Fair trade and sustainable development practices
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/dl.v20i28.115199Keywords:
Fair Trade, Sustainable Development Goals, modernization, poverty alleviation, green consumptionAbstract
There is consumer interest in organic and fair trade products globally. This has created a growing interest for producing agricultural products, which meet the standards for organic and fair trade products. This paper critically discusses fair trade as notion and in practice and connects the analysis of production of fair trade quinoa in a community in Southern Bolivia with Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). According to World Fair Trade Organization fair trade will improve environmental sustainability both at local level and globally as peasants in global South have opportunities to export organic products to markets in the global North, which will also have the result of empowering producers. This paper poses the question whether fair trade is alleviating poverty and supporting local producers creating environmentally sound technologies (Sustainable Development Goal 12, Target 12a) – in this case in communities in the highlands (Altiplano) in Southern Bolivia. The paper critically discusses sustainable development and the Sustainable Development Goals and questions whose interests Sustainable Development Goal 12 is primarily serving: consumers or producers. The discussion concludes that initiatives like fair trade and policies based on global goals can have unintended consequences, which are disadvantageous to local communities.
References
Askegaard, Søren. 2006. “Brands as a global ideoscape.” In: Brand culture, edited by Jonathan E. Schroeder and Miriam Salzer-Mörling, 81-91. London: Routledge.
Bebbington, Anthony; Hickey, Sam; Mitlin, Diana (eds.). 2008. Can NGOs make a difference? The challenge of development alternatives. London: Zed Books.
Carant, Jane Briant. 2017. “Unheard voices: a critical discourse analysis of the Millenium Development Goals’ evolution into the Sustainable Development Goals.” Third World Quarterly 38 (1): 16-41.
Carimentrand, Aurélie; Baudoin, Andrea; Lacroix, Pierril; Bazile, Didier; Chia, Eduardo. 2015. “Quinoa trade in Andean countries: opportunities and challenges for family.” In State of the art report on quinoa around the world in 2013, edited by Didier Bazile, Daniel Bertero and Carlos Nieto, 330-342. Rome: FAO/CIRAD.
Castaldo, Sandro; Perrini, Franceso; Misani, Nicola; Tencati, Antonio. 2009. “The missing link between corporate social responsibility and consumer trust: the case of fair trade products.” Journal of Business Ethics 84 (1): 1-15.
Collyer, Fran M. 2018. “Global patterns in the publishing of academic knowledge: Global North, Global South.” Australia Current Sociology 66 (1): 56-73.
Cornwall, Andrea. 2002. “Making spaces, changing places: situating participation in development.” IDS Working Paper 170. Institute of Development Studies, 1 January 2002. <https://www.ids.ac.uk/publications/making-spaces-changing-places-situating-participation-in-development/>. Retrieved 17 December 2019.
Doherty, Bob; Davies, Iain A.; Tranchell, Sophi (2013): “Where now for fair trade?” Business History 55 (2): 161-189.
European Fair Trade Association. 2002. EFTA Yearbook. Maastricht: EFTA.
Fairtrade International. n.d. <https://www.fairtrade.net/>. Accessed 17 December 2019.
Fuentes, Christian. 2014a: “Green materialities: marketing and the socio-material construction of green products.” Business Strategy and the Environment 23 (2): 105-116.
Fuentes, Christian. 2014b. “Managing green complexities: consumers’ strategies and techniques for greener shopping.” International Journal of Consumer Studies 38 (5): 485-492.
Glasbergen, Pieter. 2018. “Smallholders do not eat certificates.” Ecological Economics 147: 243-252
Hudson, Ian; Hudson, Mark. 2009. “Review articles.” Historical Materialism 17 (2): 237-252.
Jaffee, Daniel. 2012. “Weak coffee: certification and co-optation in the fair trade movement.” Social Problems 59 (1): 94-116.
Eriksen, Thomas Hyllander. 2015. Small places, large issues: an introduction to social and cultural anthropology. London: Pluto Press.
Klein, Naomi. 2009. No Logo. New York: St. Martins Press.
Jacobsen, Sven-Erik. 2003. “The worldwide potential for quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.).” Food Reviews International 19 (1-2): 167-177.
Long, Norman (ed.). 1989. Encounters at the interface: a perspective on social discontinuities in rural development. Wageningen: Agricultural University.
Ofstehage, Andrew. 2012. “The construction of an alternative quinoa economy: balancing solidarity, household needs, and profit in San Agustín, Bolivia.” Agriculture and Human Values 29 (4): 441-454.
Parpart, Jane L.; Veltmeyer, Henry. 2004. “The development project in theory and practice: a review of its shifting dynamics.” Canadian Journal of Development Studies /Revue canadienne d’études du développement 25 (1): 39-59.
Raynolds, Laura T.; Murray, Douglas L.; Heller, Andrew. 2007. “Regulating sustainability in the coffee sector: a comparative analysis of third-party environmental and social certification initiatives.” Agriculture and Human Values 24 (2): 147-163.
Raynolds, Laura T; Murray, Douglas L.; Wilkinson, John (eds.). 2007. Fair trade: the challenges of transforming globalization. London: Routledge.
Sachs, Jeffrey D. 2012. “From Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals.” The Lancet 379 (9832): 2206-2211.
Stenzel, Paulette L. 2012. “The pursuit of equilibrium as the eagle meets the condor: supporting sustainable development through fair trade.” American Business Law Journal 49 (3): 557-642.
Valiente-Riedl, Isabel. 2013. Is fair trade fair? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Winkel, Thierry; Bommel, Pierre; Chevarría-Lazo, Marco; Cortes, Geneviève; Del Castillo, Carmen; Gasselin, Pierre; Léger, François; Nina-Laura, Juan-Peter; Rambal, Serge; Tichit, Muriel; Tourrand, Jean-François; Vacher, Jean-Joinville; Vassas-Toral, Anaïs; Vieira-Pak, Manuela; Joffre, Richard. 2016. “Panarchy of an indigenous agroecosystem in the globalized market: the quinoa production in the Bolivian Altiplano.” Global Environmental Change 39: 195-204.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Counting from volume 31 (2022), articles published in Diálogos Latinoamericanos are licensed under CC-BY 4.0. Read more about the license terms here https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
No Creative Commons license applied on volumes 1-30. All rights reserved by the authors. Readers may download, read, and link to the articles, but they cannot republish the articles.
With the publication of volume 31 (2022), authors retain the full copyright to their articles and give Diálogos Latinoamericanos the right to the first publication. Authors also retain copyright to earlier versions of manuscripts, such as the submitted (pre-print) and the accepted manuscript (post-print).
Copyright to articles published in volumes 1-30 is held by the authors.
