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THE BIG
PICTURE
The textile industry sits at a genuine point of leverage for global progress on climate and equitable work. Comparable in scale to the world’s seventh largest economy¹, and providing livelihoods for around one in eight workers worldwide³, it has the reach and capital to make transformation possible well beyond its own supply chains, particularly across the producing economies of South and Southeast Asia that carry much of its labour and environmental cost today. That leverage is already being put to work.
Nearly 88 percent of brands now hold formal emissions targets⁴, and momentum toward decarbonisation continues to build. Turning that commitment into results at the pace the industry’s scale demands remains the task ahead: the sector still accounts for around 10 percent of annual global carbon emissions², raw material emissions have risen 20 percent since 2020⁵, and polyester alone still accounts for 59 percent of global fibre output⁶. Closing that gap, at pace, is the central opportunity the industry now faces, and the one this project is designed to help meet.
INTRODUCING
TEXTILE
FUTURES
2040
Textile Futures 2040 is a project developed by Forum for the Future, supported by the H&M Foundation, that examines the plausible futures towards which the global textile industry may be moving. Building on more than a decade of futures work in the sector, including the earlier Fashion Futures scenarios, the project responds to a moment of significant uncertainty. In conditions of rapid change, planning for a single expected future is insufficient.
The project instead sets out four distinct scenarios for the industry in 2040, each intended to help decision makers examine their assumptions, test strategies against a range of possible conditions, and identify the choices that will remain sound however the future unfolds.
FOUR
SCENARIOS
Four plausible futures for the textile industry in 2040, each arising from a different combination of the forces now reshaping the sector, and each presenting its own opportunities, tensions, and trade-offs.
EXPLORE THE
TOOLKIT
