Fashion was on the agenda at the United Nations climate talks at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt this week.

Across different sessions, the Global Fashion Agenda (GFA) addressed the importance of including the fashion sector’s outsized impact in the climate conversation. A net positive industry, the Copenhagen-based sustainability think tank argued, will require a “holistic” approach that also takes into consideration respectful and secure work environments, living wages and circular systems. This would require “accelerated” investment, “comprehensive” targets and “ambitious” alliances throughout the value chain.

GFA has its roots in the annual conference, whose acronym, COP, stands for Conference of the Parties, a reference to the 197 nations that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. The first Global Fashion Summit, then known as the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, launched at COP15 in 2009 because fashion wasn’t officially tabled at the time. Since then, awareness and understanding of garment production’s environmental issues have grown “significantly,” said GFA CEO Federica Marchionni, though there is still “a long way to go.”

“It is essential that leaders attending COP27 move beyond words to set clear commitments that are rigorously followed through beyond the conference, leading to [the] implementation of concrete and urgent actions,” Marchionni said. “Policymakers can have a tremendous…