Fair Trade: Contemporary challenges and future prospects

Abstract

Fair Trade has emerged over recent years as a powerful critique of conventional global inequalities and a promising initiative supporting alternative globalization ideas, practices, and institutions grounded in social justice and ecological sustainability. Fair Trade has become a key rallying cry around the world for efforts challenging the negative impacts of conventional international trade. It has simultaneously become a market generating US$ 1.5 billion per year incorporating numerous commodities and thousands of producers, consumers, and distributors in the Global North and South. Fair Trade’s recent success has been rooted in its ability to combine visionary goals with practical engagements in fair and sustainable trade within and beyond the agrofood sector. But as demonstrated in this volume, the dramatic growth in Fair Trade since 2000 has fueled a number of challenges which threaten to unravel this promising initiative unless its vision and practice can be realigned.