This is not the first time that B Corp has been criticized for the gap between their marketing claims and the reality of their standards. But the moment offers an opportunity to evaluate what those standards are, and if they are a meaningful tool for addressing the exploitative norms under which businesses currently operate.

Nespresso Single-Use Coffee: Hardly a “Force for Good”

Nespresso is Nestlé’s single-serve coffee line, providing coffee capsules with high-end branding to coffee drinkers at home as well as in offices and hotels. Single-serve coffee as a product seems incompatible with a vision for business that’s good for people and the planet, as B Corp certification promotes, given the huge amount of waste created.

Nespresso’s actions over the years are a prime example of greenwashing. Instead of grappling with the actual sustainability of their single-serve product and business model, they have attempted to make the case that their capsules are more environmentally friendly. The plastic pods used by companies such as Keurig for their single-serve coffees have a dismal environmental profile, generating enough waste, by some accounts to circle the globe 14 times. But it’s hard to make a leap from there to being actively good for the planet just by substituting aluminium for plastic waste.

In their marketing, Nespresso has chosen to emphasize people’s personal responsibility for recycling their packaging, despite the fact that their capsules aren’t accepted by standard household recycling programs. Per Nespresso’s calculation, just 28% of Nespresso pods are currently recycled, with the rest ending up in landfills around the globe (others have questioned this number, calculating the likely recycling rate closer to 5%). An article in the Guardian newspaper calculated the impact this way:

Waste disposal is not the only issue with single-use aluminium pods. Mining aluminium is a resource-intensive process with toxic by-products. In 2018, among plenty of fanfare, Nespresso partnered with Rio Tinto to launch Aluminium Stewardship Initiative ASI-Certified “sustainable aluminum” for their pods. Rio Tinto is a mining giant dubbed “a poster child for corporate malfeasance” for their lengthy rap sheet of environmental, labor and human rights violations as well as corruption and bribery. Despite the big announcement, buried in recent sustainability reporting, Nespresso has admitted that they did not achieve their target to source 100% ASI-Certified aluminum by the end of 2020. That’s yet another play from the corporate greenwashing playbook: Make a big announcement, then quietly fail to meet it.

Nespresso’s Record of Human Rights Violations

Nespresso’s parent company Nestlé has a long record of human rights violations, from their notorious formula debacles that have stretched over half a century to child labor, deforestation, land grabs, and more (for more on Nestlé’s business practices, listen to Season 1 of For a Better World podcast). Much reporting does not distinguish between Nespresso and Nestlé for sourcing data.

However, in just the last two years, since Nespresso began their path to B Corp Certification, there have been multiple investigations finding human rights violations in Nespresso’s supply chains. In 2020, investigative reporters found children as young as 8 picking coffee on seven Guatemalan farms selling to Nespresso. Then in 2021, Brazilian labor inspectors found multiple instances of wage theft on plantations selling to Nespresso, part of a pattern of violations and human rights abuses on certified farms.

Nespresso is part of the growing group of corporations developing their own Voluntary Sustainability Standards for themselves to meet, instead of opting to meet existing independent standards. Their Nespresso AAA Sustainable Qualitywas developed with Rainforest Alliance, a certifier who has repeatedly been critiqued for low standards and for how they have backed multinationals in covering up abuses in their supply chains. Nespresso’s AAA program does not have publicly available standards available for analysis to define how they reach their three pillars, Quality, Productivity, and Environmental and Social Sustainability.

Their most recent sustainability reporting notes that “More than 93% of Nespresso permanent coffee is now sourced sustainably through its AAA Sustainable Quality Program, up from 84% in 2014, including 48% certified coffee, up by 9 points since 2014.” It is not clear from Nespresso’s reporting what portion of their coffee is part of that “permanent” lineup that meets their sustainability standards and which percentage is purchased on spot markets (for context, it is not uncommon in cocoa sourcing to see brands speaking of their child labor pledges for their “direct” supply chains, while omitting the crucial fact that these supply chains only account for a fraction of their sourcing). All in all, Nespresso has previously been noted for their lack of transparency in their operations, described by coffee industry expert James Hoffman as “a black box of a company.”

And this is the business model that is now B Corp certified as “a force for good.”

B-Corp Certified Falls Short of its Claims

The non-profit organization B-Lab established B-Corp certification to distinguish businesses using “business as a force for good.” They claim that “Certified B Corporations are leaders in the global movement for an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy. Unlike other certifications for businesses, B Lab is unique in our ability to measure a company’s entire social and environmental impact.”

Yet despite B Lab’s claim that their certification is “transforming the global economy to benefit all people, communities, and the planet,” their standards fall far short of that sort of transformational change. They also fall short of the basic principles laid out in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) , which spell out businesses’ fundamental responsibilities to prevent, address, and remedy human rights violations in their operations.

This is not a new critique. Indeed, advocates for business human rights have spent years underscoring the inadequacy of B Corp certification to address fundamental human rights. In the next section, this article will examine those standards and what that looks like in the context of Nespresso.

How B-Corp Standards Work

B-Corp certification scores companies based on a lengthy two-part self-assessment. The first part has a questionnaire evaluating companies on the following topics, each category worth approximately 40 points, with a total of 80 out of 200 required for certification.

• Governance – includes governance structure, mission, corporate accountability, and transparency.
• Workers – includes compensation and benefits, training and employee development, health and safety, job flexibility. There are questions on worker ownership, but no points given for union representation or freedom of association.
• Community – covers a vast range of topics including job creation, diversity and inclusion, workforce development, employee volunteerism, local involvement and sourcing, suppliers and product sourcing, supply chain poverty alleviation (including fair trade certifications), and charitable giving.
• Environment – encompasses overall environmental stewardship, including facilities, emissions, and supply chain and distribution where relevant.
• Customers – evaluates companies whose products are designed to address a particular social problem, such as health or educational services.

The second part of the assessment is an unscored list of “Disclosures”, which arguably focus on the most important issues from a human rights perspective. The Yes/No questions in this section range from whether the company supports workers’ rights to organize and collectively bargain, uses child labor, violates Indigenous peoples’ rights, as well as land and environment based issues. There is also a section for disclosures on suppliers, featuring just four short questions, asking whether the multinational has suppliers who use child labor, prison labor, or forced labor; operate in conflict zones; have practices that have substantial negative impacts on human rights, labor conditions, or local communities; or negative environmental impacts. Surprisingly, given recent exposes on child labor, workers’ rights, and supplier Rio Tinto’s abysmal environmental record, Nespresso checks “no” on all points except the conflict zones topic.

