Location
Climate change, deforestation and poverty are global issues that go beyond the reach of single companies or governments; it takes public-private cooperation to solve them.
IDH, The Sustainable Trade Initiative brings governments, companies, CSOs and financiers together in action driven coalitions. We orchestrate the powers of law, of entrepreneurship and investments to work together to create solutions for global sustainability issues at scale.
Sector by sector and region by region we create, (co)finance and implement sustainable action plans. These plans can vary from working with the governments of Cote DÍvoire and Ghana and large cocoa companies to end deforestation, to investing with coffee companies and financiers in better livelihoods for hundred thousands of coffee farmers. All our plans and approaches start from a vision that sustainable impact will only last when there is a market and a viable business case for both (smallholder) producers as well as traders, buyers, financiers etc… to drive sustainability from niche to norm at scale.
In 2018 we reached over 2,7 million smallholder farmers of tropical food and cash crops in multiple sectors to improve their livelihoods. We worked with numerous plantations to close the living wage gap of over 50.000 workers in Malawi alone. We delinked commodity productions from deforestation in Africa, Latin America and Asia, bringing millions of hectares of land under sustainable production. And increased the demand for sustainable products globally.
