Philanthrocapitalism_ How Giving Can Save the World - Matthew Bishop [74]
Remember, even if you’re acting alone, there’s something you can do. After the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative, Amy Oliver e-mailed us to say she would buy energy-efficient lightbulbs and appliances and teach her children to do the same. Jessica wrote that after years of recycling and driving hybrid cars, she intended to take a job working for a sustainable environment. Your ability to contribute may fall somewhere in between. If you want to explore what steps your own community can take to promote clean energy, I recommend It’s Easy Being Green, by Crissy Trask. In the meantime, at the very least we can all follow Amy Oliver’s example.
ENERGY ISN’T THE only area in which the private sector has organized markets for the public good. One of my favorites is the market for fair trade coffee, where companies have joined to ensure that the world’s coffee farmers, most of whom are small landowners in developing nations, earn a decent income. The farmers are organized in local cooperatives and all are guaranteed a minimum price of $1.41 per pound regardless of market fluctuations; credit at fair rates; and long-term contracts. The minimum price is very important because the market can drop below $.50 a pound, with no corresponding drop in prices at coffee shops. The companies sign licensing agreements with an organization called TransFair, which monitors the coffee-growing to make sure that fair wages and decent working conditions are maintained and certifies goods with a fair trade label. Among the major fair trade sellers are Equal Exchange, Diedrich, Green Mountain, Peet’s, Tully’s, and Starbucks. I have personally seen the results of Starbucks’s commitment in Rwanda and in Aceh, the Indonesian state devastated by the tsunami. Both places were selected by Starbucks to provide one of the special brews the company features each month. The company sent employees to work with local people to ensure the quality of the coffee beans and production and then marketed the product in an attractive package. In my local coffee shop, both items sold out well before their month was over. Last September a woman e-mailed me to say that from now on she would only buy fair trade coffee. We could all do that by simply buying goods with the fair trade certified label.
In 1999, my administration executed a unique trade agreement with Cambodia that gave U.S. clothing companies the opportunity to be fair trade purchasers. We promised greater access to the U.S. market if the Cambodian factories applied both local labor laws and international labor standards, including a ban on forced labor and child labor—a big problem in factories in many developing nations. The International Labour Organization agreed to monitor them and to help companies meet the standards and correct the problems. As a result of the agreement, working conditions vastly improved; employment skyrocketed, producing new jobs for 270,000 workers (two-thirds of the industrial workforce); and exports to the United States increased 17 percent, through participating companies like Gap Inc., Nike, Sears, and others.
In 2005, the global system that established nation-by-nation quotas for access to U.S. and other wealthy markets expired, raising fears that Cambodia would lose its market share in the United States to lower-cost producers, mostly in China. Cambodia chose not to abandon its commitment to the high standards when the quotas expired, instead emphasizing the “brand security” that fair working conditions offer to buyers and trying to improve productivity. Apparently the companies agree, believing that it is both morally right to maintain the high standards, and a marketing asset to discerning U.S. and European consumers.
Before the quotas expired, Cambodia and the companies buying its clothing got some support for continuing