The Wuppertal Institute hits the mark once again, but it's an awfully wide target
By Dan Swartz
'Fair Future': Edited by Wolfgang Sachs & Tilman Santarious
Published by Zed Books
I first came into contact with the Wuppertal Institute's groundbreaking research almost 15 years ago while participating in ANPED's Sustainable Production and Consumption campaign. Wuppertal were pioneers in developing campaigning tools such as 'ecological footprint,' 'ecological rucksack' and 'food miles' — terms which have become commonplace in today's environmental parlance.
In Fair Future, published in English translation in 2007, Sachs and Santorius draw from a deep well of disciplines and contributors to explore the topics of social justice and environmental sustainability. While the book is grounded in solid scholarship, conveniently indexed, and (as far as I can tell) carefully translated, it also contains reams of graphs, charts and statistical data that make some arguably excessive demands on the casual reader. (Collecting this information into an appendix might have been a more reader-friendly option.)
The important territory that Fair Future covers in its seven chapters is quite broad and beyond the scope of this review, but as a vendor of Fair Trade coffee I was particularly interested in the book's focus on 'free trade.' The authors write: "It would not be surprising if future historians looked back to the Fair Trade movement as a laboratory for the reshaping of the world economy. It is a niche where principles have been tried out that may one day become building blocks for a sustainable system of world trade." This is a commendable statement, but I still think the book fails to explore Fair Trade in satisfactory detail. Nor is Fair Future as pointedly critical of the world's 'free trade' mechanisms as I would expect, given the source.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is, in fact, a powerful global bureaucracy through which unelected trade bureaucrats are empowered to decide the fate of democratically achieved laws. If any local, state or federal law of a WTO member country is found to violate the organisation's trade rules (focusing on free trade of goods and services), the law must be changed or that country can face economic sanctions. NGOs have voiced concerns that the supposed benefits of free trade have been overtaken by trade sanction threats that are used to dismantle environmental, human rights and consumer protection in favour of corporate interests. For example, positive eco-labelling, such as 'dolphin-safe' and 'turtle-safe' — which let consumers know that drift-nets have not been used in fishing for tuna or sea turtles killed when fishing for shrimp — have become illegal under WTO rulings.
In alternative trade organisations, 'fair trade' means that trading partnerships are based on reciprocal benefits and mutual respect; that prices paid to producers reflect the work they do; that workers have the right to organise; that national health, safety, and wage laws are enforced; and that products are environmentally sustainable and conserve natural resources. Worldwide Fair Trade sales total USD 400 million each year, and yet many people remain unaware that such alternative markets exist.
Fair Trade bypasses calls for 'special deferential treatment' of poorer southern countries by guaranteeing fairer salaries and conditions for workers, cleaner and ethical production. In the WTO and 'free trade' world, the market is still skewed unfairly by state subsidies, such as the USD 1 billion that the US pays its farmers each year not to grow food, and another billion to buy surplus food to keep consumer prices (but not farmers' incomes) artificially high.
While Fair Future is certainly a worthy publication, I find its language and information not quite fresh or 'cutting edge' enough for readers already familiar with the subject matter, but too technical for those who are not.
