Main Aims of Fair Trade Movement

Main Aims of Fair Trade Movement

Introduction

Fair Trade is an organized social movement and market-based approach that aims to help producers in developing countries and promote sustainability. The movement advocates the payment of a higher price to producers as well as social and environmental standards. It focuses in particular on exports from developing countries to developed countries, most notably handicrafts, coffee, cocoa, sugar, tea, bananas, honey, cotton, wine, fresh fruit, chocolate and flowers. (Worthington, Ian and Britton, Chris 2006)

Fair Trade's strategic intent is to work with marginalized producers and workers in order to help them move towards economic self-sufficiency and stability. It also aims to allow them to become greater stakeholders in their own organizations, as well as play a wider role in international trade. Fair Trade proponents include a number of international development aid, social, religious and environmental organizations such as Christian Aid, SERRV International, Oxfam, Amnesty International, Catholic Relief Services, and Caritas International. (Worthington, Ian and Britton, Chris 2006)

A common criticism of the current way of economic globalisation is that international trade is now used by the large corporate interests to suit their agendas, setting up or omitting the rules and generally undermining the income of the most disadvantaged groups. For instance, it is stated that 48 of the world's poorest countries account for only 0.4 per cent of world trade. Since 1980 their share has halved. Five hundred multinational companies now control almost two thirds of world trade, and the world's five largest companies together generate annual sales greater than the combined incomes of the forty-six poorest countries in the world (Worthington, Ian and Britton, Chris 2006). IMF/Word Bank are heavily criticised for requiring further trade liberalisation as a condition for loans; liberalisation that is not applied by the rich countries to their own import barriers(Worthington, Ian and Britton, Chris 2006)

Fair Trade Movement Succeed: Explanation

In this context the Fair Trade initiative is relevant, as a parallel mini-system inserted into the larger one, presenting a different(Worthington, Ian and Britton, Chris 2006) kind of values in order to show that a difference can be made in the outcomes of trade. This section aims at looking at the Fair Trade Market from a different perspective. Not by making a critique of its weaknesses, but by trying to understand it as an element of a broader movement, which this paper will call the Fair Trade Movement. The following analysis is not limited to the realm of Alternative Trading Organizations (ATOS) but covers a broader mobilization that, through different actions and common values, is taking place out of concern for the principles of the current dominant framework of world trade. It will examine the way collective action constructs instruments to address the outcomes of implementing values of competition, rather than those of cooperation and solidarity, and the way this effort grows beyond frontiers and is linked at present with directly affected groups and grass-roots movements that share the same ...