This recovery comes also in a critical decade of action for achieving the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals, both of which will also alter the future of work in the sector. The pandemic has highlighted that vulnerability is not equally shared across the supply chain, so too for carbon emissions, with emissions concentrating in specific production activities, and these activities geographically concentrated in certain hot-spots – areas that are both highly reliant on the textile and garment sector, but also highly vulnerable to supply chain disruptions and impacts on the sector.

This creates a strong spatial dimension to the need for planning for a Just Transition in the industry; hot spots in local areas can be turned into opportunities for accelerated community action to “build back better”.