Commerce Équitable France – Solidari’THÉ programme
Monday, February 3rd, 2025 in: News
ARTICLE FOR RVC NEWSLETTER | February 2025
RVC has contributed co-funding to the French Fair Trade Platform (CEF)’s ambitious three-year programme (2024-26) on tea value chains. CEF is in the
process of developing a « Tea Barometer » to measure the social, economic and environmental performance of the companies involved in French tea chains. It will focus not just on whether company policies are in place, but also on their actual practices with tea producers and other supply chain stakeholders.
The idea of the Barometer is based on the Chocolate ScoreCard and rates companies according to a range of sustainability criteria including traceability and transparency, living income for producers, child labour, deforestation, climate impact etc.
CEF organised a scientific committee webinar in December to present the background to the tea industry, the objectives of the Barometer, as well as its methodology, scope and workplan. A first draft will be presented to participants at the RVC conference this coming Autumn.
Banana Link has suggested that, along with other RVC members like Oxfam GB, with years of experience of multi-stakeholder processes, consulting a range of organisations active on relevant issues (IUF, THIRST, TransformTrade, Ethical Tea Partnership) about the potential for an international tea forum that spans the Asian (mainly) plantation sector as well as African smallholder and plantation sectors. The experience of the World Banana Forum co-founded by BL highlights the need to include economic issues around prices, wages and externalities from the outset of any such initiative.
Resources :
December 2022, tea study: https://www.commercequitable.org/wp-content/uploads/rapport-etude-the-vf.pdf
September 2024, press release on a « tea sustainability club » : https://www.commercequitable.org/actualites/commerce-equitable-france-cree-le-club-durabilitithe-pour-federer-les-acteur%c2%b7rices-qui-souhaitent-accompagner-la-transformation-de-la-filiere-the-vers-des-pratiques-plus-just/
September 2024, programme presentation : https://www.commercequitable.org/wp-content/uploads/ppt-lancement-solidarithe-30092024-3-1.pdf
Contact : Yun Zhang, Chargée de projet filière thé :