Fossil fuels are frying the planet.
Stakeholder Democracy Network
- Is climate change such an immediate and overwhelming threat to the livelihoods of poor farmers that we just should focus on minimising our carbon impact? Does that imply only buying local and organic produce?
- Are chocolate, tea and coffee unneccessary goods we should simply stop buying?
- If people will buy these products anyway, should we focus on the farmers being paid decently through Fairtrade and thereby increase their chances of surviving the climate chaos they are facing?
In short, does the “ethical consumer” face a dilemma between decreasing the environmental impact of their consumption and consuming “luxury” products poor farmers benefit from?
“Yes”, says Claire Fauset:
Climate change isnīt going to happen. It already IS happening. Rising sea temperatures have changed the rainfall patterns of Eastern Africa and previously fertile lands are now barren, their ex-farmers forced out by hunger and poverty. Rising sea levels mean lands in Bangladesh that used to flood every couple of decades now flood every year, and the people who lived there have become destitute refugees. The overconsumption of fossil fuels is the major culprit. Of those consumers, it is we rich Northern nations who are the prime criminals. How can we encourage and expand trade to benefit poor farmers when our methods of doing so assault other poor farmers?
All the Fairtrade stuff — chocolate, coffee, mangoes, ornaments, etc — are luxuries.We do not need them. This means that they are vulnerable to a change in taste or fashions, and so do not provide long-term security for farmers the way feeding themselves does. But more to the point, we need drastic cuts in our use of fossil fuels. Surely one of the first places to start is the long-distance freighting of unnecessary items.
Our first priority should be to only buy what we need. If Fairtrade gives us an excuse for unsustainable indulgence, then it blinds our consciences to the greater damage done by fossil fuel use. It makes us continue to see the world in terms of long distance trade and undermines localisation of food supply that is the only hope for feeding humanity sustainably.”
Clare Fauset is a UK activist and performance poet.
“No”, says John Clutterbuck:
Food miles are controversial. They account for a small proportion - about 3% - of total UK carbon emissions, far less than is generated by home and office equipment on standby, or by private motoring. Transport is only one of the factors involved in the production and consumption of food, which also include soil cultivation, fertiliser and pesticide use (for non-organics), packaging, processing and storage, consumer travel to and from shops, preparation for table and disposal of waste.
Carbon emissions on transport of Fairtrade products to the UK are estimated to be equivalent to 0.03% of UK food mile emissions in 2005. This includes airfreight of flowers from Kenya, the only Fairtrade products to arrive by air in 2005.
Despite food miles on Fairtrade products, net sustainability is increased through growth in Fairtrade because of the benefits Fairtrade provides to producers in developing countries. For example, increases in the Fairtrade shares in the UK markets for bananas or sugar increases overall sustainability. Fairtrade and local should be seen as complementary, not mutually exclusive”
John Clutterbuck is a volunteer at the Fairtrade Foundation. This piece represents his personal views, not those of the Fairtrade Foundation
What do you say?
Express your opinion on the online discussion Forum, set up and run for and by campaigners in the People & Planet network. A selection of comments will be published below on this website.
“Fairtrade will in the long run do more to slow down climate change than a western consumer panicking over food miles”, says Ben West
If we want a safe, secure and prosperous world, we need to see poverty and inequality in the World’s economic systems as one of the driving forces behind environmental damage, and enviromental damage as one of the driving forces behind economic inequality, resulting in a cycle with one feeding into the other.
Fairtrade is potentially a way of turning that vicious cycle into a virtuous one. By providing a means for extra investment into producer communities, an opportunity is provided for economic development to take place in a much greener, sustainable way than has happened in the West. By focusing on the community, Faitrade can provide a sense of self-respect and shared interest to communities, as well as ones in which the proceeds of development and trade are used for the benefit of the locality. Such principles, by implication, are going to provide an incentive as well as a means for those communities to behave in a way which is beneficial not just to themselves, but the land which provides their livlihood.
An impoverished tenant farmer or a distant landlord do not have the same incentive to behave in an environmentally sensible way as those in a sustainable livlihood with economic security and the ability to plan and invest in the future.
CO₂, whilst one of the causes of global warming, is still just a symptom of a much wider problem; the disconnect between livelihoods and the land upon which they depend. Fairtrade, by promoting and preserving that link, will, in the long run, do considerably more to slow down climate change than a western consumer panicking over food miles. To stop buying these commodities would be an environmental disaster in itself when you consider the widespread economic upheaval which would result.
Ben West is a P&P activist at King Edward IV’s School in Southampton
“We need full lifecycle assessments, not food miles junk!”, says Tom Chance
I think the key is to make policy based upon evidence, specifically full lifecycle assessments (LCAs) that provide ecological footprint profiles for different products.
The food miles is gaining traction, but it’s dangerous because it’s quite possible that the CO₂ emissions associated with the transport of food is outweighed by the CO₂ from other stages such as production, storage and disposal. The New Zealand government allege this is the case with lamb, ie that it’s better to import shipped lamb from green NZ where they use few energy-intensive chemicals and a lot of renewable energy, than to buy local non-organic lamb in the UK where our farmers use masses of energy-intensive chemicals, electricity and other sources of CO₂ emissions. Note that this example is really just an allegation, since nobody has verified the study, and it doesn’t consider organic lamb. It also doesn’t look at the impact of intensive agriculture in developing countries. There’s a good study recently commissioned by Defra here.
It may well, therefore, be better to import essential items from abroad than to produce our own. But we should make these decisions based upon carefully researched LCAs rather than simplistic arguments like food miles.
When it comes to Fairtrade produce, I’d guess that the different products are pretty low-energy to produce and if shipped they’re not going to contribute a lot of CO₂. But their development potential is huge, and if the democratic aspects are beefened up they could also help communities develop in an environmentally sound way.
So… local and organic of course, because that’s relatively uncontroversial… but in general we need LCAs people, not food miles junk, and we should continue to support initiatives that help communities develop towards environmental and social justice!”
Tom Chance is a student member of People & Planet’s management committee.