As part of attaining B Corp certification, companies are required “Make a legal commitment by changing their corporate governance structure to be accountable to all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and achieve benefit corporation status if available in their jurisdiction.” This legal commitment is promising–indeed, such a reconfiguration is essential to breaking free of the profit-driven, extractive capitalism that is harming people and the planet we inhabit. Yet so far, this aspiration has not held up to the realities of shareholder capitalism. Despite B Corp’s much touted “mission lock^[1],” the CEO of B Corp Danone was forced out for focusing too much on sustainability and not enough on shareholder dividends.

Lastly, large multinationals such as Nespresso and those that are subsidiaries of other corporations have additional screening and transparency requirements. Setting a higher bar for bigger companies who have greater capacity to do harm is a good step. However, the process also underscores a fundamental issue with B Corp certification. The emphasis is on transparency. Yet,, as the Nespresso disclosures reveal, a company can deny recent violations, or mention them in the “Transparent Disclosures” document and still be certified.

Perhaps anticipating backlash, the B Corp blog post announcing Nespresso’s certification emphasizes continual improvement and evolution, both of certified companies and of standards themselves. Yet despite this aspirational theme, continued progress is not mandatory for certification and some companies’ scores have decreased over time without apparent consequences.

Human Rights Can’t Be an Afterthought

While an in-depth analysis of B Corp’s standards are beyond the scope of this piece, there is a disturbing thread that runs throughout. B Corp’s model fails to meaningfully center human rights, both in the framing of their questions and in the ways in which scores are weighted throughout the assessment questionnaire.

An incisive article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review observes that,

Further, the weighting of the scores tends to prioritize the nice-to-have elements of a good work environment without putting emphasis on the fundamental human rights that should be protected for all working people.

An employee handbook is as close as many workers in the U.S. come to having a contract that spells out their working conditions. Yet this question is only worth 0.28 points. B Corp standards allow Nespresso to get full points for this category without critical provisions such as grievance processes or statements regarding the fundamental, internationally recognized right to bargain collectively and freedom of association.

By comparison, employee health and wellness initiatives are worth 0.95 points–weighting health assessments, programs to get people counting their steps, and other nice-to-have perks above fundamental rights.

The distribution of points is even more concerning when one looks across categories. As the screenshot from Nespresso’s Assessment shows, verifying that their supply chain is in compliance with local law, international human rights and environmental standards, is not a priority. And it does not need to be. These critical supply chain accountability measures count for less than employee wellness programs.

Other assessment questions assign just 0.21 points to having a supply chain code of conduct for suppliers and 0.35 points for having a stakeholder grievance process – other fundamentals that are once again acutely undervalued.

B Corp Certified: Accountability or Greenwashing?

After the Nespresso announcement, a small coffee company expressed concern on Twitter about what it meant to have a multinational with Nespresso’s social and environmental profile B Corp certified. B Corp responded, “Becoming a B Corp means Nespresso now has both a verified framework & an influential community holding them accountable to continue to improve their social and environmental performance & be transparent about progress. Find out more about efforts so far: https://bit.ly/3ELLJjm.” Yet both this accountability and progress are to be questioned. As the previous section made clear, B Corp’s standards do not adequately reflect the sort of human rights focused criteria that would mean true improvement in what’s being referred to as “social performance” here. Instead, it’s far more likely that B Corp would help them fairwash and greenwash their business model–there is no minimum requirement for scores per category nor mandatory areas for high scores. A company could improve scores and ostensibly make progress without addressing core human rights issues – or supply chain abuses.

Further, there is no requirement that companies improve progress over time. For example, grocery store New Seasons Market’s score has declined 33% over the time they have been a B Corp. The company’s union-busting made headlines in 2018 and garnered five complaints to the National Labor Relations Board. Yet the B Corp response to activity which is in contradiction to labor law, as well as international labor standards is to have the company state their own case in a disclosure buried deep in their assessment profile. There is transparency on paper, but no requirement to address or remediate the harms caused.

In the last year, several other high profile cases have seen certified B Corps acting at odds with the commitment to put people and the planet ahead of profit. And it seemed that the “influential community” was strikingly silent, despite concerns and complaints of workers, farmers, and advocates for fair food. In 2021, certified B Corp Danone announced that they were dropping the contracts of 89 organic farmers in New England, citing the inefficiencies of incorporating these small farmers into an increasingly consolidated supply chain. Advocates raised complaints with B Corp, who responded with a statement making clear that consideration for the livelihoods of these farmers was a matter of “supply chain selection” that B Corp did not intervene in. It is a decision that is very much in line with the last 50 years of U.S. agriculture policy that has pushed farmers to “get big or get out,” putting profit and efficiency first–and a decision that hardly seems in line with the rhetoric of transformation that B Corp puts forth.

In 2022, certified B Corp Amy’s Kitchen came under fire with a boycott led by food advocacy organizations due to the company’s union busting. Workers at Amy’s are organizing given a long string of health and safety issues. The Teamsters’ submitted a formal complaint, challenging Amy’s Kitchen’s certification and calling on B Corp to include workers in the resolution of the complaint:

As of this writing, B Corp has yet to respond, although they granted the certification in the midst of the workers’ public union campaign. However, the company’s statements make clear the value of B Corp certification to a company in presenting its values–and how readily the certification can be used to redirect and mislead those who might be concerned about human rights and labor violations. Further, it raises a large question regarding the role of workers in the accountability mechanisms of B Corp certification.

Will the B Corp Community Rise to this Challenge?

B Corp points to the existence of an “influential community” that will be instrumental in holding companies accountable. So far, we have not seen companies taking public stands to uphold the integrity that B Corp claims to stand for, or to hold other companies to the transformational standards they put forth. Some companies who count themselves as part of organic and fair trade movements have been outspoken in their concerns about the influence of multinational corporations and the status quo on those standards.

Does such a movement exist for B Corp as well?

It remains to be seen. However the certification of Nespresso, despite their strong association with multiple corporations with atrocious human rights abuses, and a product that’s inherently wasteful seems like a strong test case for peer accountability.

^[1] B Corp assessments denote the legal commitment required as “Mission Locked” on a company’s profile, describing it as ” A company with an Impact Business Model is intentionally designed to create a specific positive outcome for one of its stakeholders – such as workers, community, environment, or customers.”

The post Nespresso: Known for Human Rights Violations, Now B Corp Certified appeared first on Fair World Project.

How Did We Get Here?

Small farmers, including fishers, pastoralists and indigenous people and farmworkers are on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Agriculture has a long history of negative social and ecological impacts, from forced labor and slavery, Indigenous land theft, and colonialism to the destructive nature of rapid industrialization. Modern industrial agriculture is rooted in colonial models, where intensive plantation economies were set up with the goal to extract as much wealth and resources as quickly as possible, relying on slave labor theft of Indigenous land and draining natural resources.

