Every year, New York Climate Week lands in the middle of fashion month, the same week as the United Nations General Assembly, and just shy of the COP climate summit. It’s a moment when activists and corporate changemakers, politicians and public figures rub shoulders in the same city, bringing the kind of cross-pollination other sustainability events can only dream of.

“It’s the one week when fashion’s ambitions share a city with the governments and investors who shape the conditions for delivering them,” says Canopy founder and executive director Nicole Rycroft. “Serendipity is the verb here.”

This year’s schedule was more crowded than ever. Despite the increased fashion presence, some attendees felt that the uptick in events kept them in siloes, undermining the clash of cultures that makes climate week so fruitful.

“My hot take is that large climate events have become as algorithmic as our feeds,” continues Rycroft. “With more than a thousand events, you could spend the whole week in your own lane: the tech crowd could fill every day with the uncertain future of AI, fashion with fashion, finance with finance.

I’d love to see organizers design for collisions instead, with sessions that mix sectors on purpose.”

Those who did manage to break out of the fashion programming report an uptick in nature conservation campaigns, more robust engagement with financial systems thinking, and an emphasis on positive momentum — a welcome break from the doomism that dominated last year.

Naturally, there was a deluge of announcements. The Climate Pledge launched a Fashion Coalition with Stella McCartney, Amazon and Canopy, with convening support from the World Economic Forum, designed to mobilize brands toward net-zero emissions by 2040. Dirt, the charity founded by model and activist Arizona Muse, published a report with the University of Oxford, which found that fashion’s sourcing choices could influence up to 30% of all agricultural land globally.

Canopy released the latest annual update to its Hot Button Progress report, tracking momentum in the manmade cellulosic fiber (MMCF) sector and arguing that brands switching 5% of their MMCF products to next-gen alternatives would come to see it as a “no-regret decision”. Collective Fashion Justice took the opportunity to spotlight what it calls “ethics-washing” in the ostrich feather industry, based on an investigative report with World Animal Protection.

And Textile Exchange shared an update to its annual Materials Market report, noting that global fiber production reached 139 million tons in 2025, up from 132 million tons in 2024, and that polyester continues to be the most widely produced fiber in the world.

But beyond the headlines, climate week offers a pulse-check of sustainability. Here are the key takeaways and subtle shifts in sentiment you might have missed.

The best conversations happen off-stage

It’s no secret that the political climate in the US has pushed sustainability underground once again, with many corporations scared to speak out, or take too partisan a stance. At climate week, this culminated in a grumbling frustration among guests that panels featured a lot of the same people saying the same things they might have said five or 10 years ago, worried about saying the quiet part out loud.

At a Solutions House event on Monday evening, congresswoman Yassamin Ansari, the US representative for Arizona’s third congressional district, spoke about the disappointment many in the climate space feel toward US politicians right now, reassuring attendees that there is still forward movement, with many of her peers are advocating for climate action, even if the overall political tide has turned the other way.

That’s where the recent trend toward closed-door roundtables came into its own, says Kate Wylie, chief sustainability officer at Chanel. “One thing that stood out to me was how honest and pragmatic the [closed-door] conversations about implementation were.

They felt very open and solutions focused. People were willing to acknowledge what is working, where progress has been harder than expected, and how collaboration can help overcome barriers and accelerate change.

There was a palpable sense of determination to not lose momentum.”

This helped push talking points beyond the usual niceties into more concrete territory, adds Clare Woodford, VP of impact and sustainability at end-to-end apparel manufacturing and textile innovation company Alpine Group. “Brands and suppliers were able to speak candidly about their respective challenges: what will a proposed change cost?

How long will it take? What would need to change in the way products are designed, bought, or made?

Some ideas sound convincing on-stage, but working through the realities across the value chain is where they begin to become possible. Those conversations are what make climate week worth attending for me.”

Nature is increasingly non-partisan

One of the breakout stars of New York Climate Week this year was Himalayan American venture capitalist Tenzin Seldon, who took to the stage at the Nat Gala on Sunday night to introduce her concept of Gross Domestic Regeneration (GDR), designed to replace Gross Domestic Product (GDP) with a new system that acknowledges and values nature and its resources. “The world protects what it prices, and it abandons what we leave off the balance sheet,” Seldon told attendees.

A few days earlier, her firm, Pulse Fund, announced a $63 million fundraise, which it will channel into early-stage climate companies, spanning the energy transition, climate infrastructure, food and agriculture, and mobility.

“GDR names the accounting error whereby a forest that took a thousand years to grow registers on a balance sheet only once it’s cut down,” adds Rycroft. “Not properly valuing nature, and not moving to a less extractive future, is coming at a great cost to life and ledger.”

While rewriting the rules of growth and prosperity might seem radical, nature was increasingly positioned as a non-partisan issue this Climate Week. This comes after a summer of heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and flash floods, during which it has become impossible for businesses to ignore the financial and physical risks associated with nature degradation and climate change.

Chanel hosted a roundtable for business leaders, academics, and civil society to explore nature as the root of resilience, says Wylie.

