The international fair trade movement is pushing for new rules to protect marginalized producers.
But first, it is specifying what fair trade is -- and what it is not.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick spoke of the need for "fair trade" on his visit to China in October. "The Chinese economy and consumers will benefit from more openness to U.S. goods," he said. "American farmers, manufacturers, and service providers are ready to compete in China, but to do so, they need full and fair access."
But the fair trade Zoellick was referring to is worlds apart from what the international fair trade movement has been promoting for the last 40 years.
In his world, fair trade is dependent on free trade.
Supporters of fair trade say that exchanges between developed and the less-developed countries take place on uneven terms, and should be made more equitable by protecting the weaker countries.
Free traders maintain that in the long run markets will correct the imbalance, and both rich and poor countries will benefit from full access to each others' markets. In this way, free traders hold that free trade is fair trade.
In a joint statement ahead of the Hong Kong trade ministers' meet next week, four leading fair trade networks have set out their recommendations on the major issues of the Doha trade development round: agriculture, commodities, non-agricultural market access, and special and differential treatment.
"A key principle in trade policy currently missing from the WTO is that every country should have the right to food security and sovereignty, and should be entitled to protect strategic sectors in its economy," says Monica Di Sisto, co-author of the common position statement.
"The fair trade movement also believes that rich countries have a moral obligation to stop all forms of trade-distorting subsidy and dumping on world markets, as the impact of these practices on the poorest has been devastating," she added in her statement.
The four associations are based mostly in Europe, but their members represent many southern producers and distributors.
They are the Netherlands-based International Fair Trade Association (IFAT), the Germany-based Fair Trade Labeling Organizations International (FLO-I), the Network of European Worldshops (NEWS!) representing approximately 2,500 fair trade shops, and the European Fair Trade Association (EFTA), with a special advocacy office in Brussels.
According to FLO-I, fair trade-labeled sales grew as much as 42.3 percent between 2002 and 2003. EFTA believes such sales now exceed half a billion euro a year worldwide.
The fastest-growing markets are Belgium, France, Italy and the United States, with growth rates between 80 percent and 700 percent.
More than 4,000 small-scale and marginalized producer groups and hundreds of thousands of workers in more than 50 developing countries are said to participate in fair trade supply chains.
More than 5 million people in Africa, Latin America and Asia benefit from fair trade terms, fair trade promoters say. Most of this trade is in traditional commodities produced by small farmers or crafts people.
In a controversial move, some multinational companies have also begun marketing under fair trade labels. The Swiss firm Nestle has launched a fair trade-certified coffee branded Partners' Blend that comes from five small producer cooperatives in Ethiopia and El Salvador.
This coffee, the label declares, "helps farmers, their communities and the environment." The fair trade label has been released by the Britain-based Fairtrade Foundation, a part of FLO-I, even though many groups boycott the company for promoting artificial milk to breastfeeding mothers.
The groups say this artificial milk only encourages women to stop breastfeeding their infants, and indirectly provokes the death of thousands of children from lack of clean water and money to buy the milk.
Paolo Pastore, director of Transfair Italy (a certifier of fair trade products, and member of FLO-I) is against certification of a single product, which he says can lead to whitewashing of an otherwise unverified company.
"We are not afraid of working with multinational companies on fair trade issues, but only if they demonstrate that they are effectively moving towards being socially responsible, respecting the international norms of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labor Organization (ILO), as well as allowing others to monitor their behavior," he told IPS.
"That means that the change has to happen 360 degrees, and not just on one product or in one field," he said. "The same has to happen at the government level: to promote really free and globalized trade, regulations must consider not just the economic and commercial aspects, but also a better distribution of resources, the cancellation of debt for the poorest countries, and the well-being of people who live there."
The fair trade movement will hold a "fair trade fair" one block away from the Hong Kong Exhibition Center where WTO trade negotiators will meet.
The three-day event is being organized by a group that includes the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (U.S.), quitterre (Canada), Gerster Consulting (Switzerland), Oxfam Hong Kong, and the Asia Fair Trade Forum (the Philippines). It is being sponsored by the Swiss and Canadian governments.IPS-Inter Press Service