The 1950s and 60s began a period of industrialization of agriculture around the world by developing high-yielding varieties of cereal grains that are grown with modern scientific methods of utilizing synthetic fertilizers, agrochemicals, and pesticides. This period, dubbed as the Green Revolution, was often promoted under the guise of poverty and hunger reduction but despite creating huge surpluses, hunger actually increased, genetic diversity declined, and farmers were further impoverished. Largely due to the monopolies and control of agricultural mega corporations like Monsanto (now Bayer), peasant farmers and social movements have resisted the Green Revolution’s advance since its inception, most recently with the massive 2020 Farmer Protest in India.

Agriculture as Extraction

The expansion of the global agricultural footprint is the cornerstone of extractive agricultural practices. Agriculture land becomes increasingly degraded due to industrial practices, threatening the global insect population and destroying biodiverse ecosystems. As land gets degraded, those profiting continually look to convert more productive land through deforestation and burning, displacing local, Indigenous and rural communities.

Built upon years of exploitation, agriculture’s legacy is one of deep structural human rights abuses. Farmworkers and workers across the food system are saddled with low wages, lack legal protections, retaliation for organizing and unionizing, health hazards due to pesticides and fertilizers and exacerbated dangers from climate change effects of high heats, massive flooding and hazardous air quality. Women farmers are regularly excluded from holding land rights and accessing credit, limiting their agency over their livelihoods, children and homes. Farmers and indigenous people are stripped of land and territory rights and those who fight against extraction are targeted and killed, with 227 Land Defenders killed in 2020. The symptoms of the extractive model are visible  on the farm and plantation–and they extend the conversion of national agricultural economies to export-led growth, trapping poor countries in an underdevelopment cycle.

Former colonies have remained trapped in cycles of dependence to rich countries, replicating colonial economic structures, including forced and child labor, poverty wages and unfair payments farmers’ production. Unequal free trade agreements, gutting of local and regional economies and production, transnational corporation control and exploitative development policies shackles former-colonies to global systems dominated by wealthy countries.

Agroecology and Climate Change

Although the pressure from the Green Revolution models of thinking and global capitalist economies in market and policy pushes agriculture towards monocultures and large farms, small farmers continue to feed the majority of the world. Known as the “productivity paradox,” small farmers produce more food on less land with small farmers feeding 70% of the world using only 25% of the agricultural resources.

Small, peasant and indigenous farmers practicing agroecology are building off of traditional knowledge, protecting biodiversity, and farming in ways that mimic natural land. All this while feeding the world. Agroecology is an integrated approach to integrate relationships between plants, animals, humans and the environment while taking into consideration the social aspects that need to create a sustainable and fair food system.  Unlike other concepts like “sustainable” and “organic,” which focus exclusively on practices and prohibitions, agroecology is a holistic approach that combines indigenous knowledge with academic research, farmer livelihoods and economic & social components to address the root causes of problems and seek long-term solutions.

While agroecology is highly specific to localized contexts, the various practices of agroecology (such as intercropping, traditional fishing and mobile pastoralism, integrating crops, trees, livestock and fish, manuring, compost, local seeds and animal breeds, etc.) are grounded in the same ecological principles of managing biodiversity, building life and nutrients in the soil, restoration of water, and energy conservation.

False Promises and Corporate Capture

Corporations and institutions are working to greenwash conventional agriculture as “regenerative” or “climate-smart” or “carbon farming”, all while ignoring the power inequity in the food system and the material conditions of farmers, farmworkers and other workers from the global majority. “Carbon Markets” are emerging in the agriculture sector as dirty industries look to “offset” their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through schemes that purport to enhance agricultural soil’s capacity to sequester carbon. Commoditizing carbon only enriches wealthy landowners, all while incentivizing and rewarding activities that violate human rights, like land grabbing and displacing Indigenous, rural and forest communities from their land.

Despite consensus on the destructive impacts of industrial agriculture, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other bodies of the United Nations continue to prioritize the interests of transnational corporations and agribusiness over significantly investing in community-driven agroecological solutions.

Peasant and Farmer Movement Solutions

Global movements of peasants, smallholder farmers, Indigenous people and farmworkers are not just pushing back on the industrialized food system that is fueling the climate crisis, destroying local ecosystems and biodiversity and violating human rights. Instead, they are actively putting into practice a vision that supports people and the planet.

 La Via Campesina, a movement of  millions of peasants, small and medium-size farmers, landless people, women farmers, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers, has been organizing for food sovereignty since the 1990s. Food sovereignty is defined as “the right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It is based on a model of small-scale sustainable production benefiting communities and the environment. It includes the struggle for land and genuine agrarian reform that ensures that the rights to use and manage lands, territories, water, seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in the hands of those who produce food and not of the corporate sector.” Smallholder farmers and peasant communities are already building off of a strong history of practicing alternatives to our industrial, corporate dominated food system that prioritize life over profits.

Seed Sovereignty in Puerto Rico

A large component of the fight for agroecology and food sovereignty is the fight for seed sovereignty. Restoring biodiversity to our food system and our planet is critical to adapt agricultural systems to climate change. According to the United Nations, 75 percent of crop diversity has been lost over the past century, largely due to corporate control of seeds, Green Revolution-era seed laws, intellectual property claims and gene modification.

Puerto Rico is one of the world’s largest GMO seed producers (Genetically Modified Organism), with Monsanto and Bayer producing the majority of soybean and cottonseed used in the United States on the island. El Departamento de la Comida, a grassroots collective in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and many other grassroots organizations, are creating alternatives to federal agencies and multinational corporations for food and farming through seed-saving and food sovereignty. Seed sovereignty is about more than just preserving biodiversity but also allows Puerto Ricans, like other communities, to reclaim an identity that has for many generations been an object of attack, colonization, and erasure. Seed saving is an ancient, ancestral practice and communities are continually fighting for seed sovereignty and against the industrialization and privatization of seed.

Agroforestry in Peru

Cooperativa Agraria Cafetalera Pangoa (CAC Pangoa) is a cooperative of 691 farmers and families growing coffee and cacao in San Martin de Pangoa, Peru. CAC Pangoa is focusing on growing coffee and cocoa diversified agroforestry systems to continue to improve soil health, provide shade to cocoa and coffee, and provide timber and fuel wood. Working to produce locally made organic inputs to avoid the pollution caused by transporting it over long distances, Pangoa produces kobashi organic fertilizer for cooperative members. José Luis Arroyo Unchupaico from CAC Pangoa notes that Climate change has created more pests and diseases for cocoa farmers in the region, organic farming and agroforestry have helped manage and reduce these pests and disease threats.

