biodiversity Strategy Tool Navigator (which help fashion players develop a science-based biodiversity strategy) can be found in an interactive website.

“Many fashion brands have a comprehensive climate strategy but knowing that the most important emissions occur when sourcing raw materials and manufacturing fabric and garments, we want to extend the give attention to emissions related to textile and garment production. Decarbonizing fashion’s supply chain at pace and scale will likely be critical for brands and players across the sector to realize their targets,” Helmersson added.

H&M has been reporting its sustainability progress for a while, earning recent accolades in reports like those from watchdog Stand.Earth. Nevertheless, the corporate has also beaten down greenwashing claims, including a recent class motion lawsuit within the U.S., that the corporate ultimately won.

“Today, clear legal frameworks around sustainability communication are lacking,” said Helmersson. “We welcome stricter laws and clearer guidance on what authorities are demanding and want for that to be harmonized across markets…As a platform for collective motion, The Fashion Pact has a task to play in understanding any upcoming regulations in order that we are able to effectively prepare our members to comply with them. By coming along with ambitious CEO leadership, we are able to speed up the change and move our industry towards a sustainable future.”

Despite its ambitions, The Fashion Pact isn’t an industry reporting body, as von Alvensleben made clear.

As an alternative, the initiative references data from Textile Exchange and Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), amongst other sources. Last yr, 77 percent of The Fashion Pact members responded to Textile Exchange’s 2022 reporting benchmark. Per SBTi, well over half (or 61 percent) of Fashion Pact members have either “committed to set” science-based targets or already had their targets approved. Of those 38 reporting members, 59 percent of their total consumption comes from renewable sources.

“This data will soon be made available on our future website to be released early summer,” von Alvensleben said. “Moving forward, we’re considering ways to define a relevant cadence to which we’ll communicate more transparently on the progress made to achieving our targets via our projects.”

That transparency extends to membership. “The variety of members doesn’t determine the variety of brands or volume in total as some members will represent a bunch of various brands. So while the variety of our members went down barely, it’s price noting that we added members with big volumes like OTB Group and MF Brands that are greater players, and essential to make an impact at the top of the day,” said von Alvensleben, adding that several corporations have pending membership. “While we cannot comment on individual members leaving The Fashion Pact, we are able to share that we needed to exclude one member based on disengagement. It is a first within the history of The Fashion Pact but was needed because the engagement of members is critical to achieving our goals.”