Episode 10: Michael Gidney
In a splendid banana covered meeting room, Mike Gidney, CEO of the Fairtrade Foundation, celebrates 25 years of Fairtrade in the UK with Safia. They discuss the beginnings of the now-ubiquitous Fairtrade Mark which guarantees a better deal for producers through minimum economic, social and environmental standards.
With 1.7 million farmers, workers and miners over 3 continents and 125 countries selling Fairtrade products it has seen tremendous growth, however, there is still much to be done to take the concept of Fair Trade to scale. There are “long, dirty supply chains which are bad for the planet and expose workers to untold injustice” and it’s still a “buyer dictates” world. Safia and Mike discuss how a trade overhaul and better regulation would contribute to eradicating “exploitative trade”, how CEOs should be incentivized by social justice indicators and how localization, not globalization can help producers and businesses to be sustainable.
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