Finca Biodinámica in Honduras

Café Orgánico Marcala (COMSA) and the ‘Finca Biodinámica’, Biodynamic Farm, is based on an organic agricultural system that is fundamentally oriented to life, maintaining the health of the soils, the ecosystems that surround it and the people who are in relation to it. COMSA is a leader in organic, biodynamic and agroecological practices of protecting soil with organic material, providing the necessary nutrients for crops using soil microorganisms, implementing diverse agroforestry practices and planting according to natural cycles. The ‘Finca Biodynámica’ is about more than soil, carbon sequestration and crops, but focuses on developing a conscious connection with local ecosystems, communities and Mother Earth.

Food sovereignty and agroecology is rooted around the sharing of rural, local and Indigenous knowledge. COMSA focuses on sharing knowledge and community with future generations through the COMSA International School, where the cooperative has created a schooling system rooted in respect and care for the environment, for oneself and for the community. ‘To survive we must think and act differently than the conventional [agriculture] systems, to evolve with a view on the long-term, diversifying, working with our children’

Farmworker Organizing in Honduras

The Honduran farm worker union STAS (El Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Agroindustria y Similares) has been at the forefront of organizing and representing farmworkers in Honduras. Honduras is one of leading exporters of winter fresh produce destined for the US market. Honduras also has a long history of corrupt US-backed governments and abysmal working conditions. In recent years, Honduras has witnessed the deadly combination of eroding human rights conditions and supercharged climatic disasters, including massive flooding.

According to STAS organizer, Ahrax Mayorga, “Honduras is a classic ‘Banana Republic’ with a history of over 100 years of banana production…causing a blight on the landscape, converting natural land and small farms to disasters.” Multinational corporations, like Fyffes’ and their local subsidiaries have continued a model of exploitation of Honduran works and environment alike. Farmworker unions, like STAS, have played a key role in advocating for workers’ rights across the globe. In addition to advocating for essential rights, like collective bargaining agreements, farmworker unions are on the frontlines of the climate crisis, fighting for worker health safety. “Chemical agriculture, along with heat stress, has created a health crisis for farmworkers, happening at the exact time that agriculture corporations are eliminating health benefits and protections for workers and COVID is hitting the countryside,” said Mayorga.

Fair Trade and Food Sovereignty in Nicaragua

Fair trade’s roots are deep in Nicaragua. PRODECOOP, a secondary coffee cooperative in Nicaragua has been at the center of the fair trade movement for almost 30 years. PRODECOOP not only facilitates the export of fair trade coffee for some 38 village-level cooperatives, but provides ongoing farmer extension, training and credit services. These services are particularly critical in the context of coffee in Central America, as coffee farmers have confronted the ongoing coffee pricing crisis, coupled with climate change driven pests and diseases, like “La Roya.”

Key to PRODECOOP’s efforts in recent years has been a focus on agroecology and diversification for food sovereignty. According to Rosalba Gonzalez Baquedano, “We cannot confront climate change, take care of the environment and produce coffee organically without fair trade. Fair trade is our way to have a dignified life and a healthy community.” However, to address the climate crisis in rural Nicaragua is not cheap. As Gonzalez Baquedana mentions, “Adapting to climate change is very expensive for farmers. It requires additional labor, investing in resilient species and improving soil health. Farmers must be paid fairly for the investment we are making in producing health and organic crops.”

Movement of Rural Landless Workers Brazil

The Movement of Rural Landless Workers (MST) is a peasant social movement fighting for land, agrarian reform, food sovereignty and social justice in alignment with la Via Campesina  in Brazil. MST has launched a National Plan to Plant Trees and Produce Healthy Food initiative to plant 100 million trees and promote community-led agroforestry in response to the record deforestation and fires as well as the policies of the Bolsonaro government.

The goal is to recover degraded areas through the implementation of agroforestry and promotion of food sovereignty. Alongside this, they fight environmental destruction from agribusiness and mining. MST builds upon traditional, indigenous and peasant knowledge through Campesinas a Campesinas (Farmer-to-Farmer) trainings where peasants come together and share knowledge and organize around agro-ecological practices. MST is actively organizing for Popular Agrarian Reform that aims to redistribute land, produce healthy food for the Brazilian people, preserve the environment (water, land, biodiversity and air), confront all forms of violence and create new social relationships that prioritize people and the planet.

Taking Action for Food Justice & Climate Justice

In order to combat climate change we need strong, multi-faceted climate action. Achieving true climate justice requires systemic change at policy level, divestment from fossil fuels, overhaul of the big-agriculture industry, ensuring human rights and land rights for indigenous communities along with a disruption of all systems of inequality. The solutions to our food system, and its impact on the planet, already exist. Small-scale farmers practicing agroecology and food sovereignty are tackling the root causes of the climate crisis, hunger and poverty. Yet, there are still huge barriers for farmers looking to transition to agroecological practices, from lack of access to financial support, corporate control of seeds and resources to structural barriers like World Trade Organization (WTO), which prioritizes corporate profit, implements policies that human rights and destroy the environment and massively invests in food and farming systems.

Take Action for Climate Justice and a Fair Food System:

• Fight back against false corporate solutions that don’t actually address power and stand in solidarity with peasant farmers fighting for just, equitable, healthy, and sustainable food systems!
• Support worker-led organizing that counters corporate power. Give to strike funds, join in on the picket line, call, send letters or sign petitions to support strikers demands.
• Support for alternative economic models by buying fair trade and locally made products and advocating for national, state and local policies to grow the movement for just and ecological food and agriculture systems.
• Support grassroots-led agroforestry projects that support communities as they regenerate the land, support community livelihoods and fight for food sovereignty.
• Fight corporate control of agriculture. Take action by fighting funding for the expansion of factory farms, supporting initiatives like the Real Meals campaign and the Good Food Purchasing Program which fights for fair food systems on campuses, local school districts and city governments.

The post The Climate Crisis, COP26 and Small-Farmer Solutions appeared first on Fair World Project.

TAKE ACTION

The Rich are Getting Richer on the Backs of Working People

In recent years, the economy has continued to degenerate, with growing income inequality and a corresponding increased attack on workers’ rights. Incomes for the top 1% have grown 7 times faster than the bottom 90% since the 1980s.  Real wages have fallen or remained stagnant, while the cost of living continues to skyrocket. This reality has been exposed and exacerbated during the COVID-19 crisis, as “frontline” workers, from the fields to the meatpacking plants to the grocery store, have borne the brunt of the pandemic with disproportionate rates of infection and fatalities. From meatpacking workers to Instacart shoppers, corporations are capitalizing on the crisis to undermine worker rights, safety, and welfare – and pocket the savings.

