'If we are to find a global solution to the climate emergency, unity is vital': Fashion Roundtable's CEO Tamara Cincik shares her hopes for COP26

Today is the second day of the long awaited COP26 conference in Glasgow. A time when some of the world's leaders inside the blue zone will seek to agree on ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions and reach Net Zero before further impacts are felt.

Already, we have become all too used to a world where the waters rise, the forests burn, and climate refugees drown on sinking boats. Outside of the conference are so many of the thought leaders, such as teenage activist Greta Thunberg. My hope is that change happens on the inside of the conference, just as we on the outside know it must.

Fashion Roundtable are not at COP26, other than virtually (sadly the Cabinet Office rejected the submission we worked on with WRAP and the RCA), but we did participate in the Sustainable Fashion Scotland digital project inside the COP26 blue zone - which looked at waste and how fashion is now seeking a seat at the table to be a part of the solution to the climate emergency.

This theme - having a seat at the table - is core to the DNA of Fashion Roundtable. Over recent weeks we brought together over 50 leading fashion brands and civil society organisations with our open letter to our world's leaders asking them to work with us and prioritise 5 key ambitions:

1) Collective action to achieve net zero emissions by no later than 2050

2) Resourcefulness in waste elimination

3) Increase responsibility by businesses towards their global supply chains

4) Support skills development in education to encourage children to learn the necessary skills to make, repair and reuse their clothes

5) Frame any solutions to the climate emergency around business models which shift the focus from profit and loss, to a just transition towards the well-being economy

I believe personal engagement and activism is as important as collective decision making - so we also created a template letter to your MP. This asks your MP to email DEFRA requesting a meeting with Secretary of State George Eustice MP once COP26 has finished. This letter takes less time than boiling a kettle, please use it. The more that your MP - and those in leadership roles - hear from you about your business and concerns, the more they are likely to act in your interests.

I was pleased to meet with Minister Scully from BEIS last week, alongside Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey and Catherine West MP at the House of Commons. We discussed the skills shortage for garment workers, as well as the need to align the desire for onshoring with skills shortages and the need to ensure business remains sustainable in the Global South for workers at the most vulnerable end of the supply chain. To hear why I think this is important, you can listen to my interview with Alexis Conran on Times Radio last Sunday here (1.21.45 minutes in).

If we are to find a global solution to the climate emergency, this theme of unity and progressive, non binary, solutions-orientated thinking, is vital.

HM the Queen has called on our world's leaders to act in the interests of our children and grandchildren, to be statesmen, not career politicians and I couldn't agree more with her sentiments.

Unity is why I believe in cross party collaboration above partisan didactics, and why I sit on the cross party UK Trade and Business Commission. Their event last night hosted by Lord Darroch of Kew, the former ambassador to the US and Best for Britain, felt so positive at a time when partisan, “them and us” thinking, is on the rise alongside populism across the world. The climate emergency shows we desperately need to find solutions by engaging with those we might not agree with, if we are to resolve issues which are bigger than any of us.