Organised by FairWild and its participants, this year's campaign theme is Wild Wisdom - a celebration of the unique qualities wild ingredients bring, and of the traditional knowledge, generations of skill, and careful stewardship that allow wild plant species to keep thriving even as global demand grows.
FairWild estimates that 1.2 billion people globally depend directly on nature to meet their basic needs, and wild plants remain a critical source of food, medicine, and livelihood for millions more. Yet of nearly 60,000 tree species worldwide, close to a third are threatened with extinction, and only 21% have ever had their conservation status formally assessed, leaving most wild-harvested trade to happen with the risk largely unknown.
Without proper safeguards, that growth can threaten both biodiversity and the harvesting communities who depend on it for their livelihoods. FairWild addresses this directly, setting clear ecological and social criteria that harvesters, traders, and brands commit to following.
Through our FairWild-certified Kolo Nafaso direct shea sourcing program in West Africa, we are already putting the Wild Wisdom pledge into practice. Established in 2009, Kolo Nafaso is based on respect for local practices and close collaboration with women shea collectors and their communities. By creating stronger business opportunities and providing targeted training, we aim to empower the women collectors, support local communities, and help ensure the long-term resilience of the shea parklands. We are proud to support FairWild Week and highlight FairWild’s work to safeguard local landscapes and the people who depend on them.
Says Jakob Nybroe, AAK’s Sustainability Manager for West Africa.
As part of its participation, AAK joins the FairWild Week 2026 Declaration:
FairWild Week 2026 Declaration
5–10 October
No two wild landscapes are the same. No two harvests carry the same risk, the same history, the same people.
Wild Wisdom is the knowledge of those particularities. This FairWild Week, FairWild certified partners come together not to say the same about every landscape, but to say that every landscape deserves to be known for its own legacy.
We, FairWild participants, know our wild landscapes, the species we harvest, the land it grows in, the season it demands. We take only what our own landscape can give back, measured against what that place can sustain, not a generic limit applied from elsewhere.
We carry the wisdom particular to our place, held by the people who have worked this land for generations and who guide how we harvest today. We treat our collectors as the specific people they are: paid fairly, kept safe, and respected in the form their own circumstances require, not a general policy applied at a distance. We honour the rights particular to each community, recognising customary knowledge and land as belonging to those who hold it, in whatever form their own tradition takes.
AAK commits to continue working with the FairWild family within our certified Kolo Nafaso supply chain to keep the shea parklands thriving.
To learn more about FairWild, visit www.fairwild.org.
