BRITS MAY make 165 million cups of tea a day, but the nation’s favourite brew faces a number of challenges to survive. Climate change, water scarcity and competition for land use are all expected to combine to make those 165 million cups harder to come by.
A new coalition of the most influential organisations in the tea value chain has therefore been formed to help the sector thrive well into the future.
Phase 1 of the Tea 2030 project took place last year. It showed that while there are initiatives already addressing some of the major issues, wider collaboration is required.
Phase 2 will therefore see Tata Global Beverages, Unilever, Yorkshire Tea, Finlays, the Ethical Tea Partnership, the Sustainable Trade Initiative, Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade International come together to understand the key challenges facing the sector to 2030, and develop creative innovations that will build a successful and sustainable sector across the globe. Other companies involved in the tea value chain are being encouraged to get involved.
The project is being facilitated and managed by Forum for the Future. “Through our past projects in sectors as diverse as tourism and shipping, we have seen how exploration of different possible futures can be a powerful way of generating a shared understanding of sustainability issues throughout entire value chains,” said deputy chief executive Sally Uren.
“In turn, this shared understanding can generate new solutions to systemic problems that are just too big for one organisation to tackle alone. We have high hopes that Tea 2030 will deliver practical action that will secure a sustainable and successful future for the global tea industry.”
