Sustainable Development

The Fairtrade Town initiative makes a direct contribution towards Agenda 21, adopted by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development on 14th June 1992, ‘a global partnership for sustainable development’. Fairtrade Town status, represents the positive commitment of the Borough Council not only to sustainable development but also to global poverty alleviation.

ADENDA 21

Agenda 21, is an international agreement, adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, June 14th 1992. It was agreed that participating countries would devise national action plans to promote sustainable development – “…to improve the living standards of those who are in need…(to) better manage and protect the ecosystem and bring about a more prosperous future for us all”(Agenda 21 Press Summary). To this end, local authorities were to draw up their own action plans in keeping with the agreed criteria for Agenda 21.

The Fairtrade Town initiative feeds directly into this global initiative, through its support for small producers in the developing world. The underlying premise being that small producers, dependant on their land for their day to day survival, will use their best efforts to farm their land in a sustainable manner. In contrast, cash cropping, often a method employed by large companies or governments anxious to provide export revenue to service national debt repayments, encourages land degradation, deforestation, desertification and reduced bio-diversity.

Also, crops sold for export will not contribute to feeding local populations, or encourage recycling of cash in the local environment. Therefore, the poor get poorer. Similarly, liberalised trade laws mean that small producers are unable to compete when mass produced goods from multinational companies flood the home markets and they are forced to sell to unscrupulous ‘middle men’ for a price which does not meet the cost of production. They sink deeper into the spiral of debt and poverty and are either forced off of their land or reduced to farming in a totally un-sustainable manner in an effort to meet the daily struggle for survival. The result is often environmental degradation – e.g. felling of trees etc.

http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/about_benefits_environment.htm