The Earth Logic Manifesto: Rethinking Fashion for a Sustainable Future

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in sustainable fashion, with many industry players making commitments to reducing their environmental impact. However, according to Kate Fletcher and Mathilda Tham, authors of the Earth Logic manifesto, these efforts are not enough. In their view, the fashion industry needs a complete overhaul that prioritizes the Earth and the long-term health of our planet over economic growth.

At the heart of their argument is countering the idea of "growth logic," which they describe as a set of assumed values that prioritize economic growth above all else. Fletcher and Tham argue that this mindset is unsustainable and that we need to adopt an "Earth Logic" approach that places the planet first. This means rethinking the way we produce and consume fashion, so that it is in harmony with nature and takes into account the long-term consequences of our actions. A Earth Logic in the fashion industry would lead to the real transformation where the system is swapped with limits set by our planet's boundaries and capacity.

Embracing Earth Logic in a Fast Fashion World

One of the challenges the fashion industry faces in embracing Earth Logic is the ingrained culture of consumerism and fast fashion in the industry. For decades, we have been conditioned to view fashion as a way to keep up with trends, with little regard for the environmental impact of our choices. To shift away from this mindset, Fletcher and Tham suggest acting on seven essential elements of action to place Earth before business interest and economic interest. The following are the seven essential elements and what they mean:

1. Acting on science. Taking steps to address the climate crisis to create systemic change that takes mainstream consumerism logic

2. Accepting Earth Logic is for all of us. Placing health and survival as the primary goal of all fashion activities, where the industry is reshaped and runs on genuine collaborations.

3. Embracing a new paradigm shift. Thinking differently about the problems we are faced with. It means embracing Earth Logic to see new patterns and relationships for a healthy and regenerative fashion industry

4. Daring to take on difficult change. Taking on the challenge of embracing three key themes, which are less, local and plural.

Less: Bringing fashion within fashions limits
Local: Grounding action in the creativity and needs of local communities
Plural: Nurturing diversity and social justice to successful transform society and nature

5. Daring to learn, communicate and organize. Activating in the fashion industry by three key themes, which are learning, languaging, and governing

Learning: Using every opportunity to expand and share knowledge and to create innovations based on Earth Logic
Languaging: Using words, stories and images to change the mindsets of growth logic to one of Earth Logic
Governing: Considering how we organize and regulate the fashion industry to understand how to create change.

6. Moving from production and consumption to care. Maintaining, using and caring for fashion systems that address the climate, foster biodiversity and social justice. It also means bringing solutions that anyone, anywhere can take on, focusing on fashion practices versus products and caring for people, relationships and other species to the forefront.

7. Staying with the trouble. Embracing that Earth Logic is a holistic approach, where social, environmental and economic dimensions of sustainability are all addressed. It also means addressing challenges that are connected to this, which include providing livelihood in world with less production and consumption.

“We have known about the problems for long enough. Now is the time for action.” - Fletcher and Tham

Embracing these seven essential elements won’t be easy, it will require a powerful opposition to what currently stands true in the fashion industry, which is fast fashion. However, the fashion industry must leave behind any logic and systems that are destroying our home and exploiting workers across the globe. And there will be great resistance, which Fletcher and Tham explain in their Earth Logic: Fashion Action Research Plan publication. Fast fashion brands will be part of the resistance as seen on October 28th, 2019 when Karl-Johan Persson, the CEO of H&M, explained in an interview to Bloomberg that if fast fashion is not upheld, then there will be terrible social consequences.

Persson’s pro-growth perspective has meant focusing on a “moratorium of consumption”, which means tackling the climate crisis through renewable energy, improved materials and environmental innovations. In other words, fast fashion brands will continue in their pursuit of profits, and conforming to the growth logic that is dominant in our society. It is safe to assume other fashion brands will also place market needs first versus embracing a Earth Logic in their business practices.

Earth Logic’s Vision for Fashion

Another key component of Earth logic is the concept of time. In a system that values care and sustainability, time is a valuable resource that needs to be spent wisely. It would mean taking a slower, more considered approach to fashion, one that values quality over quantity and emphasizes the importance of longevity and durability. This is critical for Kletcher and Tham since they state that there is no evidence to support the idea that the fashion industry is undergoing a meaningful sustainable transformation. In The Pulse of Fashion Report 2019 Update it states that the “fashion companies are not implementing sustainable solutions fast enough to counterbalance the negative environmental and social impacts of the rapidly growing fashion industry”.

