Pauline Tiffen on the Challenges of Fair Trade
Published April 01, 2009 @ 01:40AM PT
In the last post, I mentioned the larger issues that were mentioned during the London School of Economics debate on 'Who Owns Fair Trade?'. The idea of how the movement is to deal with large multi-national companies adopting the Fair Trade Mark, such as Cadbury, and what are the next steps in the evolution of Fair Trade as a business model. These questions have been essential in talks around Fair Trade lately as people have been looking to expand the movement and getting more multi-national companies involved. I advised you all to watch Pauline Tiffen's take on these issues, but I've also decided to put it in a separate post with some of the text. Pauline talks about a main issue which is the fact that the Fair Trade Mark is designated for a product and not a company and how this should be improved upon.
Fair Trade, the system of certification, has set up a beautiful way to encourage rigorous advancements amongst small scale producers. It's tough to get a Fair Trade Certification and it provides a lot of stimulus and a lot of grief to these producers. It is unequal because no major corporation has to reflect in its structures any commitment to Fair Trade. So a cooperative, in any part of the developing world, to be Fair Trade, has to prove that it is this microcosm of beauty and social order and justice. And in the meanwhile the corporation who distributes the money, makes the most margin of all, and is completely unaccountable for that margin doesn't have to prove a thing about its intentions. So I say, if we want more people involved in Fair Trade in large business and in large retailers and we want the volume, lets not get the volume at the expense of the content or the essence of Fair Trade.
Pauline Tiffen speaks at 'Who Owns Fairtrade?' debate from Trading Visions on Vimeo.
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Author
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Zarah is the Operations Manager for the Global Exchange Fair Trade Online Store, a project of the international human rights organization, Global Exchange. Alongside her work with marginalized communities from all over the world to get their products into the international market, Zarah serves to educate and inform the public about a more just and sustainable trading system.
