About IDH

The objective of the Dutch 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 Dutch Sustainable Trade Initiative 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.

The sectors that are already implementing a programme in the context of the Dutch Sustainable Trade Initiative are: tropical timbre and other forest products, soy, nature stone, cocoa, tea, tourism, aquaculture and cotton.