Tea industry contends with environmental and social problems

Solutions lie in reducing the sector’s environmental footprint and building resilience against climate change effects in a rapidly warming world, say experts.

Mar 23, 2024 - 20:00

Tea industry contends with environmental and social problems

It’s estimated that we drink around five billion cups of tea every day. Producing this vast quantity of leaves to quench global thirst for black, green and other varieties is an industry that spans more than 60 tropical and subtropical countries and largely depends on smallholder farmers.

Globally, agriculture plays a large part in driving our planet’s “triple crisis”: climate change, biodiversity destruction and releasing chemical pollution into oceans and waterways. Like many other agricultural crops, tea has an impact, implicated in deforestation of tropical areas (both historic and present), and heavy use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers that harm soils and rivers and add to climate change.

On top of these environmental issues, farmers and tea workers face deeply embedded human rights and gender issues, such as low wages and poor working conditions, exacerbated by globally low prices, according to experts.

Sabita Banerji, founder and CEO of The International Roundtable for Sustainable Tea, or THIRST, says the tea sector is in many ways akin to “a 19th-century industry that’s now struggling to survive in the 21st century,” as it faces a host of sustainability challenges, both social and environmental.

“It needs to grow and adapt to the current times,” she adds.

While the tea industry is contending with its environmental and social problems, human...