Fairtrade Fortnight 2024


Fairtrade Fortnight 2024 – Be the Change

This year we are celebrating 30 years of the Fairtrade Mark in Britain This means 30 years of farmers using the power of Fairtrade to drive positive change in their communities.

So, we’re expecting an extra special Fairtrade Fortnight from 9th to 22nd September.

The theme is Be the Change, spotlighting how YOU can Be the Change, by choosing Fairtrade every time.

Read more and access resources on this link

Our goal is more than people just being aware, it’s about them encouraging an active choice to support over 2 million Fairtrade farmers and workers across 58 countries, wherever possible, to ensure they can earn a fairer wage.

We’d like to see lots of organisations around SE Hants getting involved. It’s not too early to start planning! There are lots of ideas here and you can download all the 2024 resources here

You can also download the 30th anniversary report, ‘Growing Our Movement For Change,’ which contains the most recent information on the impact of decades of work to achieve fairer prices.

Since Fairtrade certified products first hit the supermarket shelves, Fairtrade has not only pioneered a unique, more equitable way of doing trade – and shown how it makes a tangible difference – it has become the world’s most recognised and trusted ethical label.

Despite this success, our global food system still isn’t fair. Farmers are part of a chain in which power is unfairly distributed. They are frequently forced to sell their crops for less money than they cost to grow. The climate crisis is making conditions more and more challenging for farmers.

So, let’s spread the word, support Fairtrade producers and call for trade justice.

The Future is Fair

It’s a simple message: choose Fairtrade now and help save our favourite foods. More of us choosing Fairtrade means extra income, power, and support for those communities, as they work to build sustainable and prosperous futures. 

Fairtrade Fortnight in the Portsmouth area

We do have plenty of plans for Portsmouth but let us know if you can add anything to this list:

An exhibition in the Central Library from Saturday 7th September for 2 weeks

A Fairtrade service at St Mary’s Church Portsea on Sunday 8th September at 4 pm with preacher Cllr Hugh Mason and Fairtrade refreshments. More details here

A Fairtrade stall in the Cascades Shopping Centre on Thursday 19th September with chocolate and bananas to try.

A Fairtrade breakfast at the Anglican Cathedral on Sunday 15th September This is after the 8 am, 9.30 and 11.00 services.

Posters around the City

Talks to community and faith groups

2. SPREAD THE WORD

We need action taking place in every part of the country to spread the word about the power of Fairtrade. Whether it’s a coffee morning, a quiz night, social media post or something completely different, we look forward to hearing more about what’s going on in your area. Visit our Resource Library for more tools and ideas on how to spread the word.

3. BUY FAIRTRADE

Choosing Fairtrade now can help save the future of our favourite foods. You can find out all about different Fairtrade commodities on our Buying Fairtrade pages – you might be surprised! 

During Fairtrade Fortnight, there will be a number of exciting activities – sign up to the newsletter to be the first to hear.

Pharmanomics

Pharmanomics – How Big Pharma Destroys Global Health

Join us for the launch of Pharmanomics, the new book by Global Justice Now’s Director, Nick Dearden.

It’s on Thursday 2 November, 7pm – 8.30 at The Cathedral Discovery Centre, Bishop Crispian Way, Portsmouth PO1 3QA

To book a free place

In Pharmanomics, Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden digs down into the way we produce our medicines and finds that Big Pharma is failing us, with catastrophic consequences.

The big pharmaceutical firms are more interested in profit than health. This was made clear as governments rushed to produce vaccines during the Covid pandemic. Behind the much-trumpeted scientific breakthroughs, major companies found new ways of gouging billions from governments in the West while abandoning the Global South. But this is only the latest episode in a long history of financialising medicine – from Purdue’s rapacious marketing of highly addictive OxyContin, through Martin Shkreli’s hiking the price of a lifesaving drug, to the 4.5 million South Africans needlessly deprived of HIV/AIDS medication.

Since the 1990s, Big Pharma has gone out of its way to protect its property through the patent system. As a result, the business has focused not on researching new medicines but on building monopolies. This system has helped restructure our economy away from invention and production in order to benefit financial markets. It has fundamentally reshaped the relationship between richer and poorer countries, as the access to new medicines and the permission to manufacture them is ruthlessly policed. In response, Dearden offers a pathway to a fairer, safer system for all.

