Who Cares About Fair Trade?

There are shifts and schisms in the Fair Trade movement and a pressing need to understand and spread a more definitive message on what socially and environmentally coherent trade and business practice looks like.

The Fair Trade Society, a new global membership organisation, is proud to announce the launch of the first issue of the Journal of Fair Trade published and available for subscription from today. Membership of the Fair Trade Society is £10/€12/$13 per year and includes online access to the Journal of Fair Trade. To find out about joining as a member of the Fair Trade Society please visit https://www.joft.org.uk/fair-trade-society/. The worldwide membership includes individual and organisations sharing an interest and passion for raising the bar, rebooting and reinventing Fair Trade. Members can access the Journal of Fair Trade digitally through a members’ only portal on our site: www.joft.org.uk. Other distribution is via JSTOR.

The aim is to be is an outspoken and game-changing resource; a platform for voices who can cogently explain what works and what has to change to be equitable, fair and meaningful. The Lead Article of Volume 1. Issue 1. “Who Cares About Fair Trade?” aims to be an introductory scene-setting article. Pauline Tiffen, Editor -in-Chief of the Journal of Fair Trade and pioneer of the movement, explains the rationale for launching the Fair Trade Society - a worldwide membership organisation which owns the Journal of Fair Trade, the complex but impactful story of the Fair Trade movement so far and why the concept of Fair is more relevant than ever, to achieving a fairer and environmentally safe global economy.

Fair Trade is a momentous movement with deep roots after 50 years, and multiple catalytic impacts and ripples. The driving motion seems, in part, to be a reflection of prevailing norms and social instincts. The early years of Alternative and Fair Trade were a time-bound combination of the heady values of basic social conscience, the drop out, the refusenik, the boycott and buycott, arguments for automony, liberation, of solidarity, trade-not-aid, new consciousness and purchasing power mobilisation. Now we - a global we - are in a different place in all senses.
“The quickening and expensive quest for sustainability does not reach or encompass what is fair. Sustainability ignores history, and redress. Fair does this.” Pauline Tiffen Editor-in-Chief, the Journal of Fair Trade, 2019.

The Journal of Fair Trade aim is to help those who care, or do not care but ought to, to sort this out.
The Journal of Fair Trade doesn’t give special significance to any variations in spelling - Fairtrade, Fair Trade, Fairly Traded - despite the contest for meaning between these terms. This is a conscious reclaiming of the words Fair Trade to encompass, analyse and give voice to all efforts to make our economies and our world fairer: more equitable and sustainable.
This reboot won’t be peaceful, obvious or easy. So expect challenging and passionate commentary on the essence of fairness, empowerment, engagement, values, alternative economics, ethics and the very re-definition of economic success and sustainability in the journal pages and on the Fair Trade Society website www.joft.org.uk in the years to come.