WHY GREEN & FAIR PRODUCTS?
Communities living in and around protected areas are for the most part directly affected by the management of the protected area and its buffer zones. Many plants that have potential for becoming market commodities, developing new crops or pharmaceutical products are also plants that have played a fundamental role in sustaining local communities as wild foods and traditional medicines for generations. Moreover, it is local communities that have helped shape and maintain these plants and their habitat by experimenting, cultivating, and managing.
Sustainable use and sale of natural resources and products with market potential can become a conservation measure and help protect significant biodiversity while guaranteeing good livelihoods to communities living in and around conservation areas. Marketing of these products can help increase the economic benefits of conservation areas for local people.
WWF Indonesia is working with several groups of women and men in villages around the archipelago to help promote and market products that make use of local natural resources. We believe that these products fulfill some essential ecological and social criteria. They are products that come from conservation areas managed together with local communities; they are products collected or cultivated in sustainable ways; they are products processed by community-based businesses; they are products sold at a fair market value with a open policy on pricing, and proceeds from the sales of products go directly to the communities/producers.
- “Green” products because they come from the forests, the sea, and the fields of conservation areas that are managed together with local communities
- “Green” products because they are made of natural resources that are harvested in a sustainable manner
- “Green” products because they are agricultural products cultivated by local farmers with minimal or no use of pesticides nor chemical fertilizers
- “Fair” products because their sales enable local people to improve their livelihoods and continue to manage their land and resources in a sustainable way
- “Fair” products because all proceeds from their sales go directly to local communities and help the local economy
- “Fair” products because they are sold at real market value and fair price for the producers
- “Fair” products because their production is appropriate to local conditions and is managed in ways that are socially sustainable and gender sensitive