Find out more about the campaign here

Nick Dearden’s book is about the structural foundations of a global market in life-saving medicines. A market dependent on taxpayer subsidies, but designed to strip both rich and poor governments of the power to improve health. An essential read for those that care about saving lives, and that want the system changed.
— Ann Pettifor, author of A Case for the Green New Deal

Pharmanomics brings together detailed investigative research with lessons from the frontlines of the fight for access to medicines. It exposes a global apartheid in which a few mostly white male Pharma bosses make billions while billions of people are left without essential medicines. It exposes how the problem of medical monopolies is not a few rule-breakers but the rules themselves. Most crucially, it shows how the system which put profits over people’s lives was man-made, and how through collective action people can unmake it, for everyone’s health.
— Winnie Byanyima, UNAIDS Executive Director and United Nations Under-Secretary-General

Make Polluters Pay.

Help us campaign for proper compensation from the big polluters for the climate damage they have done.

We know that the Government is planning to backtrack on pledges made at previous UN conferences on climate to provide loss and damage funding for countries worst affected by climate chaos and which have done least to cause it.

This is unacceptable, especially as higher income countries have done most to create the greenhouse gases which are heating the planet.

Also, the worst polluters, the fossil fuel companies are not only raking in huge profits but are also heavily subsided (unlike renewable energy sources). Surely it is only fair that they are taxed to provide the funding needed?

You can real more about subsidies to oil and gas companies here:

The Big 5 fossil fuel companies (Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell and TotalEnergies) have played a particularly big role in this, contributing to over 11% of global historic carbon emissions between them. Collectively, they could owe as much as $8 trillion in climate damage to the global south.

These companies reported over $170 billion in profit in 2022 alone

During the Autumn, there are several occasions when we are asked to act.

There are Climate talks in New York 15-17 September, with big demonstrations planned. https://fightfossilfuels.net/

23rd September is a National Day of Action for Make Polluters Pay.    https://makepolluterspay.co.uk/mpp-action-day

From 30/11 to 12/12, the UN Climate Talks, COP28, will be taking place in Dubai, hosted by the United Arab Emirates

For the Portsmouth area, we have decided

  1. To ask as many local groups as possible to support our letter to all the local MPs.
  2. To encourage as many people as possible to write individually to MPs.
  3. To organise a photo-opportunity in Guildhall Square on 15/9 at noon at which we hope lots of groups will be represented. We did this – see picture above.
  4. To send the letter and photo to the press as well as to MPs.
  5. To have a big event in Guildhall Square with stalls, music, speakers and a march during the COP28 talks – this will be on December 9th.

The groups letter we have created is available from havclimate@gmail.com

Could you please get a representative from your group to send a name, role if any and the name of the group which we can add to the letter.

Please send to havclimate@gmail.com by 15th September.

Protest in Guildhall Square 2022

COP 28

COP28 (30/11 to 12/12) will take place in Dubai, hosted by the United Arab Emirates, a leading oil and gas producer. And the official chosen to preside over the summit – Sultan Al Jaber – is the chief executive of the country’s national oil company, Adnoc, which is planning a big expansion of production capacity. There is also going to be a huge contingent of fossil fuel companies, which many believe should be banned.

If you want to read a bit more about this issue, see: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/01/leak-uae-presidency-un-climate-summit-oil-gas-emissions-yemen

Pascoe Sabido, at Corporate Europe Observatory and the co-coordinator of the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition of more than 450 organisations, said:  “The Cop28 UAE key messages “rip the green façade off of this fossil fuel presidency. Anyone who reads them should have alarm bells ringing.

“The UN climate talks have become an oil and gas industry trade show, not the flagship for climate action. An entire industry has successfully co-opted the process and is leading us in a death spiral to climate catastrophe. How far are we prepared to go to make sure that doesn’t happen?”

In Portsmouth, we plan to have a large demonstration during the COP 28 talks, with speeches, music and a march from Guildhall Square. We’re not sure of the exact day of national action yet but will publicise it soon.