I was wrong.
There, that wasn’t so difficult.
At university a lecturer told me that it was common for environmentalists to hold equal and opposite beliefs at the same time. Maybe I should have listened a little more carefully.
For most of my adult life, I’ve believed in the myth of fairtrade - which is the concept that poor farmers get a better price for their crops by encouraging thoughtful and good-willing consumers to pay a premium for their products. Initially I thought it was an idea which would change the world. Later I revised that to believe that it was at least doing something positive for the families who grew fairtrade products. At the same time I believed that there was something seriously wrong with world trade when the rich got everything they dreamed of whilst the poor suffered.
Over 15 years (and many, many others have been at it much longer), we wrote letters to supermarkets, held street protests, repeated various stunts to bring the public’s attention to the unfair way that the poorest farmers were treated and the good of choosing fairtrade. Eventually we persuaded the supermarkets that there was an ‘ethical’ market and that consumers would - shockingly - pay more for certain products. Suddenly ethical was mainstream. Read the rest of this entry »
01-20-2008 |
17 Comments »