Clothing giants H&M and Zara have been linked to large-scale illegal deforestation, land-grabbing, violence and corruption in the Brazilian Cerrado, according to an investigation by Earthsight. Using satellite images, court rulings, shipment records and by attending undercover global trade shows, the U.K. NGO tracked nearly a million tons of tainted cotton going from companies in western Bahia, in the Cerrado, in supply chains serving H&M and Inditex, Zara’s holding company. The two companies in focus, SLC Agrícola and Grupo Horita (Horita Group), have a long history of illegal deforestation and environmental abuse. The report also deplores the lack of supply chain traceability provided by Better Cotton (BC), a certification system that aims to ensure sustainability in cotton farming, widely used by H&M and Zara. Yet investigators found that the cotton linked to illicit activities in the Cerrado carried the BC label. Unlike the Brazilian Amazon, where deforestation has been decreasing, the Cerrado has seen forest loss in 2023 jumping by 43% year on year; the savanna biome hosts a third of Brazil’s biodiversity and 5% of the world’s species, yet it has lost more than half of its native vegetation to large-scale agriculture. © MapBiomas / Thomas Bauer / Earthsight 2023 Brazil’s booming cotton industry is putting more pressure on the region, as the country, which grows almost all of its cotton in the Cerrado, is predicted to become the world’s top cotton supplier by 2030. “If you read Zara and H&M’s sustainability policies and human rights policies, they don’t…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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