Richard Adams OBE (born October 28, 1946) is the British founder of the UK fair trade organisations Tearcraft and Traidcraft and of a number of social enterprises which promote ethical business.

He has degrees in sociology (Durham University), theology (University of London) and business administration (Newcastle University) which also conferred an honorary Doctor of Civil Law on him in 2005 as did Durham in 2007.

After visiting small farmers in Gujarat, India, in 1973 he established an agricultural imports company in London with distribution to the main wholesale markets. In 1974 this business began importing crafts from farming communities in Bangladesh, following which he founded Tearcraft which became the marketing arm of the UK relief and development charity, Tearfund. In 1979 Richard established the independent company Traidcraft, which became a plc in 1984, offering the first 'alternative' and socially orientated public share issue in the UK. In 1989 Adams convened the steering committee of what became the UK's Fairtrade Foundation, based on the Dutch Max Havelaar Foundation. He was a member of its board from 1992 - 1999. In 1994 Adams founded the Creative Consumer Co-operative, through which Out of this World, Britain's first chain of organic grocery stores with an explicit ethical, fair trade, social and environmental agenda, were launched. Adams was a director of the UK Social Investment Forum 1992-1996; Chair of the Student Christian Movement 1994-1997 and, with Mark Hayes, a co-initiator and founding director of the social investment society, Shared Interest. He is an honorary Fellow of Glasgow University's Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting and received an OBE in 2000 for services to ethical business. He was appointed by the UK Government in 2001 as one of 24 UK members of the Brussels–based Economic and Social Committee of the European Union. He won the New Statesman Social Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2005 and in 2006 was listed by The Independent newspaper as one of the top 50 people in the UK who had had most impact in “making the world a better place” for his development of the concept of ethical shopping.

Richard Adams (ca. 1626 – 7 February 1698), a non-conforming English Presbyterian divine, author of various sermons and other writings in divinity, was the grandson of Richard Adams, the rector of Woodchurch, in the part of Cheshire which is called the hundred of Wirral, and son of Charles Adams, who, with his brother Randall, was brought up to the church, and became the father of four Adams — Richard, Peter, Thomas, and Charles, who were all clergymen. Long, George. The Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1842–1844. 4 vols.

Adams was admitted to Brasenose College, Oxford, March 24, 1646, where he became fellow, and took his master's degree in 1651. In 1655 he was settled in the church of St. Mildred, Bread-street, London, where he was a very useful preacher, and was regarded as an ornament to his function. Being unable to comply with the terms of ministerial conformity settled on the restoration of Charles II, he resigned the living, but continued to reside in London, where, when the times allowed of non-conforming services being publicly conducted, he became pastor of a small congregation of Presbyterian dissenters, whose place of worship was situated in Parish-street, in the Borough. In this situation he remained till his death, February 7, 1698. A sermon preached on occasion of his death, by John Howe, an eminent non-conforming preacher was printed, and contains a strong testimony to his harmless, useful, and holy life.

He was the author of the exposition of the Epistles to the Philippians and Colossians in the supplement to Poole's Annotations, and of various printed sermons. He joined Mr. Veal, another non-conforming minister in writing prefaces to several of the treatises of Stephen Charnock.

He published also two works of his brother Thomas Adams; namely, Protestant Union, and The Main Principles of the Christian Religion, 8vo. 1675.

Richard Adams (born 1957) is a New Zealand jazz violinist and abstract artist. He is best known as the front man for the quartet Nairobi Trio.

Richard George Adams (born May 9, 1920) is an English novelist who is best known as the writer of three novels featuring animal characters, in particular Watership Down and to a lesser extent Shardik and The Plague Dogs.

Captain Harold Richard Adams (8 October 1912 - 25 June 1978), more commonly Richard Adams, was a British Labour Party politician.

He was educated at Emanuel School and studied at the University of London before entering the Middle Temple. From 1938 he worked as a business consultant.

He began his political career on Wandsworth borough council in the 1930s, but this was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. He joined the East Surrey Regiment in 1940, and saw service with the 25th Army Tank Brigade in North Africa and Italy, before ending the war serving on the staff in Land Forces Adriatic.

He was elected as the Labour member of parliament for Balham and Tooting, part of his home district of Wandsworth, in the 1945 general election. He was an assistant whip from 1947, and became a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury in 1949, a post he held until 1951.

Balham and Tooting was dissolved for the 1950 general election, and Adams stood in the redrawn Wandsworth Central constituency, succeeding Ernest Bevin as its Member of Parliament. He was re-elected for the same seat in the 1951 general election, but chose to stand down in the 1955 election, being succeeded in the now-marginal seat by the Conservative Michael Hughes-Young.

He married twice, once to Joyce Young in 1938, with whom he had two daughters; the marriage was dissolved in 1955, and he remarried P. Fribbins, with whom he had one son.