“The time frame of ten years is the same as a child’s time at school, one eighth of most people’s lifetime, or ten annual reports for a business. Consider what you, your family, community workplace will do in the coming ten years. Every moment will count.” Fletcher & Tham, page 29

And while the Earth Logic manifesto is visionary and aspirational, it is also grounded in practicality. Fletcher and Tham recognize that the fashion industry is complex, and that there are many obstacles to achieving sustainability. However, they argue that the time for incremental change is over, and that we need to fundamentally rethink our relationship with fashion and the planet. It would require counteracting our tendency to fall back into growth logic and staying close to the trouble, which is about committing to a better life together on an already damaged planet.

“Change is non-innocent. Even change for what we think is good or necessary can mean loss, effort, friction, conflicts and dilemmas”. - Fletcher & Tham

As consumers, we have the power to demand change from the fashion industry. By prioritizing sustainability, we can possibly create a future in which Earth logic is the norm. And the road ahead will surely be long and challenging, but the reward would possibly be a fashion industry that is a force for good. And as Fletcher and Tham explain in their Earth Logic: Fashion Action Research Plan publication, a Earth Logic would allow us to cross the barrier to authenticity, where we can be ourselves and where we can tell the truth about the climate crisis and the radical change needed in the fashion industry. However, this would entail taking action to create and embracing opportunities for the fashion industry’s systemic transformation.

Embracing The Earth Logic in Midst of a Climate Crisis

Earth Logic Fashion goes beyond superficiality and dominant systems of power and business. It instead envisions fashion as connected with nature, people and long term healthy futures. Earth Logic Fashion’s plan does this by placing earth first before everything, even profit. The scale of change necessary to make this a reality is the resource base of Factor 4, which means a four-fold reduction in resources and waste for all activities, and 75 percent of resource consumptive actions. It also means an increase in three quarters of resource efficiency, but many suggest that to avoid climate collapse, the change needed would mean a target closer to Factor 10, or even Factor 20. Factor 10 is when resource impacts are reduced by 90 percent, and Factor 20 is when resource impacts are reduced by 95 percent.

To contextualize the radical change needed, Factor 4 would mean a sharp reduction of resources that would significantly affect our lives, while Factor 20 would mean an incredibly massive constraint in access to resources. It would mean that a typical citizen would be restricted to having all their possessions that they would ever own to fit a small rowing boat. And however radical this sounds, Fletcher and Tham still argue that we need an uncompromising deadline and restrictions to avert the climate crisis, and that this will require a dramatic shift in knowledge and behavior. All the while, the radical changes needed would require a reconfiguring, not only of fashion's environmental impact, but in the psychology behind fashion use, in our standardized economic systems, and of the current finance and trade markets. And it would also mean addressing global and local infrastructures and our construction of meaningful lives and livelihoods, without forgetting about the creativity needed to re-envision the fashion industry.

Earth Logic’s Action Research Plan

Despite increasing awareness, knowledge, and measures towards sustainability in the fashion industry, environmental impacts have not reduced. Current strategies for change, such as tweaking parameters like materials flows, are limited as they do not address the systemic problem. According to Fletcher and Tham, the circular economy, which aims to close materials loops and minimize waste, has gained traction in the industry but is limited by being situated within the logic of economics and growth economics. And sadly, the majority of environmental issues in the fashion sector are endemic to the current mode of growth logic.

To address the crisis, the Earth Logic Action Research Plan takes a different approach by tracing the roots of the crisis to the growth logic and by targeting a new context for fashion with changed values. The plan draws upon research from various fields of study to create a progressive program with the explicit aim of transforming the fashion system and changing its objectives. But the plan has a double focus on developing new understanding and practice, as well as the processes by which this knowledge and action is uncovered and generated. This approach is critical in challenging a dominant paradigm and avoiding replicating the same problems that led to the crisis in the first place. This offers starting points for research in the fashion context, inviting those in (and those working outside) of the fashion industry to commit to the difficult task of taking action towards transformational change.

The Earth Logic’s Systemic Focus: An Activist Knowledge Ecology

Interestingly enough, The Earth Logic plan relies on action research, a well-established field that involves research and change-making through collaboration with people and a holistic approach to knowledge. Action research uses cycles of action and reflection, allowing for iterative insights grounded in the local context and a sense of purpose. Through dialogue with the research community, action research generates knowledge and change synergistically while questioning ideas and practicing thoughtfulness. The Earth Logic plan values the systemic approach and efficacy of action research as vital dimensions in conducting research with an uncompromising deadline.

