October 29, 2025

Skewed by narratives and numbers

When multiple industry bodies published a Leather Manifesto to coincide with the 2021 Glasgow COP26 meeting, it was to use the opportunity to spread the messages about leather’s value to a wider audience. So many conversations were going on from which the leather industry was excluded, and facts and opinions were being presented about leather based on carefully selected facts being used to present misleading stories; which were then being used to form legislation. These covered anything from chemical content, methane, land use or damage to forests. Even the business and fashion press had a predetermined view that leather was somehow just “bad”, so that the more objective journalists were finding their articles edited to conform to this inaccurate position.

In those early years, the leather industry had not been represented at COP meetings and had done little elsewhere to get itself invited to these meetings and symposiums. The fact that this has now changed is apparent in the latest Manifesto for COP30 in Brazil.

Leather and the Measure of What Matters

Many industry colleagues may only see the summary points in this year’s manifesto – “Leather and the Measure of What Matters” – but they should use this link and read it through. It is well written and full of excellent quotes. Fifteen years ago, when we started putting up the Leather Naturally website, respected colleagues noted that the language of promotion was overpowering the facts, so we at once rewrote it so that it was properly based on sound science. I do not know who wrote the current Manifesto, but it speaks with clarity about the real issues entirely supported by evidence at every step.

Both the Leather and Hide Council of America (LHCA) and LeatherUK/ICT have started attending COP meetings, I imagine along with others, and reported that multiple sessions from agriculture to fashion impact leather. So, leather is now getting access to new forums and even has new collaborations. Based on all this, “Leather and the Measure of What Matters” frames the industry’s COP30 argument around “evidence-based sustainability”, urging governments to adopt metrics that properly value natural materials and the regenerative systems they support.

This is vital. Around the world, politicians like to be seen doing things. This often means precipitous legislating without proper study. Either to regulate, which the EU enjoys doing, or to deregulate or discard, which the U.S. is busy doing. Neither is good in the long-term, as they are more about signalling than considered action, so have consequences that have not been thought through. In this, both the EU and U.S. are demonstrating quite a sense of entitlement, and even a willingness to bully, as access to their consumer markets is at stake. It plays with lives and livelihoods and does irreversible damage at a critical moment for our planet. Cancelling and deleting climate data at a time when good science is required is the very reverse of what the leather industry needs.

Missing names

With this happening, I am astonished by some of the names missing from the extensive list of cosignatories of the Leather Manifesto. Where is India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and why so few from Africa and Latin America? They need to be piling in as fast as possible, making loud noises about the risks of single use plastics, synthetic materials shedding microplastics, the loss of pastoralism and grassland landscapes with their essential biodiversity, and the ruination of future careers needed by the young people growing up in their countries.

This is a document that every single national representative from every country should have in their files as they head to Belém. Even more so as climate change is starting to push some of its greatest challenges into the Global South. The Manifesto pushes the importance of rural agriculture through its arguments of employment and wealth generation. This becomes a potential driver of more sustainable agricultural practice and creates hides and skins as unavoidable byproducts of the meat and dairy industries, helping to support farmers and associated workers in precious grassland rural settings. A byproduct which can be recirculated to provide careers, industries and help eliminate plastics.

One of the single biggest impacts on the African landscape has been the blue plastic bag. Once immensely useful, like so many plastic items, it is now an even bigger landfill problem. Yet the old attitudes and greedy fossil fuel producers continue to prevent the finalisation of a plastic treaty and plan even heavier lobbying for petrochemicals in the decade ahead. With fossil fuel use declining, they want a bigger plastic market to help replace it.

All leather stakeholders must battle to deflect these risks and powerful lobbies against leather, not by individual anger and online shouting but by supporting the ICT and all the other bodies like Leather Naturally, where individuals work without pay to use subscriptions to write and send out accurate, consistent messages. As the Manifesto says so clearly:

To treat leather as a sustainable material is not to deny its origin in livestock farming, but to recognise that, as long as meat and dairy are produced, hides will exist. The choice is not between leather and no leather but between using hides responsibly or wasting them and replacing them with fossil-based substitutes.

Let us stop pretending that the difficulties of the leather industry are all caused by someone else but believe in leather for its inbuilt integrity and stories, and support by supporting our institutions.

Michael Redwood

Leather chemist, writer, and advisor on responsible leather manufacturing and material strategy. This article was originally written for ILM.