FairWild Foundation

The FairWild Foundation promotes the sustainable use of wild-collected ingredients, with a fair deal for all those involved throughout the supply chain.

Background

The increasing demand for wild plants – as ingredients for food, cosmetics, well-being and medicinal products – poses major ecological and social challenges. The pressure on potentially vulnerable plant species can endanger local ecosystems and the livelihoods of collectors, who often belong to the poorest social groups in the countries of origin.

Meanwhile, accountability and fair trade are becoming increasingly important criteria in the global market place. Several product certification and labelling schemes currently exist, but are generally not appropriate for wild plant products.

As a response to these concerns, the FairWild Foundation promotes the FairWild Standard and certification system for the sustainable management and collection of wild plants.

The FairWild Standard assesses the harvest and trade of wild plants against various ecological, social and economic requirements. Use of the FairWild Standard helps support efforts to ensure plants are managed, harvested and traded in a way that maintains populations in the wild and benefits rural producers.

The FairWild Standard is also proving instrumental for the implementation of existing regulatory frameworks provided by National Resource Management Systems as well as by International Conventions such as:

• The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
• The Non-Detriment Findings Process of CITES

What we do

We encourage sustainable and fair business practices and focus on influencing consumer choice.

We inform, advise and assist those involved in the wild plant trade.

We provide advice on the application of the FairWild Standard and supply chain certification.

We provide advice on the application of standards for sustainable and fair management of trade in conservation, trade policy and other regulations.

We offer

A Total Quality Management System – to assure buyers that FairWild certified products are sourced and produced in a socially and ecologically sound way.