The Earth Logic plan also prioritizes including stakeholders in the research process to make it relevant and ensure the communication of findings to key stakeholders. The plan aims to create an activist knowledge ecology to generate knowledge, action, empowerment, and change.This approach ideally enables stakeholders to have a voice and influence the research process while facilitating the creation of a platform for generating knowledge and change.

The Earth Logic Plan Structure:

The plans structure is broken down in three parts:

Part 1 of The Earth Logic Structure: The first part of the Earth Logic plan consists of a values-explicit context that serves as an evaluative framework for research projects. This framework includes eight values, which include interdependence, diverse ways of knowing, co-creation, grounded imagination, care of the world, and care of self. The lens of Earth Logic, with its eight values of multiple centers of attention and action, explicitly promotes non-human species, nature, users, communities, and non-Western perspectives, dislodging business growth as the central focus in the fashion industry.The framework also allows for the continuous evaluation of research and can be used to select research and development projects. Additionally, funders and action research teams can engage in a dialogue to evaluate research in the context of these values.

The Earth Logic’s First Value: Multiple Centers

The fashion industry's focus on economic growth and profit has resulted in a lack of consideration for non-human perspectives and needs. Earth Logic offers an alternative approach that centers on multiple priorities, including non-human species, nature, communities, and non-Western perspectives. By promoting a diverse and inclusive system that recognizes the impact of power systems on marginalized voices, the Earth Logic Action Research Plan can lead to a more sustainable and inclusive fashion system.

The Earth Logic’s Second Value: Interdependency

Interdependency is a key concept in Earth Logic, recognizing the connection between human life and the health of the planet. The quality of interactions between diverse actors is essential for this paradigm to work. Fletcher and Tham argue that interventions can have a significant impact, and events in one part of a system can have ripple effects across the entire system. And that urgent change requires thinking that acknowledges interconnectedness across different timeframes and requires research institutions to move away from pursuing discrete knowledge in a bubble. Embracing interdependency and multiple centers would also involve acknowledging the web of living co-vulnerabilities and changing both understanding and the purpose of research itself.

The Earth Logic’s Third Value: Diverse Ways of Knowing
The concept of multiple centers is crucial in the Earth Logic paradigm since it would recognize the value of diverse knowledge, wisdom, and creativity to address the challenges facing our planet. Diversity would ensure resilience and the nimbleness of systems to respond to stresses and opportunities, promoting innovation and a deeper understanding of complex systems. The inclusion of diverse ways of knowing, such as indigenous knowledge, artistic exploration, and spirituality, is central to action research, which emphasizes the importance of incorporating diverse perspectives to achieve positive social change.

The Earth Logic’s Fourth Value: Co-Creation

The Earth Logic paradigm emphasizes collaboration and co-creation to bring about systemic changes. This requires a high level of collaboration, deep attention to relationships, and team consciousness to generate new ideas and actions. Transdisciplinarity and co-creation, Fletcher and Tham explain, have been slow to be enacted due to their less quantifiable nature, but the Earth Logic paradigm would foreground the importance of specific skills of collaboration, listening, dialogue, and linking to draw on all knowledge, wisdom, capabilities, and creativity on earth to save our planet.

The Earth Logic’s Fifth Value: Action Research

Action research is a valuable approach to solving problems that emphasizes the interconnectedness of theorizing and acting in Earth Logic. This approach would allow for the simultaneous search, exploration, prototyping, learning, and making of changes, leading to robust work in uncertain situations. By generating and sharing new knowledge and skills, inspiring agency and hope, and creating design and innovation, action research could promote societal transformation.

The Earth Logic’s Sixth Value: Imagination

Imagination would be essential to addressing biodiversity loss and climate change, and grounded imagination is key to this effort. Unlike fantasy or speculation, grounded imagination is a creative process that involves accepting our reality and committing to staying with the problem. It would shift our focus from ourselves to others and interdependence, and instead see our actions in relation to the whole web of life. Grounded imagination is driven by common sense, instinct, sensory experience, and our ability to choose and act rather than following external rules and targets. It is closely linked to multiple centers, interdependency, honesty, and responsibility.

The Earth Logic’s Seventh Value: Care of the World

The fashion industry has significant environmental and social costs due to its heavy reliance on resources such as fiber, energy, water, and human labor. The concept of care, which prioritizes the nurturing and growth of relationships between humans, materials, and the natural world, has the power to transform the fashion industry's relationship with the environment. Earth logical care emphasizes resourcefulness, carefulness, and parsimony while acknowledging the concerns and cares of those who have not been heard. This approach shifts the fashion industry towards new priorities, such as true environmental pricing, worker conditions, and ocean health, and complicates the idea of how to effect change.

