RECOMMENDATIONS

Certification owners play a crucial and unique role in the cotton value chain. However, to build global recognition and withstand future crises, you will have to involve farmers in your work even more. You need to both broaden and improve your impact. To do this, we need you to:

1. Urgently facilitate retailers and brands partnering with smallholder cotton farmers so they significantly increase their financial investment in climate change adaptation.
2. Adopt ambitious strategies, including price premiums and mechanisms, to guarantee living incomes for smallholder cotton farmers.
3. Consider where your standard can adapt to cover under-represented sustainability issues (see the certification benchmarking for more information).
4. Raise the bar on transparency: know exactly where your cotton comes from, demand your partners improve their impact and help consumers understand sustainability challenges in your supply chain.

By demonstrating your impact, you can future-proof your standards and build a lasting legacy. You can also enhance your legitimacy by involving and amplifying farmers’ voices. 

For the full details on how you can do better, read the Cotton Paper.

Your customers care about sustainability, and they’re counting on you to change your behaviour today - not in five years’ time.  When it comes to the cotton value chain, you have the greatest share of money and influence and it’s your duty to be a driving force for good.
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To do this, we suggest you:

1. Go beyond just purchasing 100% of cotton from certified sources, and take responsibility for improving sustainability in your value chain and the conditions under which your products are grown and made. Your due diligence must also include cotton farming, meaning you and your partners must identify, mitigate, and remedy risks from the root.
2. Partner with, and financially invest in, smallholder farmers to adapt to climate change and adopt agroecological farming practices before it is too late.
3. Update your purchasing practices to ensure they do not create perverse incentives or reduce income for producers.
4. Raise the bar on transparency: know exactly where your cotton comes from, demand your partners prove their impact and help consumers understand sustainability challenges in your supply chain.

For the full details on how you can do better, read the Cotton Paper.

As traders, you are the cotton sector’s gatekeepers. If you choose, you can open up the value chain, connect retailers with farmers, and make transparency and traceability the norm. With these possibilities in mind, we ask you, among other things, to:

1. Proudly embrace traceability
2. Use your purchasing practices to guarantee a living income
3. Use sustainable farming as a prerequisite for commercial arrangements
4. Proactively support producers who are transitioning to more sustainable production
5. If you are involved in cotton production, work to empower smallholder farmers, not control them

For the full details on how you can do better, read the Cotton Paper.

As part of a multi-stakeholder initiative, you play a critical role by providing a forum and implementing interventions to address issues in the cotton value chain. Therefore, you need legitimacy. For this, you need to listen to, and involve, smallholder farmers in your work. 

We want to see you play your part, not only in ensuring companies are doing the bare minimum and sourcing 100% of their cotton from certified sources, but by ensuring cotton provides farmers with good livelihoods and is environmentally sustainable through increased investment in training. 

For the full details on how you can do better, read the Cotton Paper.

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