Sunday, May 3, 2009
NPR: Fair Trade Markets Growing Quickly
Listen to it here! http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103270772&sc=emaf
For the Environment
Nicaraguan coffee grower, Blanca Rosa Molina
Fair Trade product highlight: TEA
Tea is the worlds second most popular beverage. Limited to certain growing regions, India, Sri Lanka, China and Kenya have plantations with labor intensive work where women pick buds from the camellia synthesis by hand under a hot sun. The amount they earn is determined by how much is gathered, often based upon minimum wage if it even exists for their country. In many cases, their earnings amount to a US $1 a day. In March 2004, 800 tea workers in India were reported to have died of starvation, surviving on roots and wild rats. In Assam, chemicals and pesticides are often spayed and mixed by child laborers who are not provided masks or gloves, and are often illiterate or too young to read the warnings. Research in Sri Lanka shows that deaths as a result of pesticide use are also not uncommon. Some tea estates are now qualifying for fair trade. Minimum standards for health an d safety must be met with to qualify. Some of these include; no employment for children under 15, a paid premium for social, environmental, or economic programs must be paid to invest in programs for workers, "joint bodies," where workers can have a direct connection with managers and owners in decision making.
About International Trade
Trade has been an important aspect in learning about and diversifying culture for thousands of years. Using desirable skills or receiving goods that are not available in one region and receiving them to another has been occurring since the beginning of humanity. International trade has improved living standards and communities for some, but for others there is a large power struggle and oppression, where their tasks or goods are in demand, but their hard work and labor does not equate to what they are paid. Trade Liberalization, a WTO border-less approach to govern trade has made the position for small-scale farmers and developing nations worse. Only in parts of Asia, including South Korea,Taiwan, Indonesia, and China, has there been any significant reduction in slavery, and they have not followed the trade liberalization route.
Funds for Education
"The higher price we get when we sell coffee on fair trade terms means that I can afford more food for my family and send my children to school with pens and notebooks for the first time," says a Peruvian coffee trader.
Kuapa Kokoo, a Fair Trade Ghanian cocoa co-op with 45,000 farmer members has set up schools and nurseries for their communities. Kuapa earned about one million dollars in extra income through fair trade over the past eight years- equivalent to annual primary schooling costs for 245,000 children in Ghana.
Divine chocolate supports this co-op http://www.divinechocolate.com/
10 good reasons to buy fair trade
- give plantation workers a fair and living wage
- back a system that benefits the poor
- support gender equality
- ensure health care for workers
- provide funds that will assist in education
- trust in environmental responsibility
- help workers rebound from natural disasters
- protest hazardous working conditions and the
use of dangerous chemicals around laborers
- keep families and communities together
-pressure large corporations for change in their policy
Fair trade and Human Rights
Fair Trade Promotes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
article 23 states: -everyone has the right to work, and to protection against unemployment
- everyone without any discrimination has the right to equal pay for equal work
- everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented if necessary by other means of social protection
article 25 states: everyone has a right to a standard of living, adequate for the health and well being of himself and his family
"although the UDHR was agreed upon half a century ago, there are problems with compliance, especially among business corporations. There is still no mechanism to ensure that non state mechanisms comply with these and other international standards. Failure to recognize the importance of rights means that large companies who operate Internationally are often in breach with basic human rights through their actions." (Litvinoff)
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