Geofairtrade Mid term conference in Brussels

The Geofairtrade mid-term conference will take place in Brussels on November 5, 2010 as an intermediate step when the project results obtained so far are presented. A panel of experts will expose the major achievements in their field of expertise in order to start a constructive discussion with the conference participants. At this stage, the progress made by the partners of the Geo Fair trade project (research institutes and civil society organizations specialized in fair trade) is as follows: Fair Trade Indicators to measure the benefit of Fair Trade to the producers and their communities have been selected along the basic principles of sustainable development (social, economic and environmental criteria). The availability of geo referenced data related to these indicators has been evaluated by experts in the different test sites. Interns are presently working with the associations of the test sites in order to formalize the acquisition of the relevant data set for each project and also establish a working plan for the regular and continuous update of the relevant data sets.
 

The first drafts of the Geo Fair Trade Tool are presently being discussed between researchers and the representatives of the Fair Trade movement. Different aspects are being worked on: structure of the communication tool with sufficient interoperability with other data banks, stakeholders' access rights to the tools (consultation, input of data, etc.), and elaboration of a tracing system identifying the lots produced by the local producers in the final goods purchased by the consumers.
 
The mid-term conference of the GeoFairTrade project will address the majors topics related to the present work of the partner consortium. It will be devoted to traceability not only in terms of giving an overview of the different product flows but also of displaying the qualitative information related to the benefits Fair Trade brings to the local producer communities. The mid-term conference will be structured around three workshops: Definition of Standard Development Indicators relevant for Fair Trade, Overview of European Projects on Traceability, Presentation of Existing Traceability Systems in Fair Trade
 

European Commission Research – Sustainable Development