Asia’s apparel industry under threat of submersion

Researchers have concluded that thousands of Asia's garment factories must relocate to higher ground or are threatened by complete submersion by 2030 due to rising sea levels. The analysis, which uses data from open-source factory database the Open Apparel Registry (OAR), Philadelphia, PA/USA, is just one example of how the data is being applied in the apparel and supply chain sectors and the potential for such data to inform sustainability and ESG decisions, highlighted in a new report.
The OAR, a non-profit organization, works to improve data quality in the apparel sector by addressing specific industry challenges such as creating a standardized format for disclosing facility information, making data publicly available to all industry stakeholders, cleaning and matching facility data and enabling organizations to connect disparate data sets.
The OAR’s tool maps garment facilities worldwide and allocates a unique ID to each. Data in the tool is contributed to on an ongoing basis and is used by major global brands, civil society organizations, factory groups, multi-stakeholder initiatives and certification schemes, for example. To date, the database, which has 1,800 subscribers and contains over 68,000 facilities, has received data from over 400 contributors and mapped facilities in more than 120 countries.