Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Some 14 per cent of British consumers buy fair-trade products at every possible
opportunity, 57 per cent shop fair-trade on a regular basis and 80 per cent feel very
clear about why people should buy fair-trade goods (Oxfam, 2007). Roughly 25 per
cent of Traidcraft's 120,000 customers are active development campaigners. Oxfam
has also noted that fair trade has undoubtedly helped generate interest in its own
Make Trade Fair campaign (Oxfam, 2002) and has given the developing world more
influence at global trade negotiations (Kelly, 2007). Additionally, a growing number
of towns in the UK have been certified as Fairtrade Towns by the Fairtade Foundation.
The first was Gastang in Lancashire, and by early 2007 there were over 230 others.
Some new businesses are directly applying fair-trade principles in establishing
ethically based but commercial social enterprises. In Luton, north of London, fair-
trade tea is being sold directly from Indian tribal communities in Tamil Nadu to
the deprived multicultural working-class housing estate of Marsh Farm. A forty-bag
pack of tea is sold door to door, on market stalls and in a few local shops. The
retail price is at 75 pence, compared with £1.20 for regular tea and £1.60 for fair-
trade tea at the major supermarkets. Stan Thekaekara, a trustee of Oxfam UK and
fellow at the Saïd Business School at Oxford University, brought the Indian growers
together. He suggests that ethics should not just be for the well-off - fair trade
should benefit deprived producer and consumer communities more than the big
chains. He told John Vidal of
The Guardian
that the experiment with tea is the first
of a number of other intended initiatives involving rice, oils, spices and cloth:
Fair trade is more expensive. The supermarkets make the most profit out of it
and nothing really changes in the trading system. Tea does not become a penny
cheaper for the people who drink it by the gallon on British housing estates,
and workers' children still face starvation and malnutrition on tea estates
everywhere. It has to become a brand. If poor people cannot drink fairly traded
tea, then it seems wrong.
(2007a)
Fair-trade certification and the influence of a number of alternative trading
organizations have led some observers to see in this movement a new type of
globalization, a reframing from below, where marginalized workers and producers
in the Global South benefit in clear ways (Nicholls, 2002; Raynolds
et al
., 2007):
•
producers enjoy guaranteed prices that are above those in conventional markets,
which is most important for those trading in tropical commodity markets, which
are often volatile;
•
organized capacity-building for democratic groups - for example, producer co-
operatives or worker unions, is supported;
•
the development of marketing and other skills of fair-trade producers;
•
provision of market information to consumers;
•
transparent and long-term trading partnerships; and
•
a social premium is provided in that community, so that healthcare, schools,
roads, sanitation and other services can be financed.
As fair trade becomes increasingly popular, the movement will confront a number
of challenges, not least in how it intersects with the dominant conventional market