And it is not just food and agriculture chain workers. Amazon workers are organizing in Alabama to take on one of the biggest corporations in the world to fight for basic human dignity. Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, Amazon has raked in record profits, propelling Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to the richest person in the world.  In fact, Jeff Bezos could pay all Amazon employees and contractors a bonus of over $100,000 and still be as rich as he was before the pandemic. At the same time, Amazon workers have faced low pay, unsafe working conditions and an employer hellbent on denying their right to organize for better conditions.

Corporations Have Weakened Protections for Working People

The current crisis for workers didn’t happen by accident. In fact, workers’ rights have been eroded over the course of the last generation due to the watering down of federal labor law and anti-worker policies, through misclassifying employees as “independent contractors” to deny them their rights, so-called “right-to-work” laws at the state level and pro-corporate decisions from right-wing justices.

Labor organizing has been in the crosshairs of big business for over a generation. And the results have been terrible. The decline in organized workplaces has coincided with the rise in income inequality and poverty in the United States. The reduction in unionization rates in the U.S. even negatively impact public health. Historically, the very idea of middle-class life has been built by people organizing for fair wages, healthcare, retirement and safe working conditions. In short, bringing democracy to the workplace has proven to level the playing field for workers. Considering the widespread attacks on workers’ rights and precarious employment in the United States, almost half of Americans polled shows they would join a union if given the option. Worker empowerment and fair wages are needed more than ever.

The PRO Act Would Protect Working People and Fair Livelihoods

The Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2021, known as the PRO Act, is the most comprehensive piece of labor legislation the U.S. has seen in years. At present, approximately 75% of large employers hire firms to stop organizing efforts, with 40% charged with violating labor law. Workers are getting outspent by massive disinformation campaigns, as was visible in California recently. Instead, we need far-reaching legislation to safeguard worker organizing in the workplace and provide legal recourse for violations of workers’ rights.

The PRO Act aims to protect workers’ basic rights by:

1. Introducing meaningful, enforceable penalties for companies and executives that violate workers’ rights. Currently, employers who violate workers’ rights face no civil penalties and workers are barred from bringing lawsuits against employers who violate the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
2. Expanding workers’ collective bargaining rights and closing loopholes that corporations use to exploit workers. Right now employers can “misclassify” workers as independent contractors, denying their right to organize.
3. Strengthening workers’ access to fair union elections and requiring corporations to respect the results. Current laws empower employers to stall union elections and retaliate against workers organizing their workplace.

From Extraction to Regeneration – Time to Put People First

As we look to the future and the critical priority to shift to a green economy, those jobs need to be dignified jobs. Green jobs must be good jobs. Worker empowerment in the workplace must accompany the massive transformation needed to decarbonize our economy. We need a Just Transition to take us from our current extractive economy to a regenerative economy that prioritizes the wellbeing of people and our planet.

Fair trade was founded on the principle of solidarity: uniting farmers, workers, and activist consumers in a joint effort to fight for basic human and economic rights. In fact, the PRO Act and other campaigns for worker empowerment reflect the parallel values of the fair trade movement. Democracy in the workplace, empowerment and fair pay should be something we all support.

The post Stand with Working People. Support the PRO Act! appeared first on Fair World Project.

For 10,000 years, Indigenous peoples of the Americas have utilized and preserved their sacred medicine, peyote, from South Texas, across the Rio Grande, to Wirikuta in San Luis Potosi. In Mexico, the Wixaritari, Yaqui, Cora, and Tarahumara collect the medicine as an integral part of their way of life and agricultural cycles. For the Wixaritari, residents of the Sierras, there is no separation between their staple foods — corn and deer — and their relationship to the cactus (Lophophora williamsii). For tribes North of the Rio Grande, peyote use came more recently, a Spiritual Medicine addressing ongoing colonial trauma and a central guide to maintaining Indigenous identity, religion, and cultural sovereignty in a rapidly changing world.

Pilgrimage and community harvest in the native gardens of the peyote have always been a part of this way of life, for the whole community and members of all ages. Pilgrimage begins the Wixaritari agricultural cycle and the connecting of sacred sites that make up their world. Native Americans of the United States and Canada travel to South Texas, to the gardens, to present offerings and prayers, and collect what medicine is needed for the healing and celebration ceremonies of the coming year.

CONSERVING A THREATENED WAY OF LIFE

This sacred way of life, which connects Native communities to annual cycles and to crucial community activities that maintain ancestral traditions and knowledge, is increasingly threatened.

In South Texas, in the United States, it’s almost entirely stopped. Threats are ecological, economic, and political. The Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative (IPCI) was formed in 2017 to respond to this crisis, almost 100 years after the first Native American Church (NAC) was incorporated. Led by the National Council of Native American Churches (NCNAC); Boulder, Colorado’s Native American Rights Fund (NARF); and a generous group of philanthropists including RiverStyx Foundation, IPCI determined that a unified, Native-led, community-supported, spiritually and ecologically designed effort was needed to protect their sacred medicine and way of life.

Peyote spiritual practices have needed protection through modern legal strategies for a long time. In 1918, the first Native American Church was incorporated in Oklahoma to protect the peyote way of life as a religion. Even still, people were prosecuted and jailed for using their medicine because peyote was considered a Schedule 1 controlled substance under federal and state law. Only in 1994, when an amendment to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) was enacted, did federal law clarify that federally recognized Tribal members’ use of peyote for traditional religious purposes was protected in the United States. But AIRFA was not enough to protect from the real threats to the Medicine Way of Life: lack of access to the private ranch lands in the gardens, improper and overharvesting, root-plowing, industrial agriculture, mining, oil and natural gas production, poaching, and illegal sales to non-Natives in the United States and Europe.

NEW BEGINNINGS TAKE ROOT

In 2017, the NCNAC — comprised of the presidents of the Native American Church of Oklahoma, Native American Church of South Dakota, Native American Church of North America, and Azee Bee Nagaha of Dine Nation (ABNDN) — gathered in Laredo, Texas to form the Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative. Great fortune would have it that they were offered and accepted a philanthropic gift of a 605-acre ranch in the Peyote Gardens to root the new organization. This conservation effort will exist to sustain the spiritual practices of Indigenous peoples for generations to come, promoting health, well-being, and Native cultural revitalization through sovereignty and sustainability of the sacred peyote plant and the lands on which it grows. Key components of the project in Texas include:

• A new system of Native-led peyote harvesting and distribution, based on respectful land access patterns, to provide spiritually and ecologically harvested medicine to Indigenous communities.
• Resumption of Native pilgrimages, where grandparents and children can harvest for their family and community ceremony together, giving offerings and learning about the life cycle of the plant, the other organisms who live with it, and the spiritual and community health its ceremonies sustain.
• Ecological assessments and repopulation on the surrounding ranches from the nursery on the spiritual homesite, a nursery managed in culturally appropriate ways by a Native conservation manager, youth and families, and communities on pilgrimage.
• Youth programs and cultural events that would bring many Native languages, architectures, and ceremonies to the gardens, which would in turn support sovereign responsibility and access to those living across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Today, the IPCI Spiritual Homesite in the Peyote Gardens has hosted five pilgrimages for offerings and harvests, and has an onsite host and conservation manager. Leases are in development with local landowners for upwards of 10,000 acres, and assessments of peyote density and health are underway. A culturally appropriate nursery and distribution center are being built by hand in adobe by community members, as well as a welcome center, youth housing, and a bathhouse. Native American Church/ABNDN members from around the country return the medicine’s cleanings (its skin, duff, and hair), which are cleaned off before use, to be spread back on the land. Hundreds of people have already visited the offering garden to learn about the medicine’s history, ecology, and spiritual tradition. In 2020, the new distribution and replanting projects will begin, putting the care of medicine directly in the hands and hearts of the Indigenous people who rely on it for their way of life.

