Summary
The tea sector has reached a critical point in its evolution. At the same time as facing a range of commercial challenges (including competition from other commodities, from overproduction, stagnating demand, rising costs, and the impacts of the climate crisis), it now faces growing expectations from its consumers, employees and investors; expectations of transparency, of respecting human rights and of protecting the environment.
In order to ensure that human rights are fully respected, everyone within this system will now need to look at their role in sustaining it – from the consumer, through to the retailer, brand, blender, packer, trader, broker, estate manager, supervisor and even the tea workers and farmers themselves.
This literature review is designed to support the industry in conducting that human rights due diligence. It tries to encompass ‘the big picture’ by piecing together evidence from a wide range of reports on human rights in the tea sector across multiple countries and looking at how the sector itself operates. The report also hopes to offer a base on which to conduct further exploration of the root causes of human rights breaches in the tea sector and what can be done to address them.