CLIMATE CHANGE and ECONOMIC EQUITY: Abel and Cole boycott?

If you believe in global social justice and maximising environmental benefits, its time to face-off the food fashionistas/fascists and boycott Abel and Cole. Their guzzling trucks clogging our roads [these deliveries claim to be eco-friendly but since they do not replace any car-trips since they only deliver one part of our supermarket shop, they are an additional carbon load], their overpriced [claimed to be more expensive than Borough Market, apparently!] fruit and veg being wasted [an estimated 35% of box schemes are landfilled or composted], and they will not buy from the world's poorest farmers - starving the UK consumer of variety particularly when it is needed in winter [babycorn or green beans or swede?] and cutting a lifeline for small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.

If anyone established a business delivering by van eco-friendly cat food and household cleaning items, they'd be roundly bollocked by the food miles brigade ... this is all A&C are doing. And you are paying [too much], and WE are paying [the added environmental cost], and THEY are paying [the poor farmers]. Also, the Soil Association should be suing for ripping off their logo [font, scale, size, colours ... ].

Walk to your local convenience store, buy some of their locally-grown vegetables and revel in the range of imported goods from Sri Lanka and India.

Time to boycott a profitable but flawed business plan!

CLIMATE CHANGE and EQUITY: VICTORY! UK Carbon Footprint Campaign Fizzles Out

Kenyan growers rejoice at the success of their well-run campaign against food miles ignorance and for global social justice.

Source: The East African (Nairobi) by Catherine Riungu

The food miles debate that threw Kenya's flower industry into a spin at the beginning of 2007 has finally fizzled out as UK supermarkets have dropped their initial hardline stance.
According to Ron Fasol, managing director of Oserian Development Company, a leading flower exporter, although this may not have been publicly acknowledged, the food miles debate has flopped and is unlikely to resurface - unless Africa reaches the high pollution levels of the developed world.
The plane symbols put on imported produce by leading UK supermarkets Tesco and Marks & Spencer have been replaced by Kenya's "Grown Under the Sun" label which, according to Kenya Flower Council chief executive Jane Ngige, has led to increased interest in Kenya produce and a subsequent surge in earnings.
Mr Fasol said the supermarkets rushed to impose sanctions on air-freighted goods without proper scientific findings, a move that prompted urgent research into how much carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere by airlifting of goods from Africa. Growers, trade associations and scientists conducted studies whose findings discounted the retailers' theory that banning imports would reduce global warming.
The Soil Association of the UK had said it would withdraw its organic certificates from air-freighted organically grown produce, effectively denying products from Africa a vital market.
In September, when the association was to have effected the ban, the British Department for International Development (DfID) organised a debate where it charged that, "while welcoming the Soil Association's concern about the impact of food production on climate change, the air-freighting of fruit and vegetables counts for only a small proportion - less than 1 per cent of UK greenhouse gas emissions. There can be no denying that food transport has an environmental and social cost, but most of this - about 85 per cent - comes from UK roads."
UK Trade and Development Minister Gareth Thomas said: "The distance food has travelled is not a good way to judge whether the food we eat is sustainable. Driving 6.5 miles to buy your shopping emits more carbon than flying a pack of Kenyan green beans to the UK."
Mr Thomas added that tackling climate change was a priority in the fight against world poverty.
"The only fair option, which considers the livelihoods of those in developing countries as well as the need to protect the environment, is to ensure that the prices of the goods we consume cover the costs of their environmental impact," he said.
He added that the government was encouraging more efficient distribution within the food and drink sector, and has proposed that food industry trade bodies look into achieving a 20 per cent reduction in the social costs of transporting food in the UK by 2012.
He added, "We must ensure the world's poorest producers are not penalised for the sins of the world's richest consumers."
In Kenya, for instance, carbon emissions are 200 kg a head, while in the UK they are almost 50 times that. African economies are currently growing by around 5 per cent or more - in part due to agricultural exports.
Agriculture remains the most likely source of economic growth and poverty reduction in most African countries. If Africa is to grow by 7 per cent, and halve poverty, get its children into school and achieve the Millennium Development Goals, it must be free to trade with the rest of the world, DfID said.
The DfID stand rubberstamped the Grown Under the Sun crusade, which set out to inform British consumers about the development benefits associated with buying fresh produce from Kenya even as the food miles and carbon footprints debate continued.
Kenya Flower Council chairman Erastus Mureithi said the campaign was aimed at demonstrating to consumers that unlike flowers grown in Europe under artificial light, Kenya's are produced under natural conditions.
The Grown Under the Sun campaign was launched by Kenya's High Commissioner to the UK, Joseph Muchemi, at the Royal Show - Britain's largest agricultural trade show - in July, when the debate was at fever pitch, at a seminar on the subject of carbon emissions and food miles. It was attended by representatives from Kenya, British retailers, the National Farmers Union and Farmer's Weekly magazine, published in London.
Mr Mureithi said UK scientists have proved to carbon miles crusaders that the subject had not been scientifically focused, leading to the current change of mind.
He, however, cautioned the flower industry against celebrating because, this being the high season, human-rights groups and environmental activists focus their attacks on the high sales on Valentine's Day which is observed on February 14 worldwide with red roses. The day is the single most important event in the flower business.

