Apparel-producing areas in Asia will be underwater by 2030 unless they relocate to higher ground, study warns

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Large swathes of apparel-producing areas in Asia will be underwater by 2030, an analysis released on Friday (July 16) showed, threatening thousands of suppliers with submersion unless they relocate to higher ground.

The analysis, which overlaid maps of rising sea levels onto factory locations, warns that the problem of rising sea levels is receiving little attention from those leading sustainability efforts in the sector. The analysis was produced by two Cornell researchers as part of a paper commissioned by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

“Rapid increases in sea level rise and heat that will affect many of Asia’s apparel workers directly have received little attention,” authors Jason Judd and J. Lowell Jackson of Cornell research centre the New Conversations Project wrote.

“It appears some of apparel’s production centres representing a significant percentage of current output will not escape the projected acceleration of the climate crisis.”

While larger, transnational suppliers might be able to shut down facilities in vulnerable areas and consolidate production on higher ground, smaller-scale suppliers would be most affected, the paper’s authors said, highlighting the example of Bangladesh, the second-largest apparel exporter.

“We’re worried. This is a real threat. More and more factories are going greener. Still our factories could go underwater,” Shahidullah Azim, vice-president of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said of the findings.

“But we can’t move our factories to a higher location overnight. We are already passing through an unprecedented time due to the pandemic. Where will we get money? Who will pay us?”

The analysis, which covered Jakarta in Indonesia, Phnom Penh in Cambodia, Tirippur in India, Dhaka in Bangladesh, Guangzhou in southern China, Columbo in Sri Lanka and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam overlaid a map of factory locations from open-source factory database the Open Apparel Registry onto data from United States climate change think-tank Climate Central on where elevation will fall below the level of a coastal flood on average once per year by 2030.

Climate Central's data is based on projections from global data sets published in peer-reviewed science journals, according to its website.

The overlaid maps paint the gravest picture in Ho Chi Minh City and Guangzhou where an estimated 50-60 per cent of factories will be below the level of the average annual coastal flood by the end of the decade.

"This calls for urgent action at the global level to both reduce emissions to limit warming while also providing funding for the workers to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change," Saleemul Huq, Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at Independent University, Bangladesh, said of the findings.