As a former employee of Shared Earth, (a fair trading company), which has
gone to liquidation on the 16th January 2012, I would like to take this opportunity to give my honest overview of the state of our high street activity and how, despite our setback, fair trade can still and will continue to bring
positive changes in terms of reducing our carbon footprint and bringing an equality in terms of addressing poverty and trade imbalance.
People say that this recession is the worst they have seen in their lifetime. We are curbing our spending, rightly so, and one can see the result on the high street as one shop falls after the other like a pack of cards. We are surely in a dire state of affairs and lot of policy changes have to be made if we are to come out strong and healthy in a couple of years. But we need to see things in perspective. Despite our so called recession, we are still far better off than millions in the developing world who still don’t have access to proper education, clean drinking water, hygienic sanitation and so on.
For example in India, probably only one third of the population is in the organised sector while the rest has to survive with atrocious working conditions, earning below the ‘living’ wage. Parents still have to send their children to work on the streets or factories where there are no safety measures in place. Kids have to put up with back breaking ten to fourteen hours a day with no proper breaks and
a normal childhood snatched away from their grasp. There is no social security net in place (which I am enjoying now) if one looses work, so the impact is unimaginable. That means a child could go hungry overnight, quitting school, as you still have to pay for books, pens and paper. Psychological repercussions for the parent are immense and one can easily become a victim of sleazy exploitation.
We have to think, what kind of society we want? Do we want a self centred society where we think of our own good, or we build a culture where we share our resources in a humanitarian way. We have a duty to our fellow beings whether they are from our own local community or an impoverished community in a different geographical location. Fair and ethical trade answers a lot of difficult questions. It’s not fool proof by any stretch of imagination but it, at least, recognises the problem and does something positive about it. There have been recent articles that tried to castigate the fair trade movement and highlighting all the evils associated with it.
It’s understandable that the words ‘fair’ and ‘ethics’ means different things to different people but fundamentally it tries to do good. Fair and ethical trade is also about using our resources in a sustainable way. By using less water, generating less waste, promoting sustainable transportation and boosting self reliance in food and energy, we can go on a long way in tackling climate change, that could have a devastating effect on the planet.
There has been a paradigm shift the way we see our lives in the wake of global warming. Whatever we do in our daily lives, we do depend on non renewable fossil fuels from driving cars to printing paper. Although we cannot go back to pre-industrial age, we can do things to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. Scientific evidence shows that global temperature has risen over the past century and more acutely in the last couple of decades. Fair Trade answers a lot of these questions as well as most non food products are handmade with minimal factory production, which in turn has a very low CO2 emission rate. Climate change is increasingly recognised as a major challenge and it’s apt we take a note of it. With regards to fuel usage, vehicle usage, electricity bill, employee travel and sourcing stocks from other countries we can ensure that the whole process emits the minimum greenhouse gases as possible. And the way to go forward is to have fairness in the heart of our business principles.
Other links:
Fair trade shop Shared Earth to close Birmingham store as company faces liquidation