WRITTEN BY: SANDOR IRON ROPE, STEVE MOORE AND MIRIAM VOLAT

Download the Full Article [.pdf]

The post Keeping the Sacred, Sacred: The Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative appeared first on Fair World Project.

Download Graphic [.pdf]

The post Why Regenerative Agriculture? appeared first on Fair World Project.

Download Graphic [.pdf]

The post When a Tree Isn’t Just a Tree appeared first on Fair World Project.

One concrete step: Support the Real Meals Campaign, calling on Aramark, Sodexo, and Compass Group, to adopt our roadmap for real change in their sourcing, putting close to $1 billion each year into food that is fair, humane, climate-friendly, and grounded in racial justice.

The Big Three: Aramark, Sodexo, and Compass Group

If you’ve ever eaten at a college cafeteria, in baseball stadium, a convention center, a museum, or a hospital, you’ve probably been served a meal by Aramark, Sodexo, or Compass Group (whose subsidiaries include Chartwells and Bon Appetit). These “Big Three” of the food service management industry are some of the biggest companies most people have never heard of. They prepare most of the meals you eat away from home, but not in a place you’d think of as an actual restaurant. And they have the college cafeteria business on lockdown, controlling 83% of the revenue in that sector.[i] Their revenue rivals or exceeds that of McDonalds.

These massive companies have a big role in shaping how our food system works. And right now, they are using that power to prop up some of the biggest food companies in the world whose names are linked to workers’ rights abuses, deforestation, climate change, and human rights violations.

It can be easy to think about this connection between all these Big Food companies and companies like Aramark as a simple problem of supply and demand, perhaps that mythical “invisible hand” of the market guiding similarly large companies together. However, the Be-Trayed report contradicts that narrative. It is not just convenience, but an intricate system that locks these companies into exclusive deals with Big Food corporations. The more they buy, the more they get back in the form of kickbacks. Volume discounts are not a novel idea. But the purchasing system outlined here does not focus on saving money for university clients or student eaters. Its complex matrix of punishments and incentives is all aimed at funneling more profits back to the corporate bottom line.

Corporate Kickbacks: Fundamentally Bad Business

The Be-Trayed report breaks down the kickbacks system into the four features that prop it up:

• The first pillar is exclusivity, requiring or strongly encouraging food service managers at dining halls around the country to buy from 80-100% of their products from “approved” or “preferred” vendor lists.
• To enforce those requirements, companies require “compliance” with those vendor lists—and make that compliance a key element of individual managers’ compensation. In the words of one industry veteran quoted in the report, “The better we did complying with all those policies and procedures, the more we made.” Another manager describes her key incentive for compliance: “I don’t really feel like losing my job.”
• The Be-Trayed report concludes that enforcement is so stringent because these exclusive deals, and the resulting kickbacks are baked into the Big Three companies’ business model. The scale of the issue: It is estimated that kickbacks or rebates account for 40-50% of these companies’ net profits in North America.
• That estimate of profits remains an estimate, however. And that is because of the final pillar of the kickbacks system: secrecy. In the words of one worker quoted in the report, there is “Absolutely no transparency” in the system. And the trail of fired whistleblowers and former managers and workers who fear retaliation if they speak out backs this claim.

Food Service Management companies have been sued over these practices before. Testimony from one of the former New York State Assistant Attorney General who prosecuted one such case described kickbacks as “fundamentally bad business.” He went on to explain that “In my opinion, rebates create an inherent conflict of interest. Decision makers are more likely to make food choices based on maximizing rebate income rather than other important factors.”

Big Food: Bad for People and the Planet

While Aramark, Sodexo, and Compass Group may not be household names, the Big Food companies they work with are. Indeed, some of the biggest have been in the headlines recently. Smithfield Foods, where a workers’ group has sued over lack of protections as COVID-19 swept through pig processing plants. Tyson, whose chicken processing plants have a long history of mistreating workers, from degrading accounts of line speeds so fast workers are unable to take bathroom breaks to dangerous conditions in the current pandemic. JBS, a massive meat multinational selling under Pilgrim’s Pride and other brands, whose Brazilian operations are linked to the fires that spread through the Amazon rainforest last year.  Cargill, the commodity trader whose name never appears on household products, but whose supply chains funnel cocoa, soy, and palm oil into industrial food chains. And leave child labor, deforestation, and poverty in the communities where they work from Indonesia to Brazil to Cote d’Ivoire.

Dubbed “the Worst Company in the World” in 2019, Cargill has recently been back in headlines for increasing child labor in their cocoa supply chains.

These Big Food companies are notorious for their contributions to human rights violations, workers’ rights abuses, and the climate crisis. And these are the companies who prop up the kickbacks model. It’s a model with just a few winners, executives and shareholders who profit, and a whole lot of losers—all of us who want good food, decent jobs, and a habitable planet.

Real Meals, Real Solutions

The Be-Trayed report delves deep into the details of how kickbacks cost university clients, vendors, and students money—and looks beyond the nitty-gritty line items. The report concludes: “The impacts of an increasingly privatized and kickback-driven supply chain may be invisibilized, but they are severe for so many communities, from Indigenous peoples of the Amazon to Black farmers in North Carolina, from processing plant workers in Arkansas to cattle ranchers in Colorado, from students in the food line to cafeteria workers on the frontline.”

But it does not have to be this way. While corporate kickbacks lock in supply chains of destruction, those student meal plan dollars could be investing in another food system entirely.

That’s why we’re part of the coalition calling on Aramark, Sodexo, and Compass Group for #RealMealsNow.

That roadmap for real change includes:

• Phase out the kickback system that reinforces the power of Big Food corporations and harms communities.
• Give market access to community-based farms and food businesses by reaching a target of at least 25% Real Food sourcing in every higher education account.
• Invest in racial justice and equity by expanding purchasing from Black farmers and other disenfranchised producers and by investing in infrastructure to support their market access.
• Reduce both their carbon emissions and their purchases of factory-farmed animal products by 25 percent and replace them with Real Food alternatives.

