"Better Cotton still in denial one year after Fashion Crimes report", 20 March 2025

...On 13 March 2025, Better Cotton (BC), the world’s largest cotton certification scheme, released an update to its ‘action plan’ to tackle issues highlighted in Earthsight’s Fashion Crimes report.

The measures announced fall well short of the transformative actions required of Better Cotton to foster sustainability and legality in cotton supply chains.

BC continues to ignore the core issue of widespread land grabbing and the profound impacts this has on traditional communities and the environment.

It is also clear Better Cotton remains unconcerned about the shocking conflicts of interest that plague its certification programme in Brazil, which it runs in partnership with cotton lobbyists.

Fashion Crimes, published in April 2024, exposed the links between cotton used by H&M and Zara – the world’s largest fast-fashion brands – and land grabbing, illegal deforestation, violence against traditional communities, and corruption in Brazil’s precious but threatened Cerrado biome...

Shortly after publication of Fashion Crimes, Better Cotton announced the results of an investigation it had commissioned into our findings. Flawed to the point of being almost worthless, this so-called investigation allowed BC to conveniently determine that no farms featured in our report and certified by the scheme had violated any of its sustainability or legality standards.

Yet Better Cotton acknowledged large-scale cotton plantations had profound impacts on the Cerrado and its communities. It also admitted Abrapa’s standards needed to be strengthened to monitor deforestation, rights violations and corruption. Better Cotton committed to working with Abrapa on these issues and implementing wider due diligence on agribusinesses’ conduct beyond the farm level.

In its latest update to these plans, Better Cotton said its consultants had talked to local communities in the Cerrado “to understand their concerns.” Based on this, BC has concluded it needs to work with Abrapa to promote “communication channels between businesses and communities.”

However, Better Cotton fails to even mention the decades-long issue at the heart of traditional communities’ grievances in Bahia: land grabbing...

The disappointing update to Better Cotton’s plans illustrates a point Earthsight and several other groups have made for years. Voluntary certification schemes heavily shaped by industry do not drive sustainability or legality in global supply chains. Governments in large consumer markets must legally require companies to conduct their own due diligence, mitigate risks and remedy any adverse impacts from their activities.

Clauses in the EU Deforestation Regulation – which does not regulate cotton – demanding such due diligence and rejecting voluntary schemes are right. The real test though will come once the regulation is applied from December 2025. Enforcement authorities will need to ignore bogus compliance claims linked to weak certification schemes and instead ensure companies are meeting their legal obligations...