SDGs 1-4 Recap: No Poverty, Zero Hunger, Good Health and Well-being, and Quality Education
Written by: Isabelle Sain, Communications & Education Coordinator @ Threading Change
Editor: Sarah O’Rourke, Communications Manager @ Threading Change
[8-minute read]
Threading Change envisions a future where fashion is circular, and rooted in justice with climate, gender, and racial equity at the forefront. As an organization, we aim to critically analyze fashion’s impact through an intersectional lens that goes into all aspects of understanding. Our goal is to education and advocate for the redesign of the entire fashion system that is currently in place.
In 2015 the UN created the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that together, create a holistic guide to achieving the UN’s goals by 2030. The SDGs were created in order to create a universal call to action. Threading Change X SDGs is a campaign that is challenging the current fashion system, and this intro to the SDGs is an opportunity to ‘thread’ in and connect the SDGs to the current fashion and textiles industry.
The first four SDGs are targets that have direct correlation to people and the collective basic necessities needed for the world to be a sustainable and equitable place for everyone. These first SDGs are the basic and non-negotiable goals that the fashion industry must take responsibility for, because as a whole, the industry has caused great harm to the communities and lives throughout its supply chains.
These four SDGs are significant to fashion as they include targets which call for effective and basic necessities to ensure the responsibility and equal partnerships within communities. Brands must work with and question how fashion can support the regions in which clothing is manufactured, instead of tearing them down.
Our first SDG to unpack is Goal 1: “end poverty in all its forms everywhere.” Progress on this goal is facing compounding threats; a global pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, and varying reactions to climate change, among others. The UN has expressed its realistic assessment that this goal will not be achieved without significant and advantageous action taken around policy and systems in place for protecting health, well-being, income, employment, and social protection to the most vulnerable members of our society.
SDG 2 is to "End hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.” The number of people experiencing hunger globally and suffering from food insecurity has been rising gradually. Food Sovereignty is how we can achieve this goal and end corporate agri-buissness. Our food system for too long has been one that has cared more about the profit they can make from rising food prices, and hungry people. Ending hunger and achieving sustainable food security does not have to do with the planet which has provided us with tremendous resources. It does however have to do with the unequal access and inefficient handling of our food system that leaves millions of people food insecure and malnourished. We have to promote sustainable agriculture and have local economies and communities create fair distribution systems and sovereignty over their food systems.
Goal 3 is "Good Health and Well-being." The progress on this goal has also faced compounding threats because of the climate crisis and COVID-19 Pandemic. The pandemic has threatened health care systems, as well as stalled or reversed reproductive health, maternal health, and child health. The UN has expressed the need to invest in universal health care coverage and create systems that prevent other health care crises and protect citizens’ health, well being, income, employment and social protection. Throughout COVID-19, there has been important discussion around the importance of fully funded healthcare systems, paid sick days, and making mental health services fully accessible.
Goal 4 is for "Quality Education.” Education and the achievement of SDG 4 ensures inclusive and equitable quality education and promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all. This goal is a foundational aspect to building sustainable, inclusive, and resilient societies. Quality education is essential to provide an entry out of poverty and to reduce inequalities. Quality education is said to be one of the most foundational goals which threads into all the other goals and steps to reach sustainable development. There are vast inequalities worldwide when it comes to quality education, with many obstacles in accessing, attending, and finishing primary school. This goal has ambitious objectives that include universal literacy and numeracy, free access for K-12 education, and making higher education and vocational education accessible and affordable. This goal has the power to transform the barriers and inequalities facing the world today. This goal emphasizes the importance of collective liberation and radical visualizations of an equitable future.
The fashion industry has contributed to maintaining poverty and food insecurity globally.
Fashion impacts food insecurity in two ways: the taking of the land and the usage of the land. Food security means food sovereignty; the materials are part of a much larger picture of colonization and exploitation of the Indigenous people of the land and their traditional agricultural practices and systems.
Fashion also uses the same exploitative tactics that maintain food insecurity to maintain poverty within the communities that the brands are involved in. The industry, brands, and company leaders have a responsibility to the current broken global supply chain as it is affecting local economies' fight to escape poverty and is worsening climate disasters, which ultimately further displace people and affect their livelihoods.
Both SDG 1 and 2 has to do with how the industry keeps a blind eye to the social damages and repercussions it is causing. Fashion uses the land with damaging techniques of farming, such as monoculture, releasing superabundant amounts of waste from processing to product, and the excess land allocated for fiber farming. What is left over from this exploitative system is overworked land, and people who stripped of the basic necessities to survive on their land.
Companies are able to hide as the production is often done out of their local economies and in the Global South, where they know they can get away with minimum wages or piece work wages that are not enough for a decent standard of living.
Goal 1 and 2 are directly tied to and affects the vast majority of the people working within the production and distribution parts of fashion’s supply chain. Companies for decades have relied on the exploitation of garment workers as it has allowed them to outsource cheap labour in order to sustain competition and hide behind the veil of fashion.
The industry must take steps in improving how supply chains are organized, fair living wages and improvement of every worker's well being. Interconnectivity is the way to challenge the ways these systems influence our food insecurity and exploitation of labour. There are major connections between fashion, poverty, and food insecurity that can be explained through globalization and colonialism, modern slavery, and the mistreatment of the livelihoods of young and female workers.
Having workers work at poverty wages contributes to many other issues that the Sustainable Development Goals also addresses like poor housing, poor nourishment, inadequate access to health care, the risk of child labour, occupational accidents, and violence against women. All of these will be explored in future Threading Change blog posts.