These steps add up to a goal of investing close to $1 billion per year to work for our communities.

While it sounds like a big number, Real Food Generation, the authors of the report, have been working on university campuses for years. The success stories scattered throughout the report show what’s possible. One example tells of students at the University of Vermont dumping Dole and Chiquita’s bananas and human rights abuse records to support small-scale farmer-grown bananas from Equal Exchange. Let’s build more of that.

Get Involved: Real Meals Now!

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the ways that the current industrial food system is failing eaters, workers, and farmers alike. As more people look for ways to make change, here are a few things you can do today:

• Check out the Be-Trayed report for specific recommendations for students, farmers, ranchers, fishers, journalists, activists, shareholders, and public officials.
• Sign on to the Real Meals Campaign petition.
• Watch and share this video where Phillip and Dorathy Barker talk about their 40 years in the dairy business and the impacts of Big Food.
• Support food workers’ urgent calls for workplace protections during the global pandemic.

[i] Aramark, Sodexo, and Compass Group control 83% of all revenue earned by the top 50 contracted food service companies in the U.S. in 2015, according to the Be-Trayed report.

The post Be-Trayed: A New Report Exposes Corporate Kickbacks Undermining a Fair Food System appeared first on Fair World Project.

See other conversations in this series.

The Indian government ordered a nationwide lockdown on March 24^th, 2020. People are not supposed to leave their homes and all transport services have been suspended. The largest visible impact of the lockdown is in our nearest big city, Bareilly. There is very little traffic on the usually overcrowded roads. The air is amazingly fresh and clear, and the river is clean—I’ve never seen our environment like this. Restaurants are closed, but some grocery stores are open from seven to eleven in the morning.

Construction has stopped and many workers have lost their jobs. Government provides some food support and guarantees rent so that renters won’t lose housing.

In the villages where Pavitramenthe works, our farmers are allowed to work in the fields—but initially, they were allowed to work only two people at a time. Now this has been relaxed to five at a time, acknowledging harvest labor demands. Since the lockdown started on March 24, Pavitramenthe’s field officers and I have stayed in regular contact with farmers. They told us that they, the farmers and storekeepers, have access to food and cash and are able to get by. The people suffering worst in their villages are landless farmworkers who cannot work due to restriction on the number of people in the field. Many have no access to cash or food.

Fair Trade Farmer Organizations Support Communities

We realized that these landless farmworkers needed help urgently. We compiled a list of what came out to be 4,000 needy workers and began planning a simple but effective distribution of foods, spices, school materials and other basic necessities to the workers and their families. Typically, there are six people per family, for a total of about 25,000 people.

Our staff packages the items in bags at our purchasing center and then uses three trucks to visit village after village. We keep a list of recipients and have them sign for receipt. Our head farmers who are familiar with everyone in their village will make sure that food packages reach the needy.

We completed our first delivery to 4,000 families in mid-April, the second is under way and includes more fruits and vegetables and traditional medicinal herbs, such as tulsi and chamomile. Women in one village are sewing some 100,000 respiratory masks for distribution to adults and children in the villages.

Fair Trade Partnerships Provide Support without Discrimination

About 500 of the 4,000 recipients of aid are Muslims, corresponding to their share of the population in this part of Uttar Pradesh. Pavitramenthe buys mint oil from Hindu and Muslim farmers alike. In the case of predominantly Muslim villages, the people out of work are usually not agricultural workers—since that work is mostly done by Hindus. Instead, they tend to work as laborers in manufacturing and mechanical work, such as welding. In both cases, Pavitramenthe’s head farmers pointed out workers in need who were then included in the distribution of food and other goods.

The seed money for the initial $50,000 needed for the first emergency delivery was provided generously by Dr. Bronner’s and matched by Pavitramenthe’s Fair Trade Fund. Dr. Bronner’s and Pavitramenthe then jointly applied for a grant from the German Development Organization GIZ who will match Pavitramenthe’s and Dr. Bronner’s contribution in staff time and materials. The bottom line: for a total cash amount of about $150,000, we will be able to supply approximately 25,000 people with food, herbs, soap and even schooling materials for six weeks.

Home Gardens Offer “A Gift” Amid Confusion

We expect to do a third food delivery in mid-May—and our hope is that by then, most farmworkers will be allowed back to the fields for work on the mint harvest. The focus of our program will then shift to supporting farmers in their dealings with brokers and government. There is much confusion about government minimum prices for crops. In addition, their payment is slow, and dealers take advantage of the closure of public markets and limited competition to push down prices. Unfortunately, government workers can also be prone to advantaging themselves over farmers too.

We will also support home gardening programs for farmworkers and farmers. In this situation being able to grow your own food is a gift that people—even many farmers—need to be reminded of.

Fair Trade and Regenerative, Organic Agriculture Help Align with Nature

Our relief program fits in very well with our ongoing commitment to supporting communities through fair trade practices and building long-term relationships with farmers. It is just one example of how we engage, it’s part of our business model.

To me, the pandemic illustrates the point that in the long term, we cannot operate in conflict with nature, trying to conquer it. Rather we need to align with nature and understand how it works.

As a practicing Hindu I subscribe to the concept of the five elements in nature. Covid-19 reminds us powerfully that we are ‘All One’—that nature does not discriminate between countries or people. That, if we don’t work with nature, if we exploit it instead, that it ‘fights us back!’. And more crises like this one will keep happening. So, our good health and livelihoods are dependent on working with and for nature—by working with regenerative, organic and fair trade principles and methods we are able to do this. In turn it provides us with sustenance and community that has been a big part of supporting our situation at Pavitramenthe now and in the future.

“Oberlin Summer – Mint” by Edsel L is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

The post The COVID-19 Pandemic Shows the Importance of Working with Nature: Reflections from a Fair Trade Leader appeared first on Fair World Project.

New NAFTA has some hard-won changes

As the dust settles and the deal rushes to a vote in the House, it’s a scramble to find out what is in the text of NAFTA 2.0 and what its consequences could be. Some of the big changes in the NAFTA deal that’s making its way towards a House vote:

Corporations Shouldn’t Be Above the Law

Corporations shouldn’t be above the law. But that’s basically what the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions of NAFTA (and other trade deals) allows for. Under ISDS, corporations have the ability to sue in private tribunals—and have won hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars as compensation for lost profits due to health and environmental regulations. In NAFTA 2.0, the chapter (11-B) that includes ISDS provisions has been cut. That’s mostly good news, except for the one massive loophole that remains: Oil and gas companies operating in Mexico. Companies like Exxon and Chevron will still have access to that private, corporate-friendly system of tribunals, although there are a few additional requirements in place.

