Sustainability and Fair Trade are the Future and saving the world!

Interlaken, 22 september 2009. Marina Spadafora, Designer from Italy, presented her new collection “Banuq”, which was entirely produced in Africa. Bringing work is the best you can do to make Africa become a successful economy, she says. Pesticides are destroying land and the health of many people, we should act in a responsible way and work with organic cotton. The organic textile market is growing fast. Sustainability is the future, it will save the world!

Holistic approach for supply chain of organic cotton

Interlaken, 22 september 2009, Sandeep Balekai from the consulting organisation “Conquest” is looking at the supply chain with a holistic approach. The triangle between production, environment and society must be looked at integrally. If for example you can avoid rejections, you can save energy and natural resources, and maybe then also the problem of the overtime of the workers is solved…

Tadjik organic cotton for sale (long staple)

Interlaken, 22 september 09, Abdusattor Haydarov from Sugdagroserv Tadjikistan came to the Organic Cotton Congress to make contacts for selling the longstaple cotton from 1000 farmers in Tadjikistan.

Valorisation locale du coton bio et équitable

Hervé Le Gal, délégué général d’Ingalan nous présente le travail de cette ONG bretonne engagée dans la promotion et le développement du commerce équitable. La région Bretagne  les a chargé de travailler à la valorisation du coton bio dans les pays producteurs d’Afrique occidentale et de chercher à amener les acteurs économiques bretons, principalement des PME, à entrer dans le programme.Au cours de ce bref entretien, il nous explique ce qu’il attend de sa participation au congrès.

Ever heard about the Marrakesh process?

If you think now of the WTO round in Marakech or an judicial proceeding, you’re wrong! The Marrakech process is a 10 years global framework for action on sustainable consumption and production. In session 35 of the WOCO09 Mrs. Eveline Venanzoni, representing the Swiss Federal office  for the Environment FOEN in the Marrakech task force for sustainable public procurement, explained the participative Marrakech process and it’s different stages starting with the conference in Rio in 2002. A famous outcome of this conference is the so called “agenda 21″.

Unfortunately not much people are familiar with the Marakech process due to laking PR. But a ten years plan to bring production and consumption in a vary of aspects towards more sustainability can be commented by all interested people. Just click on the link and find the draft paper at http://www.unep.fr/scp/Marrakech/

WCOC09: Results, news and secrets of day1

Andy Salm moderated the closing session of day1 of the WCOC09, reporting back in plenary ‘results, news and secrets of the day’. The story telling process used for this session, as well as the other facilitation techniques adopted throughout the all congress,  are quite original for an event of this size and type.

Most of the discussions so far have been taking place in small groups, to ensure a high degree of interaction and participation among the delegates. For each session, a rapporteur had been chosen, with the task not so much to write a formal report, but rather to write down on 5 cards the key points emerging from the group discussion. Andy’s job was then to go through this cards, and pull out recurrent threads and learning points. He shared these with the audience, and took few minutes with us to record the main ones with us in the blip below.

Working as a community

The most important message we can take from this first day is that in order to achieve a successful growth in the organic cotton industry, we have to work as a community. It is important to realize that each person along the value chain is important and that the little individual steps can have a big impact.  Dialogue, integration and long-term partnership are crucial to achieve this goal.