Thoughts on the International Fair Trade Towns Conference (4-5 July 2015) from Joanna Pollard, Aztec Arts and member of York Fair Trade Forum
We walked into the party like we were walking onto a yacht – OK we were stepping off one of the many small ferries which ply the waterways on which Bristol is built, but the Friday night party at the Create Centre (http://www.createbristol.org/) was a great start to the 9th International Fair Trade Towns Conference. The venue is a haven of environmental and sustainable living and the food we shared was all either local, sustainable or fair trade. This proved to be the perfect launch to the conference whose theme was “How Green Is Fairtrade?”. Not only is application of the Fairtrade mark partly decided on the basis of envionmental concerns, Principle 10 of the WFTO Ten Principles is specifically concerned with protecting the environment, so fair trade is definitely a green issue.
The impact of climate change on Latin American coffee farmers was brought home by the first speaker on Saturday, Fatima Ismael of Nicaraguan coffee farming co-operative Soppexcca. It seemed natural that the conference should be kicked off by a producer, and Fatima’s research on the impact of increasingly unpredictable weather – hurricanes and cyclones as well as increasing temperatures – showed delegates how important it is to safeguard livelihoods. Leaf rust is not only causing one-off harvests to fail, but entire plantations to die. One solution is to diversify – plant other crops like cocoa, but the most sustainable answer is for fair trade farmers to produce goods for marketing to consumers in their own country, reducing food miles and connecting more people into the fair trade movement.
The environmental impact of unfair trading practices was highlighted by Greg Valerio, pioneer of Fairtrade gold. The traditional way of extracting gold, whether in Africa or Latin America, is to use mercury, whose negative impact on health has been well documented. Miners experience health problems or give birth to children with birth defects because they are neither educated about nor protected against the harmful effects of mercury. Greg’s impassioned plea for us to campaign for Fairtrade gold to be more widely available was one of the great calls to action of this conference.
Linda McAvan MEP and Harriet Lamb talked about the wider political implications of fair trade campaigning, reassuring us that our pleas are heard at a local, national and global level, so please don’t give up.
Mossley’s Fair Ted with Joanna and partner Dave
A series of workshops covering lots of different aspects of fair trade campaigning made up most of the rest of the conference. I attended a workshop about regional networking which also contained one of the most interesting attendees, the mayor of a Lebanese fair trade town, one of ten in the country. Lebanon is, along with Ghana, pioneering the roll out of fair trade towns in the global south, where fair trade is seen as a way for people to buy local and support local artisans and farmers. We hope to make further connections with Lebanese fair trade campaigners and support their goods.
On Saturday evening we were taken on a very informative bus tour around Bristol – marred only when the guide suggested we might have been shopping in Primark – if there was a group of people guaranteed not to have been shopping there, it was us! The tour ended at the Passenger Shed next to Bristol Temple Meads station where the sustainability theme was continued as we were treated to a meal made by charity FareShare (http://www.fareshare.org.uk/) from food that would otherwise have been thrown away some of which had been rescued from the previous weekend’s Glastonbury festival. Entertainment was provided by a choir from a local Fairtrade primary school and after their bedtime by a group of folk musicians who taught us country dancing. Great fun was had by all and it was especially great for attendees from the 20 countries outside the UK to join in this traditional British entertainment.
Sunday was a day for networking and reflecting – Bruce Crowther, godfather of the Fairtrade towns movement, Adam Gardner of the Fairtrade Foundation and Tadeusz Makulski pioneer of International Fair Trade Towns explained how the movement has reached over 1700 towns across the world and WFTO President Rudi Dalvai explained how fair trade organisations, rather than products with the Fairtrade mark, may hold the key to the expansion of fair trade towns.
Our Sunday workshop was led by representatives from the USA and Sweden and was a nuts-and-bolts examination of social media, including our very own Twitter party. Open Space was something I’d never heard of before – an opportunity for everyone to find a group who wanted to talk about what most interested them. Often we find it easiest in big groups to talk to people we recognise and already know, so this was a great chance for delegates to meet each other in a semi formal context. Tables were set up to facilitate discussion around broad themes, and delegates joined and moved around as the mood took them.
The Conference ended with a call to action – asking delegates to sign a resolution to work with local green and environmental groups to forward the cause of trade justice and to support the right of producers and farmers to be represented in any political decision which affects them.
Joanna Pollard