SDG 3 in many ways has to do with the ways in which brands and companies must partner with those in their supply chain to improve their quality of life instead of exploiting and harming their communities, families and land. The fashion industry and it’s mistreatment and exploitation of people is threatening their physical and mental health.
Fashion impacts the health and well being of people in two ways: the unsafe working conditions that people are put through, as well as the lack of support given to access health care. Throughout the pandemic the conditions garment workers are forced to work in are especially concerning. Often, they have zero protocols for COVID-19 to protect the workers and financially support them during the unpredictability of the pandemic.
Brands have a responsibility under the UN Guiding Principles of Business and Human Rights to respect the human rights of workers in their supply chain. The dangerous practices and substances that garment workers are exposed to with no protection against harmful substances are alarmingly normal. The repetitive motions, hours long in the same uncomfortable positions, toxic substances and fumes being inhaled, loud noises and long hours without proper daily rest time all contribute to the unhealthy lifestyles garment workers are subjected to. The well-being of garment workers is never taken seriously and very rarely do they address the conditions on these sites until they turn into accidents, fires, injuries, or become known to the greater public.
Lastly, SDG 4: Quality Education is a way how fashion can systematically change and allow fashion’s influence to be used for good and systemically sustain a future that is rooted in justice with climate, gender, and racial equity at the forefront. Brands and companies can introduce sustainable practices through education and conversation around a climate positive future.
When we promote quality education within our communities, work spaces, and societies, we are manifesting commitment to collective change. Aligning your brand to a sustainability framework includes giving the time and subsidies necessary for workers to invest in their education. Advancing quality education within the fashion industry can stop the vicious cycle of exploitative labour, including things like child labour. There are millions of children working within the garment industry and the result has affected their access and ability to finish their education.
To support SDG 4, brands must invest in their worker's training and education by creating the capacity to support and run training programs. SDG 4 also is a great opportunity to partner with organizations and educational institutions to provide programs that involve their employees and invest in the future of their manufacturing and sourcing communities.
The majority of garment workers are young females who do not have access to quality education. Education can provide them with autonomy over their opportunities, including their ability to individually manage their finances and families. These partnerships can support the access to specializations and prioritize the worker’s well-being, while valuing their lived experiences, knowledge, and expertise. Implementing the targets of SDG 4, brands and companies can systematically change the treatment of workers in regards to wages, social programs, their health and well-being, and invest and commit to the communities that the supply chain threads through.
Fashion and education is an incredibly critical conjunction that can truly change the ways in which the industry works.
Commitments through policy and social protection services are ways in which we can hold the fashion industry responsible for the role it plays to sustain poverty, malnutrition, and unhealthy and unsafe working conditions. For example, if more policy and legislation is put in place around regenerative agricultural practices that provide for the land just as the land provides for us, we can develop fashion practices that develop fibers in regenerative practices, closing the cycle of excessive, harmful waste as well as ensuring a stable food supply. In this way, regenerative farming and agri-practices have a holistic approach to healing the land, peoples, and ecosystems.
The same goes for fair wages; there has to be legislation put in place that commits to paying all workers a living wage, not just by the Global South countries but also the countries where these brands are based in order to achieve Goal 1 by 2030. Creating social programs around quality education, and emotional and physical well-being for the entire supply chain has the potential to break the supply chain’s exploitation and transform the future of the fashion system.
Join us in calling on brands and governments to…
Commit to paying a living wage on every order they place.
Dismantle the gender pay gap in their supply chains.
Commit to creating a safe, ethical, sustainable and transparent supply chain.
Stop exploiting their labour and have excessive work hours.
Provide access to community health, physical health and mental health services.
Provide workers paid sick leave and paid sick days
Stop the use of harmful chemicals and processes.
Brands must contribute to the development of autonomous, educated and healthy communities by providing time and subsidies for workers to learn.
Utilize an education-first approach.
Brands must establish a standard for how the fashion industry and education can promote collective change and radical transformation of the fashion system.
About the author:
Isabelle is an artist whose work is an ongoing sensory experience that explores the relationships between body and space. Her work is grounded in establishing connections and events that define shared experiences to understand human interaction within the physical, political, social, and spiritual environment. Isabelle obtained her BFA in Textiles and Fashion at NSCAD University. Isabelle’s work has been exhibited in Toronto, Halifax, and Copenhagen. She has conducted a number of research projects investigating the future of fashion with KEA University, and has collaborated with several brands including Samsøe & Samsøe, and the Green Cannabis Co. In her art practice and experiences, she has created textile based design processes and solutions that establish connections to reinterpret textile production into a more environmentally and socially conscious industry. She is grounded by the preserving and passing of tradition while focusing her research on designs and systems, intersectional environmentalism, and climate justice.
Sources:
“Conscious Fashion and Lifestyle Network.” Sustainable Development Goals, www.sustainabledevelopment.un.org/partnerships/FashionNetwork. Accessed 15 October 2021.
“Poverty Wages.” Clean Clothes Campaign, www.cleanclothes.org/poverty-wages. Accessed 15 October 2021.
“Solutions.” The Garment Workers Protection Act, www.garmentworkeract.org/. Accessed 15 October 2021.
“Poverty and Pay in the Fashion Industry.” Common Objective, 31 May 2018, www.commonobjective.co/article/poverty-and-pay-in-the-fashion-industry. Accessed 4 October 2021.
What She Makes. OXFAM Australia, www.whatshemakes.oxfam.org.au/. Accessed 10 0ctober 2021.
“A Living Wage is a Human Right.” Labour Behind the Label, www.labourbehindthelabel.org/living-wage/. Accessed 8 October 2021.
