France Leads the Way Toward a Sustainable Fashion Industry

On Tuesday, June 10, 2025, the French Senate adopted a bill to regulate the fashion industry in France, with a major focus on curbing the practices of ultra-fashion companies. The fashion industry globally has been riddled with environmental and social impacts, including climate change, pollution, unfair competition, and excessive waste. This piece of legislation introduces an eco-score system that assesses the environmental impact of clothing items, considering factors like emissions, resource use, and recyclability. Where it is determined under the law that a particular clothing item has a low eco-score, every violation could attract a fine of as much as €10 or up to 50% of the price by 2030. According to Anne-Cecile Violland, the centre-right member of parliament who proposed the bill, this "is a major step in the fight against the economic and environmental impacts of fast fashion and a strong signal sent to businesses and to consumers.”

This is a significant step by the French government toward sustainability. We hope that more countries around the world will follow in this direction while we continue to press for a major international treaty for this industry.

UAE’s Law on the Reduction of Climate Change Effects Takes Effect

Having been passed on August 28, 2024, the United Arab Emirate’s Law on the Reduction of Climate Change Effects took effect on May 30, 2025. This is a very important piece of legislation, in that it sets the national strategy for the development and reduction of long-term emissions, as required of all parties to the Paris Agreement. Even more critical is Article (6) of the law that provides for the measurement, reporting, and verification of emissions from individual designated sources on a regular basis. With regard to adaptation, the Law imposes an obligation on relevant competent authority to develop and implement adaptation plans, each within its respective area of competence, including sectors such as infrastructure, energy, environment, health, insurance, and any other sector as may be determined by the Ministry or the competent authority. Other critical issues addressed in the law include Climate Data and Science(Art.8), Incentives and Carbon Offsetting Mechanisms(Art.10), NDCs (Art.12), and Penalties (Art.15) for violations of provision of Article 6(1) of the Law.

Though a major step in the fight against climate change, especially in the context of the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region, a major noticeable omission in the Law is UAE’s commitment to the finance needed toward the actualization of the objectives of the Law. Hopefully, the government will put its money where its mouth is.

Hope for a Sustainable Use of Ocean Resources

When United Nations State Parties gathered between June 9 – 13, 2025 in Nice, France for the United Nations Ocean Conference, one of the major issues on the agenda was the need to secure the commitments of state parties for the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction. This Agreement, which is open for signatures of all member states and regional parties between September 20, 2023, and 20 September 2025, is a major international Agreement aimed at ensuring the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction, and to address biodiversity crisis for ocean habitats outside the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The conference closed with many positives, including 20 member states appending their signatures to the Agreement to bring the total number of signatories to 136. In addition, 19 more member States ratified the Agreement to bring the total number of ratifications to 50, in addition to the European Union, leaving it only 10 short of the 60 ratifications required for the Agreement to enter into force.

CGSL will continue to monitor progress on this Agreement in the weeks and months to come.

Super Pollutants: EU Reaches a Major Milestone in Methane Regulation

According to the World Resources Institute and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), Super Pollutants such as methane, black carbon, tropospheric ozone, and some fluorinated gases (like HFCs) contribute approximately 50% to global warming. Yet, these potent greenhouse gases have remained unregulated in most parts of the world. Though they have near-term warming and shorter atmospheric lifetimes than CO2, these gases have been causing unprecedented destruction of lives and properties for decades. In particular, Methane is the second highest contributor of greenhouse gas to climate change after carbon dioxide.

It is therefore a major step toward a sustainable world to witness this effort by the European Parliament. Adopted in June of 2024, the Regulation on Reduction of Methane Emissions has three implementation phases. In the first phase, the European Commission is expected to make public, a Methane performance profile of its member states by August of 2026. In the second phase, it will introduce monitoring, reporting, and verification measures on all oil, gas, or coal being imported into the EU by January 2027. Lastly, by August 2030, EU producers and importers must prove to authorities that the methane intensity of their product is below the maximum levels set by the Commission.

There are good grounds to believe that the EU is on track to significantly cut down its fossil fuel consumption, while it continues to reinforce its global leadership in the fight against climate change.

The Norwegian State (Ministry of Energy) vs. Greenpeace Nordic and Nature and Youth Norway

This case is based on a request for an advisory opinion made by the Borgarting Court of Appeal of Norway to the European Free Trade Association(EFTA) Court, concerning the interpretation of Article 3(1) of Directive 2011/92/EU of the European Parliament and Council on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment. In particular, the request sought opinion on the assessment of the consequences of failure to carry out environmental assessment on certain public and private projects on the environment and the duty of the Court in that regard.

The court upon considering the case found that:

(i) Greenhouse gas emissions that will be released from the combustion of petroleum and natural gas extracted as part of a project listed in point 14 of Annex I to Directive 2011/92/EU on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment, and then sold to third parties, constitute “effects” of that project within the meaning of the Directive;

(ii) A national court is required under Article 3 of EEA, to the extent possible under national law, to eliminate the unlawful consequences of a failure to carry out a full environmental impact assessment required under the Directive.

The court however found further that this does not preclude regularization through the conducting of such assessment after the commencement of the project, provided that the national law allowing such regularization does not give room for circumvention of the EEA rules and that such subsequent or ancillary assessment carried out for regularization purposes is done to cover both future and past environmental impacts of such project.

The advisory opinion of the European Free Trade Association(EFTA) Court in this case is another confirmation of the role of the Court in upholding and giving a planetary interpretation to environmental statutes.