Integritea

In the movie ‘Wall-E’ we are transported 700 years into the future, when the last surviving humans have been forced to abandon a polluted Earth and find refuge for their corpulent selves on the spaceship Axiom. The characterization of humans as grossly overweight dugong like creatures, transported in pods - being limited in their ability to move – appears a lot less like the fiction the movie is rated as, when one considers the rate at which human greed and indulgence are evolving. The genius of the movie does not end there, for the polluted and suffocated planet Earth seems to share the same trajectory, although that is probably set to make Wall-E non-fictional a lot sooner than the 700 years suggested in the movie. Last week the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released an assessment of where the world is with the 2010 target for significantly reducing the rate at which biodiversity was being lost. It makes sobering reading and is without a doubt essential read...

Fears of global recession have corporate planners scurrying to improve their financial prospects, mainly by cutting costs. The snappily titled programmes that are the outcome of these are obviously intended for the consumption of Wall Street, but are they fair on consumers and the worker? (more...)...

It's a little late I know, but Hollywood takes it's time coming to Sri Lanka. So when finally taking the kids to a movie about a robot called Wall-E, and not expecting much more than a couple of hours of mild entertainment, the reality came as a surprise. Writer/Director Andrew Stanton delivers a wolf in sheep's clothing, or rather a deeply insightful socio-political commentary on 21st Century society in the guise of a ‘cosmic comedy'. And all that in a movie in which the entire dialogue between the two main ‘characters' is restricted to synthesised squeaks of each other's names. And Wall-E achieves its overt and covert objectives beautifully, for there is delight in the eyes of the children present, nicely matching the consternation in those of their adult escorts. The spaceship ‘Axiom' is the home of mankind...

Amidst the wreckage of the Ministerial Meeting of the WTO in July emerges a new world order in which the wealthy, normally unchallenged Western states see their might checked. The discussions ended in failure and 7 years of effort seem to have come to naught. In spite of the somewhat arrogant accusations of Susan Schwab, it is clearly not the fault of the developing nations. India was held responsible by Ms. Schwab; yet the real culprit is most revealingly exposed by Burkina Faso's trade minister, Mamadou Sanou. He pleaded that the cotton industry in his country faced "extinction", exclaiming, "We can hardly control our anger. They wanted me to be here to negotiate on cotton. I have been here for 10 days and I haven't been able to discuss cotton. There is a risk that the whole system will collapse in our country." (more...)...

It has been a while since Dr. Robert Aboagye-Mensah of the Christian Council of Ghana famously commented,

"International trade between my country and the West is like an antelope and a giraffe competing for food which is at the top of a tree. You can make the ground beneath their feet level, but the contest will still not be fair."

It is seven years since WTO first met in Doha, acknowledging that international trade was not only unfair but structurally imbalanced - or unfair by design. That acknowledgment makes it surprising that in 2008 there is still disagreement on the most fundamental aspect of the Doha Talks - the $48 billion agricultural subsidies the US was giving its farmers.

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The June 2008 issue of ‘The Director’ Magazine of the IoD, included a well researched feature on the subject of CSR. It was to me, an informative, yet bewildering overview of the subject. Informative because it is a comprehensive and well researched feature, bewildering because in many cases, the businesses that practice this ‘corporate social responsibility’ – apparently with the aim of helping people and the environment - are taking a very un-businesslike approach to the matter. The difference between businesses and charities - in general of course - is that the former usually has clear, measurable and efficiently implemented outcomes, whilst the latter are often limited in their relevance by their adoption of inappropriately focused and sometimes impractical methodology. The combination of the two, using businesses – and businesslike methods - to help people and the environment may therefore offer a potent solution to the ills of our 21st century society. CSR should therefore be...

Sunday's news was full of the 'Primark Scandal' which has attracted a swift and ferocious response from Primark. Naturally the company feigns ignorance of exploitative labour practices amongst its suppliers and comforts itself with reference to its Code of Practice. Inevitably the denial has transferred the blame to its suppliers. But supplier standards in this case are built around the demands of the customer, and a more significant assessment of the problem would reveal that these suppliers are caught in a system of trade that is built on externalising social and environmental factors in favour of the corporate 'holy grail' - profit. Profit for the trader - the middleman, not the producer/supplier that is. This is not an isolated instance and it is symptomatic of the ill effects of the nearly universal emphasis on price, price and price only. Axing the suppliers who have been caught will only change the actors for exploitation - social and environmental - will surely continue to be used by o...

One of the most beautiful fruit shop in the world - a stone's throw from Uda Walawe National Park - where the fruit, spice and vegetables are ripened or matured on the tree, bush or root, usually in a plot owned by the fruit and vegetable seller herself, and where taste and flavours are authentic and untainted by the genetic modification. The Dilmah perspective on Fairness in Trade is based on exactly this model - the grower, bringing his or her product to market, direct. In this case the lady who owns and operates this little wayside shop, genuinely cares for her customer, the quality of her produce, and benefits 100% from her family's toil. Moreover, her customers enjoy delicious fruit, genuinely cared for, and genuinely fair - all the way from the tree to the customer....

As the section title implies, this is nothing to do with tea, but a collection of images which I have taken on my travels around Sri Lanka, mainly whilst on our MJF Foundation projects. This image was taken at a little village near Uda Walawe, as we prepared to embark on our Local Heroes project to transform the beautiful but deprived village of Koulara. The innocent delight in this child's face was a stark contrast to the plight his family faced. Fortunately, that has changed now, with the fruition of the Local Heroes project....

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