CLIMATE CHANGE and TRADE EQUITY: Can trade rules be leveraged to reduce climate change?

Pascal Lamy, the Director of the WTO hints at how the WTO tool-box of rules can certainly be leveraged in the fight against climate change. Normally, the WTO has rules on product standards that encourage its members to use the international norms and this would be defined only by a consensual international accord on climate change that successfully embraces all major polluters. He uses the "food miles" debate to illustrate how far away both this global consensus is and our understanding of climate cause and effects.

Source: Business Daily (Nairobi) by Pascal Lamy
The issue of Climate Change intersects with international trade in a multitude of different ways. While the World Trade Organisation does not have rules that are specific to energy, to the environment or to climate change per se, there is no doubt that the rules of the multilateral trading system - as a whole (i.e. the WTO "rule book") - are indeed relevant to climate change.
Today, there are many different perceptions of what the trading system ought to do on climate change. While some would like to see the trading system curb its own "carbon footprint," through the greenhouse gas emissions it generates in the course of the production, international transportation, and consumption of traded goods and services; others would approach the issue differently.
Some would like to see the trading system offset any competitive disadvantage they suffer in the course of climate change mitigation. More specifically, they would like to impose an economic cost on imported products at their borders equivalent to the one they suffer in curbing their own emissions.
In other words, a "levelling of the playing field" of sorts, if you will, based on an importing country's perception of how that field may best be levelled.
And, of course, there are many different ideas floating on what these "offsetting" measures may be, with most of the discussion naturally focussing on countries' most trade-exposed, energy-intensive, economic sectors like iron and steel and aluminium.
For instance, while some are considering the imposition of domestic carbon taxes, with adjustment for those taxes at their border; others are contemplating emission cap-and-trade systems, with an obligation upon importers to participate in those systems.
Yet another group would prefer to focus on what is most immediately "deliverable" - if I may say so - by the trading system in terms of the fight against climate change. And by this, they mean the opening of markets to environmental goods and services; in particular to those that are relevant to climate change, through the ongoing Doha Round of trade negotiations.
These are but a few of the ideas I have heard so far on how some would like to position the multilateral trading system on climate change. But there are other ideas for sure, and much work is being conducted at the moment - in various quarters - on how the WTO tool box of rules may be leveraged in the fight against this environmental challenge. While some are looking at WTO rules on taxes, others are looking at the rules on subsidies and intellectual property for instance.
My starting point in this debate is to say that the relationship between international trade - and indeed the WTO - and climate change, would be best defined by a consensual international accord on climate change that successfully embraces all major polluters.
In other words, until a truly global consensus emerges on how best to tackle the issue of climate change, WTO Members will continue to hold different views on what the multilateral trading system can and must do on this subject.
There is no doubt that trade regulations are not, and cannot be, a substitute for environmental regulations. Trade, and the WTO toolbox of trade rules more specifically, can - at best - offer no more than part of the answer to climate change. It is not in the WTO that a deal on climate change can be struck, but rather in an environmental forum, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Such an agreement must then send the WTO an appropriate signal on how its rules may best be put to the service of sustainable development; in other words, a signal on how this particular toolbox of rules should be employed in the fight against climate change.Absent such a signal, confusion will persist on what would constitute an appropriate response by multilateral trading system.
Let us take the issue of the international trading system's carbon footprint for instance. Much is said in the press everyday about the carbon footprint of international transportation.
In fact, a new and emerging concept is that of "food miles." In other words, the desire of consumers in certain countries to calculate the carbon emitted in the course of international transportation, with many already drawing the conclusion that it may be better to "simply produce goods at home" to minimize emissions.
But that argument does not always stand up to empirical verification. In fact, 90% of internationally traded goods are carried by sea. And maritime transport is by far the most carbon-efficient mode of transport, with only 14 grams of CO2 emissions per ton kilometre.
Shipping is followed by train transport, then road transport. Air transport has by far the highest CO2 emissions per ton kilometre (a minimum of 600 grams), illustrating the high relative climate impact of such transport.
For instance, some studies show that a Kenyan flower that is air-freighted to Europe emits a third of the CO2 of flowers grown in Holland. Others show that New Zealand lamb that is transported to the United Kingdom can actually generate 70 per cent less CO2 than lamb produced in the UK.
Only a multilateral approach to climate change would allow us to properly address these issues. A multilateral agreement, that includes all major polluters, would be the best placed international instrument to guide other instruments, such as the WTO, as well as all economic actors on how negative environmental externalities must be internationalized. Only with such an instrument can we move towards the proper pricing of energy.
The WTO tool-box of rules can certainly be leveraged in the fight against climate change, and "adapted" if governments perceive this to be necessary to better achieve their goals. The WTO has rules on product standards for instance, that encourage its members to use the international norms set by more specialized international institutions.
The WTO has rules on subsidies, taxes, intellectual property, and so on. All of these tools can prove valuable in the fight against climate change, but in that fight, would need to be mobilised under clearer environmental parameters that only the environmental community can set.
Surely we should not miss an opportunity to open markets for clean technology and services in the Doha negotiations. But, in doing so, we should cognizant of the fact that, ultimately, it is the existence of environmental regulations that will drive demand for these goods and services.
Hence the importance, once again, of setting the right environmental framework within which market opening can take place.
The writer is the director-general of WTO.

