26 Green Action Fund 2021 grants awarded to Consumers International Members

Consumers International is delighted to announce that 26 Consumers International members from developing and transitional economies are to be awarded a grant of £2,420 each to implement this year’s Green Action Fund campaigns.

The Green Action Fund is an annual award that promotes sustainable consumption across the globe through awareness-raising, training, and educational activities.

Global collective action for Sustainable Consumption

This year our members will be running 26 campaigns in 22 countries across four regions: twelve in Africa, eight in Asia-Pacific, four in Latin America, and two in the Middle East.

Grantees drive change by promoting a culture of sharing and collaboration within communities to promote sustainable consumption patterns. These initiatives include:

• Food and land-use initiatives: Promoting sustainable agricultural practices through sharing community is a core feature of many projects, including a seed sharing platform in Malaysia, manure sharing network in Rwanda and urban community gardening initiative in Pakistan.
• Waste reduction schemes: Grantees across all regions are organising campaigns which will establish sharing communities that address pressing waste problems, from a used toy sharing platform in Lebanon to a community pick-up of medical waste in Burundi and plastic waste management initiatives in Cape Verde and India.
• Tackling unsustainable use of consumer goods: Some grantees are leveraging their expertise in consumer advocacy to fight for consumers’ right to sustainable goods and services. Grantees in India will raise awareness of the effects of unsustainable consumption, and in Kenya new consumer groups will be formed to discuss collective solutions.
• Collaborative marketplace enterprises: Various projects will build capacity for the creation of collaborative and inclusive market enterprises. Local artisans will be connected with young entrepreneurs in an incubator project in Nepal, and women will be taught to set up family herbal medicine businesses in Indonesia. 
• Knowledge and experience-sharing networks: Many grantees are taking advantage of the growth of digital networks during the pandemic to set up platforms which share knowledge and experiences, from the creation of a women’s network in Yemen to a cross-community exchange of experiences on energy in Mexico.

Most importantly, 2021 will be a decisive year for progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals as we approach COP26 this November which seeks to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

During Green Action Week, the annual global campaign running Saturday 2 October to Sunday 10 October 2021, grantees will run activities linked into their wider projects, mobilising consumers around the theme and promoting actions that can be taken to reduce unsustainable consumption globally.

The grants are made available by our partner, the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, and administered by Consumers International, with the campaigns being delivered between September and November 2021.

Download our summary to learn more about each project.