The Earth Logic’s Eighth Value: Care of Self

To address climate change and biodiversity loss in fashion, it is necessary to acknowledge the challenges and build personal resilience to cope with stress and conflicts that may arise. Caring for oneself is just as important as caring for the world when creating an Earth Logic action plan. Practitioners and communities must make space for self-care, quality relationships, and voicing emotions in collaborations to create a holistic approach that celebrates life and enjoyment.

Part 2 of The Earth Logic Structure: The second part of the Earth Logic plan consists of an Action Research Checklist, which are considerations for research aimed at urgent change. The plan emphasizes the need for a radical approach to research, which involves placing the earth first and working in an Earth Logic way. This approach means moving away from conventional research practices, such as waiting for full evidence and striving for complete knowledge of the full picture. Instead, the plan calls for a more nimble, iterative approach that involves being immersed in context, collaborating with peers, and engaging in continuous dialogue with stakeholders.

The Earth Logic Action Research Checklist:

The withholding of action until full evidence is available: Fletcher and Tham argue that waiting for full evidence before taking action on environmental problems is not always feasible, as the issues and their impacts have been known for decades. They suggest that a more nimble, iterative approach is necessary, where robustness replaces rigor. This involves being immersed in the context, collaborating with peers, engaging in continuous dialogue with stakeholders, using citizen science to gain nuanced understandings, and remaining open to new opportunities as they arise.

The pursuit of total knowledge of the full picture: Fletcher and Tham argue that the current challenges being faced by humanity are complex and vast, which are referred to as wicked problems, and cannot be held by a single organization. Individuals and organizations are situated in the middle of this complexity should make decisions in real-time, with robustness stemming from local context, collaboration with different stakeholders, and dialogue with other contexts. Rather than striving for complete knowledge of the full picture, caring for meaningful collaboration, diversity of perspectives, and loops of action and reflection should replace it.

Perfection: Fletcher and Tham argue that the urgency of environmental collapse requires accepting good enough solutions instead of waiting for perfect ones. With a commitment to putting the Earth first, collaboration with diverse perspectives, and reflexivity, robustness can create imperfect but effective solutions.

One step at a time: Fletcher and Tham argue that the complexity and urgency of the task at hand means that work stages cannot be carried out consecutively. Instead, they must be synergistically informative, inspirational, generative and transformative, creating knowledge, innovation, and change at the same time. This approach would require agility, openness, and a willingness to learn on the go.

Heroics, lone genius: Fletcher and Tham argue that the need for collaboration across diverse perspectives and the acceptance of "good enough" means a culture shift away from individual heroism and "eureka" moments. Instead, the quality of collaboration and relationships with the Earth would be valued. This shift would also have implications for the academic world, particularly with how work is rewarded.

One size fits all: Fletcher and Tham argue that the focus on generalizations and standardizations in modernity should be challenged by the complexity and diversity of environmental challenges and the scale and speed of change required. Ideally, work would then be situated responses rooted in the local context, and a multiplicity of approaches will replace one size fits all.

Intellectual Knowledge: Fletcher and Tham challenges the prioritization of one type of knowledge over all others, as has been the case since the scientific revolution. It calls for drawing on diverse ways of knowing, including direct experience, indigenous knowledge, and artistic perspectives. It also demands that individuals place themselves within the challenges and responses, recognizing their roles as problem causers or solutions holders. Earth Logic also emphasizes collaboration and agency to address current environmental degradation.

Prestigious dissemination routes and academic language: Fletcher and Tham argue for the need for an "activist knowledge ecology" to emphasize the pressing environmental challenges we face. This would require making research findings and insights easily accessible and understandable to a wider audience. The aim would be for everyone to translate academic language into practical solutions that could be implemented by real-world actors to tackle real-world problems. This would foster practicality and application rather than prestige and shelf-life.

Part 3 of The Earth Logic Structure: The third part of the Earth Logic plan consists of an Holistic Landscapes for Progressive Transformation Strategy. It is broken down in six holistic Earth logic landscapes for the fashion action research to create the change needed in the fashion industry. The landscapes offer practical solutions that have already been implemented, and can be started anywhere. It relies upon communities, creating commitment and having us take actionable steps forward, The landscapes also aim to work together in a holistic manner, rather than being separate options for the future.The first three landscapes concern the direct transformation of fashion by focusing on fashion activities, while the subsequent three support structures and processes needed to create, maintain and evaluate The Earth Logic fashion.

