The February meeting of Enfield Climate Action Forum (EnCAF) focussed on the links between injustice in the global trade system and continuing failure to reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases.
Recently a campaign was launched to regain Enfield's former status as a Fairtrade Borough, and the meeting included four presentations on how the Fairtrade movement could help combat climate change. In addition, a new video from GlobalNet21 takes a wider look at how skewed the current system of trade agreements is skewed against poorer countries and against efforts to prevent a climate catastrophe.
Below you can watch the presentations by Bill Linton on the resurgence of the Fairtrade movement in Enfield; by Elaine Graham-Leigh on Fairtrade and climate change; by Rev Melanie Smith on the meaning of Fairtrade; and by Delia Mattis on the links between poverty, trade injustice and climate change.
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Click for the text version of Bill Linton's presentation
Enfield used to be a Fairtrade Borough – we gained that status in 2008, but afterwards the campaign lost momentum & eventually our status. We were actually in the process of winding things up when Melanie [Smith] rode into town, guns blazing, and turned things around. So now we're aiming to get our status back again, though now it will be as a Fairtrade Community.
EnCAF is about climate change, so what has Fairtrade got to do with climate change? Elaine will be going into it in more detail shortly, but essentially it's about social justice – we aren't going to tackle climate change without social justice. Poor people who struggle to feed their families can't afford to worry about taking care of the environment. If they need to burn down a bit of rainforest to plant crops, the rainforest will burn. And when climate change really starts to bite - as indeed it is already starting to do - it will bite them first and hardest, and many of them – millions of them - will head for Europe as their only hope of survival. You can imagine what European governments will make of that.
So, Fairtrade is about ensuring that farmers get paid a fair return for their produce. Melanie will be going into the details later, but what concerns us is that they can only sell at Fairtrade prices what we buy at this end of the supply chain. In fact most Fairtrade co-operatives can only sell a proportion of what they produce at Fairtrade prices, the rest has to go on the open market. So our campaign is to get Fairtrade worked into every corner of Enfield life. We won't get our Fairtrade Community status back just from having a lot of shops selling Fairtrade products – though that's an important bit of it. We also need pubs and restaurants stocking Fairtrade wine or cooking with Fairtrade ingredients; places of worship supporting Fairtrade – ideally as Fairtrade PoWs - they don't have to go that far, but of course we hope they do; schools teaching about Fairtrade and again ideally becoming Fairtrade schools; the council passing a supportive motion – which I am pleased to say they have already done – and using Fairtrade products in council building such s the Dugdale Centre; workplaces where the staff get their tea and coffee FT.
That's where I'm hoping that all of you come in, both in ensuring that all of that happens, in your workplace, in your PoW, in your children's schools – and also in ensuring we know about it when it does happen. We need publicity too, in local newspapers, newsletters and on social media.
It's quite a bit to do, but we're up for it.
This week EnCAF released a further video on the same subject, in which Francis Sealy interviews Ruth Bergan, co-ordinator of the Trade Justice Movement