Will COP30 deliver for cotton? The fibre at the frontline of fashion’s climate crisis

COP30 began this week amid controversy, as a new four-lane highway carved through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest to host the conference, a jarring backdrop for an event dedicated to climate action. Against this uneasy start, cotton finds itself at the sharp edge of the fashion industry’s own climate reckoning. A decade after the Paris Agreement, the world’s most widely used natural fibre remains deeply vulnerable to heat, drought and flooding, even as it underpins a trillion-dollar global supply chain that shows few signs of decarbonising fast enough.