CLIMATE CHANGE and EQUITY: America looks to learn from development-friendly UK

USA: Farmers in developing world hurt by 'eat local' philosophy in USA

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Increasing awareness of climate change has transformed the way Americans think about organic food. While organic consumers used to focus on how food was produced, such as whether pesticides were used, they now are also concerned about how far food has traveled to arrive at their plate. The issue is that greater distances often equate to more energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.
The preference for eating local has been popularized, among others, by UC Berkeley journalism professor Michael Pollan in the "Omnivore's Dilemma" and by Barbara Kingsolver in "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." This "eating local" philosophy has a huge following among those consumers who buy organic food. But what about the consequences of the local food craze for farmers in the developing world who have joined the organic and fair trade movements?
We're getting a glimpse of the future of this debate in the United Kingdom, where the tension between the local food and fair trade movements is acute. Just recently, the U.K. Soil Association, a nonprofit group that promotes sustainable and organic farming, called on the British government to restrict imports of organic produce brought in by air. In a concession to the fair trade movement, this group would allow for imports from countries actively seeking to promote organic and fair trade markets within their own borders. Despite this concession, British fair trade activists are worried.
Whether the British government would ever adopt such a ban is questionable, but labeling schemes and use of concepts such as "food miles" (the distance a product has traveled to reach the store) are likely to increase consumer awareness and influence purchasing habits.
The suggestion that developing countries should promote local markets for organic produce in order to wean themselves off of export markets is a false alternative. These markets often already exist in everything but name.
Many farmers in the poorest of African nations - where I do my research - already supply local markets with their grains and produce. While not formally recognized as such, these markets are virtually organic because most poor African farmers restrict pesticide use to traditional export crops such as cotton, cacao and coffee, while local foodstuffs are grown with few or no chemical inputs.
Traditional export-oriented agriculture is problematic in many ways, but the organic and fair trade movements are beginning to diversify opportunities for African farmers in this sector. Just as Mexico and South America supply large amounts of organic produce to California, European demand for organic and fair trade products from Africa is surging. These are not just niche markets where developing world farmers can potentially gain a higher return, but these channels also promote better working conditions and the reduced use of chemicals. If the local food movements in Europe and North America reduce their demand for organic and fair trade products from afar, the most likely consequence is that African farmers who have entered these niche markets will return to producing their export crops in the conventional, pesticide-intensive manner. While local food markets can provide some income for these farmers, they still are reliant on export opportunities for the bulk of their cash income.
Although our decisions as consumers have the power to influence how our food is produced, this approach is limited. What we really need are changes in the basic rules that govern the global marketplace.
If international bodies, such as the World Trade Organization, set and enforced rules about basic working conditions and environmental standards, then we would not be relegated to trying to promote organic farming and fair labor practices via labeling schemes and informed consumption. If African countries were allowed to protect nascent industries, then they might not be so reliant on agricultural exports.
But until these changes are made, it is a cruel joke to condemn developing-world farmers to commodity crop production and then remove the only hope they have for higher returns - organic and fair trade crops and products. While the local food craze is all well and good, we should not be so quick to denounce organic and fair trade foods that are imported from the developing world. By shunning these products, we do not encourage local markets to flourish in these countries, but we condemn these farmers to the ills of conventional production for the global market (the only other real alternative at this time). We should remain open to such products in the short term, but also work for broad scale changes in the rules of the global market place to ensure that even conventional agricultural production is safe and fairly compensated.

Tesco DROP aeroplane stickers - citing sustainable development!

This great article is from Business Daily in Kenya by Zeddy Sambu entitled "Kenya: High Demand for Produce in European Market". It makes some key points which show that business is no longer going to accept "knee jerk reactions" to consumer actions - here to carbon emissions and climate change with a special focus on "food miles":

• Tesco has backpedaled on its earlier decision to warn its consumers on airfreighted produce citing research had proved that certain airfreighting foods are less harmful to the environment than those grown locally.


• Paul Monaghan, the head of ethics and sustainability for the Co-operative Group has also warned that aeroplane logos on airfreight goods in shops did not reflect the scientific reality.


• Tesco and Marks & Spencer (M&S) -Kenya's biggest buyers who had introduced the aeroplane symbol on imported produce - said there has been no impact on the sales.


• Air-freighting fresh produce from the whole of sub-Saharan Africa accounts for less than 0.1 per cent of Britain's carbon emissions.


• "As a measurement tool, these aeroplane symbols are fundamentally flawed, as they do not reflect the total energy used in production and processing, only the energy used for transport, " said Joseph Muchemi, Kenya's high commissioner to the UK, at a recent crisis meeting-to discuss the impact of 'Food Miles' and carbon labeling on exports of fresh produce from Kenya with the UK stores officials.

Click here for the full article.