So Shines A Good Deed
I wasn’t quite sure what aspect of poverty to write this post for the Blog Action Day on. The obvious one would be poverty in Scotland. We have loads of press releases, newspaper stories, and as far as I can tell, forgotten government targets to eliminate child poverty. But I’ve been campaigning for Fairtrade for a few years, so I thought that might make a more interesting topic.
A Fairtrade campaign isn’t really an environmental one, there’s food-miles to take into account, and no commitment to produce fair trade produce in an environmentally sustainable way, but fair trade does do a lot to alleviate poverty in, primarily, farming communities. Unfortunately, and, I suppose, inevitably, as the campaigning for fair trade, and its share of the market for things like coffee or bananas has grown, so has the criticism.
Fairtrade will never end all the poverty in the world: true. Fairtrade is anti-market: only a tiny bit true. And so on, and so forth with the list of criticisms. During a debate on fairtrade which I held during Fairtrade Fortnight last March, one of the speakers, Paul Cammack, used a quote from the ‘Merchant of Venice’:
“how far that little candle throws its beams, so shines a good deed in a naughty world”
This is a pretty good description of the utility of fair-trade. No, fair-trade will not end all poverty, but it is a valuable measure to take while the argument for a fairer global trading system is put, and hopefully won. Surely, it is better to ensure that at least some people are able to access electricity, clean water, health care, education, and the basic infrastructure needed for a decent quality of life, not to mention allowing diversification into other more profitable crops, than it is to deny this to everyone until the long uphill slog of reforming global trade systems is complete?
So go and buy more Fairtrade coffee, tea, bananas, wine, clothes, or any of the myriad products on offer. But also get out pen and paper, and write to your MSP, MP, MEP, eurodéputé, or whatever you call people in power, and demand that everyone is given a fair shot in the global trade system.