DEMOCRATISING TRADE THROUGH SOCIAL ENTERPRISES

“When talking about the SDGs, we should not talk about North and South. We are all developing countries working towards Sustainable Development.”
WFTO Chief Executive Leida Rijnhout walks us through the DNA of mission-led enterprises and how they are contributing to Sustainable Development.
The global community of Fair Trade Enterprises believe development isn’t an end in itself. The wellbeing of people and the planet precedes above all else.
Wealth and power redistribution are a shared responsibility that goes beyond old narratives of the powerful North and the weak South. As inequalities have been longtime rising in the global North too, the strive for global transformation towards Sustainable Development is a global issue with no geographic preference. We can’t afford to work separately to dismantle a broken system, we need to unite.
This week, we celebrate the contribution of the Fair Trade movement to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in catalysing systemic change in the economic system. 25th September both marks the date when the Fair Trade Charter got updated in 2018 and the UN Agenda 2030 was signed in 2015.
The primary goal of the Fair Trade community is fully aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the UN Agenda 2030, which streamlined the pathway to sustainable development. The Fair Trade movement has been pursuing the transformation of global value chains for decades now, by supporting the work of small and medium mission-led enterprises even before the SDGs were identified.
None of the 17 interlinked SDGs can be cherrypicked at convenience. The push for unlimited growth has been causing unmeasurable devastation and cannot be addressed through quick fixes, nor minimal adjustments. 
We need systemic change to build the new economy.