Fair Trade Fortnight - Trade Aid's annual fair trade celebration and campaign

Why Environmental Justice?

Fair trade products have a minimal carbon footprint and will therefore lower a consumer’s own carbon footprint when they choose to purchase fair trade. This purchase also provides fair trade producers with terms of trade that allow them the ability to continue preserving their own environment for future generations.

Creating environmental justice means seeking to redress the imbalance that currently exists between the carbon footprints of the Northern and Southern global communities, but not taking the onus off either side to be aware of their impact on the earth.

Fair trade helps to create environmental justice. Find out more here

Keeping slave labour products out of NZ

October 17 each year is the United Nations International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. Eradicating Poverty is at the heart of what Trade Aid is working for. We believe that unfair trade is causing and sustaining poverty for millions of craft and commodity producers around the world. NOW is the time to learn about why trade is not fair.

Read about:

• Kenya and why despite following strict liberalisation reforms, it is now "sliding systematically in to the abyss of underdevelopment and hopelessness.
• How small the increase in trade would have to be for 128 million people to be lifted out of poverty and other key facts
• The problems, solutions and the unfairness of trade including what happened to Haiti when it was forced to open its markets to foreign imports
• WTO report from the latest Ministerial held in December 2005 in Hong Kong. An easy to read summary from Trade Aid's GM Geoff White explaining why the WTO is flawed in its approach to development through trade

and then... do your own research

Trade Justice is about rich countries not using international trade rules to benefit themselves at the cost of others and that means New Zealand. What should we be asking of our government? What can we do to make things more fair? Further reading

The Debt Campaign - Jubilee Debt Action Network

So what is wrong with debt?

Poor countries that have huge debts must repay the interest and the original debt from their government's budget. This means that already very poor governments, must send precious money overseas, instead of funding education, health services, or assistance to small farmers and food producers. At community level, this means your children may not have a school, the teacher may not be paid, or there may be no books to learn from. Or it means poor rural communities lack access to a local clinic, or must pay for treatment and basic medicines, leaving the poorest without access. It is the world's poorest people who are repaying these debts, through lost health and livelihoods.

In 2002, over $200 billion dollars flowed from poor countries to rich countries, far more than flows the other way.

For a summary of the debt issue read here

You can find out more about how poor countries became indebted countries, how debt affects people, and what can be done about it. www.debtaction.org.nz

Point Seven campaign

New Zealanders gave generously to the Tsunami but every week the same number of people die from poverty as died in the Tsunami. There is a crisis of poverty every week. What is the Point Seven Campaign? and why is the New Zealand government not honouring its promise? Find out more here