Laure Waridel, Fair-Trade Pioneer
As part of a series of articles on major personalities who have furthered the cause of tolerance in Canada, Tolerance.ca® presents Laure Waridel, an activist dedicated to creating a more equitable and ecologically just system of international trade.
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world," claimed Archimedes. More than two thousand years later, the Greek physician and mathematician's famous adage could well apply to Laure Waridel, a pioneer of the fair-trade movement in Quebec.
Active for more than ten years in ecological and humanitarian causes, Waridel is a firm believer in the one-step-at-a-time approach. It may be impossible to change the world overnight, but Waridel believes that as citizens and as consumers, we have an influence on the course of events. "To start with, we must realize that we have much more power than we allow ourselves to believe. Our actions have an impact on others. While we tend to think of our consumer choices as individual choices, they do have a strong collective impact," says Waridel, who was named one of 25 Canadian personalities who are starting to change our world by Maclean's magazine.
Vote With Your Wallet
In many African, Asian and Latin American countries, entire populations continue to suffer from poverty. Although its sources are undeniably multiple and complex, the rules of international trade are strongly slanted against citizens of Southern nations, in Waridel's view.
Far from contributing to their development, the free-trade agreements ratified with wealthy nations and the policies imposed on developing countries by large institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), keep them in subjection.
Consumer Power
Although she does not consider herself a revolutionary, Waridel is one of those who stubbornly refuse to throw in the towel despite the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. If the economic and political authorities are reluctant to alter their approach, then it is up to ordinary citizens to provoke change. Of course, it is essential to continue to press governments to take the real needs of poor countries into account, but we all must do our part, she believes.
That starts with paying close attention to what we buy at the grocery store. When we buy "fair-trade certified" products, as identified by the Fair Trademark Canada logo, we are certain that Southern producers receive a fair price. Thus we help them throw off the yoke of domination by large agro-processing industries.
To Waridel's mind, buying is a political act, the equivalent of voting. With that act, we can refuse to perpetuate an unjust system. By purchasing fair-trade products, we contribute to strengthening local communities in disadvantaged countries and to motivating them to take charge of their own affairs.
Growing Up on a Farm
Laure Waridel's passion for the environment and strong connection to the land goes back a long way. She was born in Switzerland in 1973, in the village of Chezalles-sur-Oron just north of Lake Geneva in the Canton of Vaud. When she was two years old, the whole family-with four girls and a boy-pulled up stakes and moved to Quebec. Their new home was a dairy farm in Mont-Saint-Grégoire, in the Montérégie region. It was not long before Laure became aware of the shift towards industrial farming methods and the vulnerability of farm producers.
As a young girl, she worked at a local organic farm, the Cadet Roussel farm in Mont-Saint-Grégoire. In 1996, it would become the first farm to join the Community Supported Agriculture project. Under the scheme, urban consumers are matched with local farms to receive baskets of organic vegetables. "Today, there are more than 70 farms in the network in Quebec," notes Waridel.
Taking Action
From 1990 to 1992, Waridel studied social sciences at the Cégep Lionel-Groulx. Subsequently, she earned a degree in sociology and international development from McGill University. She completed her university studies with a communications certificate from the Université du Québec à Montréal and a Master's degree in law and environmental studies from the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
After the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, Waridel became one of the founders of Équiterre. She remains with the non-profit organization today as a consultant. Équiterre is dedicated to promoting ecological and socially responsible choices through action, education and research. It focuses on four issues: fair trade, ecological agriculture, energy efficiency and sustainable transportation.
Équiterre's most recent campaign is Changer le monde, un geste à la fois, the French-language version of the David Suzuki Foundation's Nature Challenge: Ten Simple Things You Can Do To Protect Nature. The campaign illustrates Équiterre's philosophy of encouraging ordinary citizens to make small changes that can add up and have a real global impact.
Coffee, A Symbol of Inequality
In Waridel's view, the most striking symbol of the inequalities perpetuated by North-South trade is coffee. In the summer of 1996, as part of her university studies, she travelled to the Oaxaca Mountains in the south of Mexico to visit a coffee-growers' cooperative set up by indigenous people of the Union de Comunidades Indigenas de la Region del Istmo (Union of Indigenous Communities in the Isthmus Region, or UCIRI).
"It was fascinating to observe the effects of fair trade," recalls Waridel. "I was very skeptical of cooperation programs in general and their claim to help developing countries. I wanted to work on the causes of inequality and I wondered if fair trade was not just a way to soothe the consumer's conscience. But I realized that fair trade really can make a difference. The experience made me want to start a campaign in Quebec, where the notion of fair trade was not well known at the time."
Fair Trade: An Instrument of Community Action
In Mexico, says Waridel, "I saw how small producers got together into cooperatives and how they practiced organic, sustainable agriculture. They not only grew products for export, but they also grew corn and black beans to improve their own health situation. It went beyond the fact that they received more money for their coffee: you could see the dignity in their eyes, their sense of belonging to the cooperative and the feeling that they could improve their living conditions."
Compared to the amount it would receive through conventional trade routes, the cooperative gets almost twice as much for the coffee it sells. "The producers set aside some of their income for community projects. The advantages of fair trade go well beyond compensation," comments Waridel. Today, there are 360 cooperatives similar to UCIRI in 22 countries around the world.
Based on the Mexico experience, Waridel wrote her master's thesis on fair-trade coffee. It was published in 1997 under the title Coffee With a Cause (Une cause café in French) and has sold more than 5,000 copies. In 2001, the book was republished by Black Rose Books under the title Coffee with Pleasure: Just Java and World Trade.
More and more certified fair-trade products are available, notes Waridel. In Quebec, it is possible to buy fair-trade tea, sugar, cocoa and coffee. "At first, there were only two sales outlets for fair-trade items in Canada. Today, there are more than 1,500 in supermarkets, grocery stores and cafes."
Today's Utopia, Tomorrow's Reality?
Despite all the efforts she has devoted to the cause of fair trade over the past decade, Waridel is aware that it is still far from being a mass movement. Although more and more people are swayed by the arguments in favour of fair trade, it still represents only 1% of the entire market, in the case of coffee. For fair-trade products as a whole, the percentage is even lower.
Is Laure Waridel a dreamer? Her position is clear. "In the beginning, I dreamed that fair-trade coffee would be available in supermarkets. That's a reality. Now people have to buy more. I would like to see fair trade become not an alternative but the norm, and to see large companies submit to the fair-trade criteria. Is that an impossible dream? I feel you have to set your goals high and you have to believe in them."
It may be true that the majority of the population does not yet feel concerned by these social issues. Yet it must be remembered that before any fundamental change can occur, a change in mentality is necessary. "I like what Victor Hugo said: "Today's utopia is tomorrow's reality."
Translated by Christine York.
* Photo : Shootfilms.
To learn more:
Books by Laure Waridel
Waridel, Laure,
Une cause café, Montreal, Les Intouchables, 1997.
Waridel, Laure et Sara Teitelbaum,
Fair Trade: Contributing to Equitable Commerce in Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and France, Montreal, Équiterre, 1999.
Waridel, Laure,
Coffee with Pleasure: Just Java and World Trade, Montreal, Black Rose Books, 2002.
Waridel, Laure,
L'envers de l'assiette et quelques idées pour la remettre à l'endroit, Montreal, Écosociété, 2003.
Web site: www.equiterre.org
This article is one of a ten-part series made possible with the financial support of
