The objective of The Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) is to improve the sustainability of international supply chains, by tackling social, ecological and economical bottlenecks for the first chain actors in developing countries. The Initiative is a multi-stakeholder process in which actors from both Northern and Southern (production) countries actively participate.
Government, private sector, labour unions and non-governmental organisations jointly implement sectoral improvement programmes, as well as an (inter)sectoral learning programme. These programmes contribute to the Millennium Development Goals on poverty and hunger (MDG 1), environmental sustainability (MDG 7), and fair trade (MDG 8).
The Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) searches for links with other chain initiatives, both in the Netherlands and other countries. The ambition of IDH is to act as a catalyser and knowledge broker. This will help front runners to move even faster and supports other actors to overcome thresholds.
Now the standards are almost finalised has IDH together with WWF taken the initiative to erect the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) that will implement the standards through certifying fish farms and launch a sustainable aquaculture label in the market (like MSC for wild caught fish). Fueled by the success of MSC retailers like Ahold en Metro want to present sustainably farmed fish to their customers.
To create supply of sustainably farmed fish IDH has started development programs to support fish farmers that produce pangasius, tilapia and shrimp in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, China and countries in Latin America and Africa to comply to the ASC standards.