By Victoria Waldersee and Ruma Paul
Large swathes of apparel-producing areas in Asia will be underwater by 2030, an analysis released on Friday which overlaid maps of rising sea levels onto factory locations showed, threatening thousands of suppliers with submersion unless they relocate to higher ground.
The analysis, produced by two Cornell researchers as part of a paper commissioned by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), warns that the problem of rising sea levels is receiving little attention from those leading sustainability efforts in the sector.
"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 center the New Conversations Project wrote.
"It appears some of apparel's production centers representing a significant percentage of current output will not escape the projected acceleration of the climate crisis."
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