James5

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Interesting example of corporate social responsibility over at Woolworths, they recently ended a contract with an Indonesian paper company due to concerns over the sustainability of the trees used. It’s good to see that concerns beyond short term profit are playing into considerations by the big guys. It was also heartening to see that BP now serve fair trade coffee at their ‘Wild Bean’ cafes - it seems big business can care.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Rodrik and Zetland have some good insights into the rising price of food. Interestingly, while World Bank head honcho Zoellick has called for an end to US farm subsidies as a solution, this would in fact mean higher food prices - maybe good news for farmers but not for those needing to buy and eat food. If the US ended subsidies tomorrow, not going to happen, the effect would actually be pretty bad in the short term for the global poor.

Popularity: 3% [?]

GreenLAGirl has reviewed Javatrekker a book chronicling Dean Cycon’s journey through a variety of coffee farms. Looks good.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Rodrik’s post on sweatshops has some good comments to follow. I like the one by dale in particular: “Its OK to follow our hearts and moral intuitions on these matters. The time has passed when proponents of industrial market societies get a free pass on rationalizing extremes of explotation.” - though I think following our hearts/morals needs to be backed up by hard data showing that we are doing actually helps. More at IELP and check out the NYT article that started it.

Popularity: 6% [?]

The BBC reports that in the next two years the East African Community is set to drop almost two thirds of tariffs to EU Members via Economic Partnership Agreements.

Popularity: 7% [?]