| History of the equitable one | Principles and operation |
| The text founder of the equitable trade is in Candide of Voltaire. Ingenuous, goes to Surinam (Guyana Dutchwoman) where, with the turning of a path, it meets a black slave who it missed the left leg and the right hand. Ingenuous adopts a revolutionary attitude at the time (a White is interested in a Black!) by questioning it: “that you make there, my friend, in the horrible state where I see you?”. The slave answers him that its Master cut the hand to him because its finger was caught in the grinding stone and it also cut the leg to him because it tried to flee. The slave finishes while saying: “It is at this price that you eat sugar in Europe”. This sentence is the base of the equitable trade. The first pillar of the equitable trade is posed: the consumer worries about the living conditions of the producer. Mias it seems that Aristote also was interested in the equitable trade. Click here to read the continuation…. |
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In 1860, a Dutch inspector of the name of Dekker goes on a journey to the Indies Dutchwomen (Indonesia) to note the living conditions in the plantations. He is dismayed by the conditions of production comparable with modern slave system. Dekker being also a Protestant and humanistic novelist, he writes, of return in Europe, the Max Havelaar novel in which he denounces what he saw in the Indies. Its book is a very great success in the Netherlands but its contents pose problem: what to make to prevent this modern slave system? The first answer is given to the United States in the years 1940. Two associations trade with the poor communities of the countries of the South. However, these attempts remain tiny. The first great project develops in 1947 in the United Kingdom in support for the Greek population. Following the second world war bursts a civil war between royalists and communist Greek. The guerrilla makes sink the country in the famine. The students of Oxford create the OXFAM to fight against this famine. The first network of equitable trade was born. |
| Towards end of the year 50, ONG English Oxfam, Oxford committee for famine relief wishes to support the local populations of the Third World countries while preserving their dignity and develops the sale of the products of their craft industry to ensure an regular income to them. In parallel, in 1959, S.O.S, an charity association created by young catholics in the south of the Netherlands, imports by solidarity of the products of the third world. In 1964, at the time of the first Conference of the United Nations for the Trade And Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva, the countries of the South insist on the need for right exchanges. Their slogan, “Trade not aid”, “of the trade, not of the assistance,” marks the spirits. |
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Thus, it is only into 1974 that the first shop of equitable trade opens its gates in France. It is Craftsmen about the World, located street Rochechouart at Paris. The structure is associative and its singular operating process: contrary to the conventional stores, at lucrative ends, Artisans of the World quasi-exclusivement is quasi-exclusivement managed by the voluntary ones. For the artisanal products, the prices are establish by the producers themselves, according to the whole of the production costs. This tariff includes the “social costs”, i.e. the personal and family needs for the producer, his formation, the organization which supports it, and the supposed “environmental cost” of the product. The shop is fed by an purchasing group created for this purpose, Solidar' Monde, entirely specialized in the equitable trade. From this point of view, the sale ex depot is only one pretext with the information of the public on the conditions of production in the countries of the South. The objective of association is before any policy, even moral, and not strictly commercial. The sales are weak besides, and the turnover of the store remains limited. With the passing of years, the Stores of the World, in Europe as in the United States, develop little. They very mainly remain attended by militants already convinced of the interest of this type of commercial exchange. The equitable trade remains confined in a very narrow “niche” of market and its action near the communities of producers of the South remains reduced, volumes of sale being not very important. |
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At the end of the years 1980, emerges in a producers' cooperative of coffee in Chiapas (Mexico) the idea of a certification of the equitable products. Certification would have the advantage of placing at the disposal of the consumers North the equitable products in the usual places of purchase - mainly averages and large surfaces - while guaranteeing to the producer as with the end-buyer the respect of certain ethical standards. This initiative of certification is concretized by Nico Roozen of Solidaridad association and the Dutch working priest, the Father Frans van der Hoff. After many fights against various pressures, coming as well from the multinationals of the North as of the intermediaries of the South (Roozen, Van der Hoff, 2001), the Max Havelaar label is created into 1988 in the Netherlands. It guarantees the “equitable” character of the offered products to the consumer. With Max Havelaar, the logic of the equitable trade changes radically. The label uses from now on the traditional structures of the market: importers as distributors are not any more specialized in the equitable trade, like in the case of the Stores of the World, but also take part in the activity of the die of conventional marketing. The equitable trade represents only one aspect of their activity. The advantage of this new form of trade is that the products from the equitable dies could be presented in conventional stores, to touch an audience of consumer much larger and less informed. The ambition of the step is to popularize the equitable trade, while ensuring to him an unquestionable credibility by the means of the affixing of a label. The first certification created by Max Havelaar relates to the coffee. The standards are then adapted to other products like the, the cocoa, sugar, honey, rice, the fresh fruits, the cut flowers or cotton. To date, the labellized die relates to a score of products. |
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During years 1990, the movement of certification of the equitable trade structure. In 1997 is born FLO International (Fairtrade Labelling Organizations), organization gathering the various initiatives of certification all over the world, such as Max Havelaar, Transfair and Fairtrade. The criteria of input on the registers of the producers and the importers of the equitable trade are also standardized. To obtain the certification of FLO, the producers are constrained to respect a certain number of criteria, namely: 1) to gather in organization, in associative or co-operative form for example, 2) to found an organization mainly made up of “small producers”, i.e. producers who do not depend structurally of contractual labour to exploit their property, 3) to make sure that the organization independent and is democratically controlled by its members, 4) not to practise any form of discrimination, 5) to open under the articles the collective structure with the novel members and to allow his political independence, 6) to have some capacities of export: an adequate logistics and an experiment of former marketing. Source: Virginia Diaz Pedregal, “equitable trade: one of the links of sustainable development? |
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The influence of “Max Havelaar” is such as one starts in 1870 the progressive abolition of the “system of the cultures”, which is replaced by a system of free labour. End of the XIXe century, a new tendency, the ethical policy, is propagated with the idea that by managing the colonies it is necessary to give to the interests indigenous population the priority on the interests of the metropolis.