Workers’ Rights Need Meaningful Enforcement

One of the huge failings of NAFTA and other similar free trade agreements like the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is that they drive a race to the bottom with companies flocking to the places with the least regulation and the lowest costs. Thanks to strong advocacy and involvement from unions, NAFTA 2.0 has some promising improvements for workers’ rights, although it remains far from a template for future agreements.

Previously, the system for filing labor disputes was slow and included a standard that labor violations must be proven to be “trade-related,” in a narrow way that has been proven impossible to meet as the systemic outsourcing of jobs to lower cost, lower regulatory locations does not count as evidence. Under NAFTA 2.0, the presumption is that labor rights violations are trade related, and the burden of proof is no longer on the ones filing the complaint.

The enforcement mechanisms include a hotline for workers and unions to report violations. There is also a timeline built in to move industry in Mexico away from company unions to more independent unions, granting workers more power in their representation. The standards also include some timelines to prevent reported violations from dragging on endlessly, as has been the case under previous agreements. Finally, in one of the big victories for workers’ groups, there are now provisions for company-specific enforcement of labor rights violations. Companies can now be fined or have tariffs imposed for violations, with the penalties becoming increasingly harsh for repeat violators—up to having goods blocked at the border. On paper, these standards are an improvement, although it remains to be seen how the inspections and reporting process will take place.

NAFTA 2.0 – Still a Bad Deal

Those are a few of the key improvements in NAFTA 2.0—while they are far from ideal, they are improvements to the existing deal. But NAFTA 2.0 still upholds the fundamental model of its predecessor and is far from what should be considered a decent trade deal, or a template for future deals.

NAFTA 2.0 Fails Farmers & Our Food System

The original NAFTA has put agribusiness ahead of small-scale and family farmers in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Each has seen farm families driven off their land. In Mexico, more than 2 million farm families were forced out; Canada lost one-third of its family farms. The U.S. has seen 1/10 of family farms get driven out of business and food imports rise. Across borders, farmers, eaters, and workers have lost income and control of their food system. What they’ve gained: A growing public health crisis. Under NAFTA, corn prices in Mexico plunged 66%, undercut by big agribusiness. Yet the price of staple corn tortillas soared up 279%.

But NAFTA 2.0 fails to address any of these issues. Trump may tout the benefits of the new deal for farmers struggling under the ongoing trade war with China, but the reality is that the tiny increases in market access to Canada for some U.S. dairy farmers is a drop in the bucket. Nothing in this new deal addresses the huge losses that farmers have faced since the passage of NAFTA. Instead, NAFTA 2.0 locks in the favors to Big Food companies, including ignoring calls for country of origin labeling for meats.  Once again, the winners are the big global agribusiness firms and the losers are all the rest of us harmed by the get-big-or-get-out mentality of our current food system.

Low Wages Hurt Workers

While it’s difficult to assign precise causes to jobs lost over a quarter of a century, economists estimate that the U.S. lost nearly 1 million jobs directly due to NAFTA. Greedy for the profits they could earn off of low wages in Mexico, corporations have moved manufacturing jobs south (and now continue to move on to the next low-cost destination). President Trump has talked about this plenty throughout his campaign for the White House and for a “New NAFTA.” But his proposed revisions to NAFTA do nothing to bring those jobs back. And while the requirements around boosted wages for autoworkers in Mexico talk of a $16 average wage, it’s mostly a trick of arithmetic. Those averages are not minimums. Instead, they count some higher paid manager paychecks as well—another case where the soundbite is much better than the substance. Those lack of wage and outsourcing protections have lead the Machinists Union to be one of the dissenting voices taking a stand against NAFTA 2.0. Even as the new NAFTA is announced, big automakers have announced further plans to shutter plants in the U.S. and move to Mexico.

In the 25 years since NAFTA went into effect, wages have gone down while the wealthiest 1%’s share of national income has shot up 55%. Nothing in NAFTA 2.0 addresses the structural changes to our economy and livelihoods.

We Can’t Afford to Ignore the Climate Crisis

NAFTA 2.0 is stuck in the ‘90s when it comes to the climate crisis. Earlier in 2019 the United Nations issued a dire report: the consensus of global climate scientists is that we have just eleven years to make the massive changes needed to halt climate catastrophe.  “We are the last generation that can prevent irreparable damage to our planet,” warned General Assembly President María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés of Ecuador. Yet NAFTA 2.0 does not even mention climate change, nor does it include the kind of binding clean water, air, or land standards that are needed. Instead, it locks in damaging rules that benefit corporations seeking low, cheap standards at the expense of all of us hoping for a habitable planet. The Sierra Club cites the example of lead battery processing—NAFTA has helped companies take advantage of lower wage and environmental standards in Mexico, shifting jobs and pollution across the border.

While so many of us are talking about the need to transition away from our collective dependence on fossil fuel, NAFTA 2.0 moves in the opposite direction, making it cheaper to produce dirty, dangerous tar oil and fracked gas and writing in big loopholes for oil and gas companies. At the moment when we need to take urgent action on climate, NAFTA 2.0 locks us in to a path forward that is recklessly, willfully ignorant of the solutions at hand.

NAFTA 2.0 – Now What?

The updated NAFTA 2.0, or USMCA, deal makes some improvements to the current NAFTA. But those improvements are small compared to the scope of the deal—and the billions of dollars of trade that it will shape. Multinational corporations continue to pursue their profit-driven agenda. Yet theirs is not the only narrative.

When the revised NAFTA was issued in the Fall of 2018, President Trump spoke of it as a done deal. But through the hard work of labor unions, environmental groups, and others across borders in North America, that “done deal” was undone and negotiators were forced to consider the needs of others besides corporate lobbyists. This isn’t the first time that massive collective organizing changed the course of a trade deal (for example, the now defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP). Those are the victories we will be keeping in mind as this deal moves forward—and indeed, that organizing has made substantive changes in the text of NAFTA 2.0, especially the elimination of the ISDS provisions in most cases.

Yet we continue to keep our eyes on the vision of trade that benefits people instead of harming them a little less. NAFTA 2.0 is not a template for future deals, it’s a floor that deals shouldn’t sink below. But what we really need are new visions for trade that, in the words of Alyshia Galvez in the current issue of our For a Better World magazine, “take into consideration the well-being of communities and the sustainability of the environment.” Let’s keep envisioning that and working for that goal.

Photo by Roderico Y. Díaz on Unsplash: A family in Guatemala indigenous dry part of its corn harvest to ensure native seeds for planting the following year. 
“All Ears” by jeffbalke is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 – Corn from one of Iowa’s many corn fields.

The post New NAFTA – What Does it Mean? appeared first on Fair World Project.