CSM collaborates with Fairtrade International, Bhutan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Fairtrade Germany and Maxhavelaar France to develop a project to promote SDG-12 funded by the European Union under their SWITCH ASIA programmes. The European Commission grant of €1 million supports the expansion of Fairtrade Certified products in India and Bhutan, thus promoting sustainable production and consumption (SDG-12) in India. The four-year project aims to increase Indian urban consumers’ understanding of and engagement with the concept of sustainability – particularly related to food and clothing.
The project is targeting 400,000 urban consumers, 50 schools, two universities and five business schools, 10 businesses (with the Fairtrade@Work programme), four towns and 15 Small Producer Organizations representing 6,800 farmers in Bhutan, India and Indonesia.
“This is a potential game changer for Fairtrade India project activities in India! The project is in complete alignment with our work and provides some much needed resources to scale up our work done in the past few years of building a Fairtrade sustainable consumption and production eco-system in India,” said Abhishek Jani, Chief Executive Officer of Fairtrade India Project, CSM. “We are excited about developing new Fairtrade supply chains from India but also introducing Fairtrade in new origins like Bhutan and developing new origin cocoa supply chains from Indonesia. The project would also help us achieve some key objectives of the Fairtrade Global strategy 2016-2020 of developing new markets for producers in India and also working more closely as a system in collaboration with Fairtrade International, Fairtrade Asia Pacific Producer Network, Fairtrade Germany and Max Havelaar France,” Jani added.