First Three The Earth Logic Landscapes:

Less: Grow out of growth- Fletcher and Tham argue that the only solution forward is less stuff. This is because the fashion industry's growth logic of production and consumption of new garments has led to ecological depletion and restricts other ideas about fashion activity. The call for less, or living with fewer fashion goods and materials, would challenge narrow views on fashion where it can only be accessed primarily through shopping malls and promotes a reduction in output and materials use. This would require massive mobilization efforts that have never been seen before and a shift in fashion activity away from the market, and towards household and community management. And it would mean a practice of caring for existing clothing by drawing upon well-established practices of thrift, care for others, and a gift-based economy.
Local: Scaling, re-centering- Fletcher and Tham argue that the concept of "earth logic fashion" would place nature and community as the top priority, with economics as a subset. Localism is a key aspect to this approach, as it favors nearby resources, community self-reliance, and place-specific knowledge. This would create a sense of rooted identity and community, which energizes the work. Localism would also concentrate on economic and political power within communities, and feedback loops that are location-specific. And, it would also the contrast to globalization, which comes with indiscriminately sourced raw materials, standardization, economies of scale, and long-distance trade.
Plural: New centers for fashion- Fletcher and Tham explore the idea of decolonizing fashion and shifting perspectives away from consumerism and Western hegemony. This would involve creating new centers for making fashion and researching from feminist, indigenous, and nature-based perspectives. They explain pluralism in fashion can take many forms, such as prioritizing marginalized voices, challenging ableism and sizeism, starting fashion from nature, and training the focus on supporting race and gender equality. Giving space for a plurality of fashion voices would also require attention to the space allocated to dominant voices, new models for funding and recruitment, and centering decolonization.
Last Three The Earth Logic Landscapes:
Learning: New knowledge, skills, mindsets for fashion- Fletcher and Tham explain that transitioning to an earth logic life will require everyone to learn practical and interpersonal skills, and how to be a human in an earth logic world. Unlearning past lifestyles and world views would be crucial since many habits, ways of relating, and thinking about the world are deeply rooted in our thoughts and actions. They also explain that fashion can be a hub for wider learning and unlearning, including how to provide for earth logic fashion, how to acquire, care for, and mend clothing, and how to share clothing. They point to permaculture as a key framework for grounding since its guiding principles are care for Earth, care for people, and fair sharing.
Language: New communication for fashion- Fletcher and Tham explain the concept of "languaging”, which refers to the relationship between communication, thinking, and action. They argue the language we use shapes our thoughts and actions, and communication makes these visible and thinkable. In the context of fashion, language could be a force in promoting change and drawing attention to critical and creative expressions. The use of language in fashion, such as pairing production and consumption as opposites, would create arbitrary and problematic separations. Fletcher and Tham suggest precise and consistent language use as the foundation for honest appraisal and avoidance of greenwashing in the fashion industry. It would also broaden the range of sustainability expression to include artistic expression and different cognitive styles, and it would call for a new culture of sustainability language that would transcend knowledge hierarchies, and instead draw on non-violent communication and understanding, respect, and collaboration.
Governance: New ways of organizing fashion- Fletcher and Tham argue that the fashion industry has been aware of environmental and social challenges for decades, but attention to governance structures and decision-making processes have been lacking. They explain that a new approach to governance is needed to nurture earth logic fashion, one which places caring relationships at its center and prioritizes the well-being of the earth, people, and fair share. This approach would view the fashion system as a web of relationships rather than a nexus of business contracts and economic priorities. In addition, they explain that a more diverse, less authoritarian system would achieve greater flexibility and nimbleness in responding to crises, better represent communities, and democratize the practices of fashion provision and expression. Strategies of commitment are still needed to help us make choices that would benefit long-term, shared societal objectives through fashion. To meet the challenges of our times, The Earth Logic fashion industry would require the implementation of governance processes that would create commitment strategies aligned to fashion's current challenges, and establish networks of connections and opportunities for comprehension based on various fashion experiences.

There is much to learn from The Earth Logic manifesto since the fashion industry's impact on the environment has been a growing concern in recent years. Kate Fletcher and Mathilda Tham’s demand for a complete overhaul of the industry is a reminder of the urgency we need to have to approach current issues in the fashion industry. Their Earth Logic manifesto argues that economic growth cannot continue to be the primary goal, and instead, we must prioritize the planet's health and well-being. This means rethinking the way we produce and consume fashion, and to approach the industry with a focus on harmony with nature and to take into account the long-term consequences of our actions. Because, as they argue, if we can adopt an Earth Logic approach, the fashion industry can lead the way in real transformation where the limits are set by the planet's boundaries and capacity.