Methodology

We undertake three steps to identify and assess salient issues in the supply chains of different commodities.

First, we commission literature reviews with external experts. Each review focuses on one commodity or commodity group and surveys recent research, studies and news articles to establish the risks and root causes of 13 human rights and environmental topic areas:

Further information about how these 13 areas cover all the internationally recognised human rights can be found here.

Second, the findings are enriched with Fairtrade’s internal knowledge, audit data and impact data. The latter includes findings from farmer surveys, household interviews and commissioned impact research.

Third, the findings are enriched with knowledge from impacted stakeholders. By the end of October 2022, we had held over 20 in-depth validation workshops across various locations in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

To map the risks that prevail in different countries, we consider external statistics that fulfil the following criteria:

• Credible source. Data is provided either by UN agencies or widely referenced non-governmental organisations and research institutions.

• Robust methodology. The methodology of composite indicators and indices must be publicly available, fully transparent and free from major dispute among key stakeholders, including development NGOs.

• Available and granular. Data is easily available for a large share of Fairtrade operating countries and sufficiently granular to differentiate among them.

• Complementary. The data set must relate to all internationally recognised human rights and environmental issues, especially those most salient to global agricultural supply chains.

Please see further information on the selected statistics and individual indicators on the country page.

Organisations must also assess how their own business model and practices influence human rights and environmental issues. The questions Fairtrade considers include:

• What are the typical, inherent limitations of certification and social audits in detecting and addressing human rights and environmental problems?

• How effective are our due diligence policies and processes?

• Considering the above, what adverse impacts may our efforts cause, contribute to or be linked to?

While numerous related tools exist, we have not found any tool directly suited for a Standard setting organisation. However, our assessment benefits from several aspects of the Human Rights Compliance Assessment (HRCA) Tool developed by the Danish Institute on Human Rights (DIHR).

We utilize an exploratory (inductive) approach to identify the limitations, responses, and impacts. We start by conducting a literature review of relevant scholarly papers and NGO studies, and build the assessment up through iterative rounds of data collection and analysis, engaging a gradually expanding group of internal and external experts.

Finally, we pull all findings together to confirm Fairtrade’s most salient issues. The ranking is slightly influenced by the likelihood of adverse impacts, but mainly based on severity (scope, scale and remediability) to people and the environment. The ranking is not influenced by Fairtrade’s commercial priorities.