Fairtrade has announced a new sustainability partnership with the International Trade Centre (ITC), the joint agency of the World Trade Organization and the United Nations (UN), aimed at helping farmers and agricultural workers to diversify and access new markets, achieve UN Sustainability Development Goals and strive towards Agenda 2030.
The expanded partnership, the details of which are outlined in a Memorandum of Understanding signed by Fairtrade Global CEO Sandra Uwera, Fairtrade Max Havelaar CEO Renato Isella and ITC Executive Director Pamela Coke-Hamilton, will oversee both organisations accelerate work in promoting greater sustainability among farmers and agricultural workers around the world.
The collaboration will see enhanced work in a range of areas including on-farm diversification to help farmers face increasing challenges, gender, women and youth empowerment, adaptation to climate change and biodiversity, strengthening of management skills for farmer groups and building capacity of producer organisations to set up and maintain their own monitoring and response systems on human rights and environmental due dilligence.
“I am thrilled to see Fairtrade and ITC recommit to and build upon our organisations’ long-standing and fruitful partnership. Together, we can work with renewed purpose in enabling farmers and agricultural workers around the world to achieve the SDGs,” Sandra Uwera, Global CEO, Fairtrade following the signing of the agreement at ITC Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
“We have seven years left to Agenda 2030 and farmers and agricultural workers are a critical part of ensuring we stay on track to achieving a sustainable future for all,” added Sandra. “The expanded partnership between Fairtrade and ITC will help ensure delivery of critical support that will enable farmer organisations to make the right decisions as they work to make their operations more sustainable and achieve greater market access for their products.”
Fairtrade and ITC have long had an extensive collaboration promoting ethical trade and advocating on sustainability issues – over the last few years the two international bodies have worked on a number of publications including the ITC Sustainability Map. In addition, both organisations have collaborated 0n projects related to coffee and cocoa value chains in Ghana, Ethiopia and Latin America.
“The collaboration with ITC’s Alliances for Action (A4A) initiative has already been very fruitful and together we have been able to create value chain projects with a real innovative and impactful character,” said Renato Isella, CEO at Fairtrade Max Havelaar. “We are happy that we can now take this partnership to the next level with the aim of bringing on board more partners and additional resources so that even more producers can benefit.”
The new Fairtrade and ITC agreement provides framework for further collaboration as the organisations expect to scale up their current sustainability efforts in cocoa, coffee and other value chains. The partnership will also support farmer organisations in accessing new distribution channels, internationall and locally.
“Our partnership with Fairtrade gets to the heart of what we do, which is empowering producers in developing countries to move up value chains, enter new markets and earn higher incomes, to live better lives,” concluded Pamela Coke-Hamilton, Executive Director at ITC. “I’m looking forward to expanding on our collaboration to reach new sectors and regions.”
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