HARRIET Lamb, executive director of the UK’s Fairtrade Foundation, an organisation that has dramatically transformed shopping habits and improved the lives of millions across the globe will officially open WTM World Responsible Tourism Day. The Fairtrade Foundation aims to create better deals for marginalised workers and farmers in developing countries, by ensuring that they receive a fair price that enables them to make a sustainable living. Lamb guided the foundation to a period of growth with estimated fair trade sales of more than £1 billion ($1.57 bn) and 4,500 plus retail and catering products carrying the Fairtrade mark.
At the heart of a worldwide campaign for trade justice to ensure that everything from food to clothes produced in the third world receives a fair price and their products have global market access.
Fiona Jeffery, chairman of World Travel Market and a pioneer of responsible tourism over the past 16 years said, “The Fairtrade Foundation has played a key role in driving fair trade battles.”
“Under Harriet Lamb’s strong leadership, it has achieved much with many similarities between the uphill fight to encourage travel and tourism to be more ethical, sustainable and caring and the huge challenges still facing Harriet and the Fairtrade movement.”
Lamb said that a number of links exist between the travel industry and the escalating changes that are pushing responsible tourism to the top of the agenda and the principles of the fairtrade campaign.
“Across the world, the Fairtrade Foundation has begun to make a huge change to millions of lives,” said Lamb. “However, there is much to be done to challenge the deep injustices still disfiguring our world.
WTM World Responsible Tourism Day, launched five years ago, strives to educate, motivate and inspire travel companies to engage in year-round responsible tourism activity. It is marked not only in London during World Travel Market but also with events throughout the world.