FAIRTRADE FORTNIGHT READY TO KICK THINGS INTO HIGH GEAR
For two weeks each year at the end of February and start of March, thousands of individuals, companies and groups across the UK come together to share the stories of the people who grow our food and drinks, mine our gold and who grow the cotton in our clothes, people who are often exploited and underpaid.
After research revealed that most UK shoppers aren't aware that the climate crisis will impact yields of commonly imported food, the Fairtrade Foundation is using its annual campaign this year to emphasise the importance of building climate resilience.
Fairtrade Fortnight’s theme this year is the growing challenges that climate change brings to farmers and workers in the communities Fairtrade works with. This year the focus of Fairtrade Fortnight is climate change. Around the COP26 climate summit 1.8 million Fairtrade farmers and workers issued a challenge to world leaders to “Be Fair With Your Climate Promise”. Across the world, as in the UK, farmers have expertise that can help tackle climate change
Fairtrade Fortnight has been running since 1997 and aims to help consumers learn more about the need to support workers across agricultural supply chains in dealing with environmental and social challenges. The 2022 iteration of the campaign launched on Saturday (18 February) and is placing a specific focus on the climate crisis.
What is Fairtrade?
Fairtrade is a system of certification that aims to ensure a set of standards are met in the production and supply of a product or ingredient. For farmers and workers, Fairtrade means workers’ rights, safer working conditions and fairer pay. For shoppers it means high quality, ethically produced products.
Fairtrade enables consumers to demand a better deal for those that produce our food. Through choosing Fairtrade consumers can demand the highest standards from business and government, ensuring people and planet are not exploited to create the products we enjoy.
Fairtrade is about social, economic and environmental justice. These are built into our standards and drive everything we do. A root cause of the inability to adapt to and mitigate climate change is poverty. More money in the hands of farmers is needed if they are to adapt and survive the climate crisis. Choosing Fairtrade fights for improvements in producers’ livelihoods with collective strength through co-ops and their bargaining power, the protection of a Minimum Price and Fairtrade Premiums.
In 2019, Fairtrade also launched an ambitious new living incomes campaign to lead the way to a sustainable future for cocoa farmers. A living income would provide farmers with a decent standard of living – enough to cover all their cocoa farming costs and enough to cover their basic human rights, like a nutritious diet, children’s education and healthcare. Only when they have met these basic needs can they start to meet the challenges of our changing climate.