I have been giving a lot of thought these days to the issue of fairness of the international food trade. I caught myself thinking – what would happen to developing economies if Europe suddenly decided to be a food autarchy? A big chain of thoughts came out and it all started after I read some information on a box of hibiscus juice!
Researching on the subject, I came across this article by Kevin Morgan: “ Local and green, global and fair: the ethical foodscape and the politics of care” (Morgan – Ethical foodscape and care – 2010). Both local and fair trade food, he argues, are part of the ethical foodscape, “which enshrines values associated with ecological integrity and social justice, the two key features of a sustainable agrifood system”. However, despite being ethical, local food chains are not synonymous with sustainable food chains (and, I dare to say, neither is fair trade). So far, so good for me.
Making a synthesis, the author declares that locally produced and fairly traded food can both be part of a sustainable food system when the latter is framed in cosmopolitan terms. Why is that? Because of climate change and because people care. Climate change is very unjust: those who have done least to cause it are the ones to be most affected. And people care for others “because this is what being sustainable means in an ecologically interdependent world”. The answer is to be an ecological citizen (explaining: “those who occupy ecological space in such a way as to compromise or foreclose the ability of others in present and future generations to pursue options important to them, owe obligations of ecological citizenship”). Is the creator of this concept implying that fair trade should be preferred? I can’t really say I have a problem with that. But how? The example given by Morgan: “paying poor countries to maintain standing forests and helping to develop clean coal technologies like carbon capture and storage”. And then I have a problem.
The problem is that the analysis changed from the private to the public realm, leaving the dilemma of ethical-wanna-be-sustainable consumers in Europe yet to be solved. I can understand States embodying a collectivity of ecological citizens when they decide to pay for environmental services, but how can an ecological citizen be different of an ethical consumer in the personal realm? In a capitalist economy, where exchanges among people are mediated by money, in how many ways can an individual that occupies too much ecological space realize the obligations he/she owns towards people that don’t? Maybe, if environmental costs were internalized, there would be a difference between them, but for that, again, the public sector is needed.
Let’s assume I say it’s OK that my country pays for the maintenance of forests in the developing world, but how about my fair traded product that maybe doesn’t have the same environmental benefits of a local product? Or, like argued in the paper, food miles don’t make any sense and the carbon footprint of product lifecycles is what matters. Let’s say, both imported and local products have the same environmental costs, and I care equally about my neighbour and an African farmer. Which one should I buy?
Perhaps the solution is in this other paper I read, entitled “Does farm worker health vary between localised and globalised food supply systems?” (Cross – Farm worker health – 2009). In its abstract, the authors wrote: “Significant environmental benefits are claimed for local food systems, but these biophysical indicators are increasingly recognised as inadequate descriptors of supply chain ethics. Social factors such as health are also important indicators of good practice, and are recognised … as important to the development of rounded sustainable agricultural practices. This study compared the self-reported health status of farm workers in the UK, Spain, Kenya and Uganda who were supplying distant markets with fresh vegetables. Workers on Kenyan export horticulture farms reported significantly higher levels of physical health than did Kenyan non-export farm workers and workers in the other study countries. Mean health levels for farm workers in the UK were significantly lower than relevant population norms, indicating widespread levels of poor health amongst these workers. These results suggest that globalised supply chains can provide social benefits to workers, while local food systems do not always provide desirable social outcomes. The causal mechanisms of these observations probably relate more to the social conditions of workers than directly to income”.
This last paper briefly mentions that it was theoretically informed by the capability approach, which lies in the heart of the human development paradigm (BTW: human development, sustainable development, economic development… in how many ways can one develop?). Capabilities are defined as “the substantive freedoms one enjoys to lead the kind of life he or she has reason to value” and constitute the informational basis in the assessment of human development. If capabilities are expanding, human development is taking place. In this article the authors looked at one of the basic human capabilities: enjoying good health. Let’s assume that horticultural products of both the Kenyan and the British farmers have the same ecological and economic costs. In this case, shouldn’t we prefer to buy the Kenyan product? Wouldn’t this be a solution to the dilemma of the ethical-wanna-be-sustainable consumer?
So… can the capability approach offer contributions to the informational basis we’ve been looking for in order to assess sustainable development? Gina has already blogged about this. Can you figure out other ways for an individual to be an ecological citizen? It’s interesting to note that both the concept of ecological citizenship and the one of capability talk about freedoms that are important to people. I’d love to hear any thoughts!
