Harriet Lamb during the WRTD 2011 opening ceremony at the WTM.
© Marcela Torres
By Marcela Torres
“We have the
means and the responsibility to help the local communities of the places that
we visit and empower them to overcome poverty,” said Fiona Jeffrey, Chairman of
the WTM. She also dedicated some words to the many and often unknown industry
champions, highlighting that there’s a growing number of people who are working
day to day to protect our culture, defend our destinations, conserving
biological diversity and contributing to secure the sustainability of our home,
Earth.
The official opening speech for this fifth
version of the WRTD was presented by Harriet Lamb, Executive Director of the
Fairtrade Foundation. Lamb remembered that “twenty years ago, when I started
talking about paying fair prices to small farmers for their coffee many people
laughed at me saying nobody would be willing to pay more to help people sustain
their livelihoods. Well, they’re not laughing now!”
Actually the fair-trade movement has expanded
throughout the world and more and more consumers are demanding products with a
fair-trade certification. And it’s not just about coffee farmers. The concept
applies to all kinds of products and trade areas. Lamb said that 50% of
consumers in the United Kingdom, for example, are willing to pay more for a
product that is certified as fair-trade.
“And the good thing is that it also makes sense
for the businesses,” Lamb said. “Think about it. A large supermarket chain that
sold some excellent chocolate actually made the connection while talking to us
and they realized that if they did not pay their cocoa farmers well enough,
those people would run out of business and they wouldn’t have farmers to supply
them cocoa beans to produce their chocolate bars. No beans, no bars. It’s that
simple!”
That commercial advantage has also been
understood by several tourism companies who are not only paying fairly to their
suppliers but also –in many cases- have gone a step further and set up
foundations to support education, conservation and even tap water community
projects throughout the world.
There is much to be achieved still, however,
and Fiona Jeffrey made a call to the entire tourism industry to hop on to the
responsible tourism wagon: “This is not just a cultish craze or the latest
in-vogue trend to be replaced with something else in a year or two. Increasing
numbers of consumers are recognizing that the world –or the industry for that
matter- cannot go on in the way it has since mass tourism first came into
being.” With more than 300 delegates from all over the world, the World
Responsible Tourism Day 2011 was celebrated yesterday at the World Travel
Market (WTM) in London, stressing the unique opportunity the tourism industry
has in helping reduce poverty throughout the planet.
This entry was originally posted by the author on November 10, 2011.
