Follow the Frog 2020 launches 22nd -27th September

The Rainforest Alliance’s annual ‘Follow the Frog’ campaign launches to ‘Build Our Collective Climate Power’ during Climate Week

Follow the Frog 2020 launches 21st -27th September with a week full of activities you can join in with. The annual campaign was created to help people to make better choices for our planet, from changing small everyday habits to purchasing with purpose by looking out for our frog seal on products. It is also an occasion to give our partners a chance to shine and showcase their sustainability commitments and impacts with us, because when we all join forces, we are unstoppable, after all we thrive together.

For the first time, we will be introducing our seal to consumers, an occasion for us to build on our vision of continuous improvement. We have joined forces with great partners and influencers with a combined reach of 5.7M to build on our collective climate power, the theme of this year’s campaign. Highlights of this year’s campaign to climate-conscious consumers include celebrity-led webinars discussing the one thing that touches everyone on the planet daily – food and food choices.

For example, we have Bonnie Wright most well known for her work as an actress playing Ginny Weasley in all eight of the Harry Potter films talking about “People Power: Our collective impact as responsible consumers” for an Instagram Live conversation with Denu Lemma Tsegaye, the Rainforest Alliance’s Ethiopia director on Sunday 27th September.

According to an alarming new UN report published by the Convention of Biological Diversity the world has missed all of it UN biodiversity targets to safeguard biodiversity and halt the destruction of ecosystems that are critical to slowing climate change. There’s no denying that these are daunting times.

Scientists say we must completely overhaul our global economy within a decade to avoid a global climate catastrophe as early as 2050. A bold, worldwide renewable energy transition is essential to this transformation. So is a complete remaking of our relationship to the land, including our global food economy and the way we manage tropical rainforests.

As we press our leaders during New York Climate Week to embrace natural climate solutions on a policy level, we can also influence companies and reshape our global food systems through mindful consumption. From farmers and forest communities to companies and consumers, our futures are bound together. We’re focused on sharing the responsibility to unlock the potential of natural climate solutions, which can provide more than one-third of the global climate solution.

That’s where our little green frog seal comes in. It guides millions of climate-conscious consumers around the world to make purchasing choices that are better for them, for nature, and for the farming and forest communities who steward our land and forests.

And why a frog, you may ask? Because frogs are one of nature’s superstar bioindicators—meaning a healthy population of frogs is a sure sign that local ecosystems are flourishing!

So what can you do?

Take the very first step on the journey by signing up to our 30-Day Sustainability Challenge, where we offer daily tips on how to live a more sustainable life and make new habits stick. When you complete the challenge, you’ll receive a free Stasher bag (an obsession-worthy sustainability aid) while supplies last.

Check out these exciting online events to watch and engage with to show your support:

Tuesday 22nd September 7 PM BST

Food, Culture, and Climate Resilience: A conversation with chef and food justice advocate Selassie Atadika

Food touches nearly every aspect of our relationship to the land. It embodies our creative potential, primal desires, and familial relationships. As such, the culinary arts have become an increasingly important catalyst for a plant-based culinary revolution that draws on Indigenous ways of eating for a livable climate future. Please join us for a conversation with internationally renowned chef Selassie Atadika, a 2019 Basque Culinary World Prize Finalist and 2018 Stone Barns Center fellow who was recently named as one of the Global Top 50 Plant-Forward Chefs.

We’ll chat about everything from how food culture can influence farming and consumer behavior, the importance of crop diversity, and how Indigenous knowledge can and should inform our work to transform global commodity supply chains.

Where: Zoom and YouTube.

Wednesday 24th September 5 PM BST

Regenerative Economics: A Local-to-Global Approach. Instagram Live with Céline Semaan of the Slow Factory Foundation and Maria Belen Portillo, Guatemala advocacy lead for the Rainforest Alliance

Transforming our global economy from extractive to regenerative is imperative to a livable climate future. Our partner communities in Guatemala have created a beautiful and highly successful regenerative forest economy over more than two decades.

Please join us for a lively conversation on what makes regenerative economies work, featuring systems designer Celine Semaan, founder and director of the Slow Factory open education platform (and contributor to Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Time magazine, and other prominent media outlets), and Belen Portillo, our Guatemala advocacy lead based in our Guatemala City office.

Where: Instagram live @rainforestalliance and @theslowfactory.

Friday 25th September 2 PM BST

Climate Justice and Resilience: Farmers and Communities on the Front Lines, a Rainforest Alliance panel featuring

The climate crisis is thrusting the world’s farming communities into deeper poverty while destroying forests and other ecosystems. Scientists, as well as local and Indigenous leaders, declare we have less than a decade to radically transform our global economy and build climate resilience for communities living on the front lines of the climate crisis.

This event will bring together Indigenous, corporate, and NGO climate leaders, including Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim (co-chair of the Indigenous People’s Forum on Climate Change), Ghanaian cocoa farmer Elijah Owusu-Cashiedom, and Rebecca Marmot of Unilever for a solutions-focused discussion on what the most urgent climate priorities are for frontline communities. Moderated by the Rainforest Alliance climate lead Saeed Abdul-Razak.

Where: Zoom

Sunday 27th September 6 PM BST

People Power: Our collective impact as responsible consumers. Instagram LIVE with Bonnie Wright and Denu Lemma Tsegaye, the Rainforest Alliance’s Ethiopia director.

Although just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions, we as consumers still have a critically important role to play with regard to natural climate solutions, especially sustainable agriculture and forest conservation. Join director/actor/climate activist Bonnie Wright for an Instagram Live conversation with the Rainforest Alliance Ethiopia director Denu Lemma Tsegaye about how our choices as consumer directly impact farmers on the other side of the world.

Where: Instagram live @rainforestalliance and @thisisbwright.

Also don’t forget to check out our landscape and community projects (in addition to certified farms) on an interactive map on the Rainforest Alliance website https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/impact .The projects displayed on this map are our field projects bringing direct benefits to farmers, forest communities, and nature.

The map includes only those projects that are currently being implemented by Rainforest Alliance. You can learn more about each project by clicking on the project polygon on the map.

More about Irish Tech News and Business Showcase here.

FYI the ROI for you is => Irish Tech News now gets over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience!

Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 50,000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content. Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds.

Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles.

If you would like to be featured in our podcast series drop us a line & don’t forget to sign up for notifications for our latest episodes and follow us on Twitter, Linkedin, SoundCloud, iTunes or your own favourite podcast platform.

Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you and hopefully, we can share your story too and reach our global audience. We are agile, responsive, quick and talented, we look forward to working with you!

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at [email protected] or on Twitter: @SimonCocking