“At Chanel, we rely on the richness of the natural world for our creations, and we have a deep responsibility to care for it,” she explains. “Across our supply chains, we are working to protect and restore the landscapes that provide our exceptional raw materials, while sustaining the vibrant ecosystem of the people behind them, from the flower fields in the south of France to the organic cashmere used in our textiles.”

“The more extreme the climate becomes, the more desperately we need the natural world,” says ecologist and author of Nature’s Echo Tom Crowther. “As yields start to fail around the world, farmers are advocating for conservation efforts that can revive the pollinators and moisture that their crops so desperately need.

We no longer need to persuade people to protect nature. It is becoming the obvious business choice, and I believe the finance world is finally waking up to this realization.”

Indigenous knowledge leads

Underpinning the momentum toward nature-based solutions was a groundswell of appreciation for Indigenous land stewardship and knowledge systems that could help humans live harmoniously with nature.

This started on Saturday with Wisdom From the Forest, the Mountains and the Sea, an event convened by Indigenous Futurisms founder Juana Burga and creative strategist Marina Testino, with support from the UNDP-led Forest Guardians Invest. The gathering featured a screening of the short film Zamu Kia; a blessing by Manari Ushigua, a spiritual leader of the Sápara Nation of the Ecuadorian Amazon; and an Indigenous-led marketplace.

At the Nat Gala on Sunday, a Paris-based spin-off dedicated to Indigenous matriarchs was announced, while Standing Rock activists Dee Jay Two Bears and Cody Two Bears were honored by designer Gabriela Hearst. And at the Atmos Gala on Thursday, Indigenous chief Juma Xipaia introduced the documentary Yanuni, charting her community’s fight against illegal mining and land grabbing in the Amazon.

It’s time to open the doors to new audiences and advocates

Despite the broad range of attendees, many expressed frustration with the people who were not in the room. “Today, many of the most valuable conversations are invitation-only.

But answers can come from anywhere, not just from the people on the guest list,” says Ying McGuire, CEO of non-profit alliance Cascale. “I do have a fear that we’re falling into a pattern where, by talking about something during climate week, we feel as though we’re solving it,” adds Gail Gallie, co-founder of The Nat.

The majority of events throughout the week might be free to attend, but being in New York is prohibitively expensive, shutting out many marginalized and under-resourced communities, be that Indigenous leaders, youth activists, or the communities bearing the brunt of climate impacts and climate injustice. “That makes it more elite and exclusive than it should be,” says marine biologist, policy expert and writer Dr.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. “I also worry that power and resources are concentrated and entrenched in ways that make it hard for new ideas and new leaders to build momentum.”

Several of the events that cut through upended the traditional hierarchy of panels and roundtables, handing the microphone over to the audience instead. On Monday, Akash Mehta — co-founder and CEO of Ayurvedic beauty brand Fable & Mane, and founder of wildlife conservation charity The Fable Fund — co-hosted an open mic night with Crowther, inviting attendees to share a piece of good climate news, building the kind of positive momentum sustainability events are often sorely lacking.

Mehta also co-hosted a similar event with The Oxygen Project founder Vasser Seydel, encouraging people outside the climate space to share an idea about how to bring nature into our daily lives.

“Nature is part of everyone’s story, and seeing people find their own way into the conversation gives me a lot of hope,” says Mehta. “You could feel new possibilities opening up as people listened to one another.”

A little imagination goes a long way

Over and over again, attendees repeated the same sentiments: that the solutions exist, it’s just a case of scaling them; that sustainability has to make financial sense; and that we need regulatory frameworks that incentivize action. Yet, while many of the conversations dug into the financial and governance mechanisms needed to operationalize and scale sustainability — a vital shift, according to brand strategist and consultant Dana Davis — the most emotionally resonant events had a different tone entirely.

Take the Atmos Gala on Thursday night, which turned the New York Public Library into an enchanted forest. In a fireside chat extolling the virtues of fungi, essayist Maria Popova told the audience: “We have to work extra hard to put ourselves in the path of wonder today.” Later, Braiding Sweetgrass author Robin Wall Kimmerer went even more introspective: “There’s no such thing as an individual. It’s fiction, our separation from one another.”

“The evening reminded me of something I think this movement desperately needs: imagination,” says Davis. “We cannot build a world that we are unable to imagine first. We need spaces where we can see it, taste it, and feel it.”

Others felt this, too. “Because both the climate situation and the geopolitical situation are so bad, people seem ready to try new things.

I’m getting this sense of tenacity and creativity, and seeing so much more openness to collaboration,” says Johnson. Her recent work has focused on mobilizing the 11.2 million environmentalists — people who say climate is their top voting issue — that did not vote in the 2024 US presidential election.

That statistic is also the basis for Patagonia’s 11.2 Million Project, launched at the tailend of climate week, which offers people $100 in store credit (or an equivalent donation to the League of Conservation Voters) if they get three people to create a plan to vote in the upcoming midterm elections.

While last year’s event veered toward doomism, the defining characteristic this year was defiance. Futerra CEO Lucy Shea noted that “business is back” after a period of sustainability recession, with chief sustainability officers traveling again, and senior executives outside the sustainability team joining them. “People know the odds are stacked against us,” says Johnson. “But we absolutely do not get to give up on the future of life on Earth.”