Updated Leather Manifesto for COP30
Twenty organisations across the global leather industry have signed an updated version of the ‘Leather Manifesto’.
A manifesto for the industry first appeared in 2021, on the occasion of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26.
The document declared and celebrated the circular-economy credentials of leather, especially its durability, repairability and lasting beauty, which foments long use of finished products made from the material.
Now, in the build-up to COP30, which will run in Belém, Brazil, from November 10-21, an updated version of the manifesto has appeared.
In the updated version, signatories explained: “As we see every year with the COP negotiations, resolving differences of opinion on how best to protect the planet and people is a huge challenge. A significant factor is the often opposing views of the negotiating parties and their presentation of evidence to support their views. Sustainability debates are skewed by narratives and numbers that obscure reality.”
The text added that “this obfuscation” has also blighted perceptions of leather. “Leather, durable, repairable, and deeply woven into our cultural identity, is one of humanity’s oldest materials,” it continued. “For millennia it has clothed, sheltered, and protected us.”
But it in today’s sustainability discourse, leather is largely misunderstood, sometimes vilified, often mis-measured, and rarely recognised for what it truly is: a renewable, circular by-product of livestock farming, the manifesto said.
It has set out to correct this imbalance and to position leather as a positive, renewable biomaterial within a circular economy.
The full text of the latest version of the Leather Manifesto and the names of all the signatories are available here.
