IDYP: World Café "Does ethical consumption really have an impact on international development?"
Written by Allison Dworschak, IDYP Treasurer, edited by Danielle Kerchmar, IDYP Chair.
On September 12th, with the support of Sustainable Coastlines, IDYP hosted a World Café on the topic of, "Does ethical consumption really have an impact on international development?”
IDYP were excited to welcome eight table hosts to help facilitate the discussion and bring a diverse opinion to the group:
1. Jason Garman
Communications Manager at Amnesty International who did this TEDx talk on the topic;
2. Aaron Davy
Code of Conduct & Standards Manager & Humanitarian Coordination at the Council of International Development;
3. Annie Hollister-Jones
Produced the Ethical Fashion Guide at Tearfund;
4. Tāmati Norman
Founder of Native Rituals and also Former Chair of the NZ-PNG Business Council;
5. Karina Nepia-Blyth
Board Member at TupoToa;
6. Evotia-Rose Araiti
Facilitator/ actress/ mentor/ active supporter and contributor to shifting the narrative that sits around Pacific people;
7. Kate Haselhoff
Projects & Advisory Analyst at the Sustainable Business Network;
8. Astra Rushton-Allan
Producer Support Team at Fairtrade Australia New Zealand.
The World Café had three rounds of questions to address the overall topic of the event.
Round 1: What kind of impact can be achieved through shifting our consumption practices?
It’s hard to know what impact you’re going to have. For example, when you buy a computer, there are so many parts from so many countries. Sometimes it’s expensive to buy ethically, so it isn’t an easy decision for people to make. Companies like Walmart have the benefit of economies of scale, but how can we possibly know where all their products come from? And what is the impact on the community (e.g. Walmart often has the impact of destroying small business communities)?
But there are small changes we can make, like changing the color of your roof to change your energy consumption.
Sometimes long distance impacts can be really abstract for the consumer. So what can we be confident about at the purchase point? We do feel confident that consumers have influence, even if only locally. Consumers have the power to enforce the way things are produced, for example with food and clothing being labeled with country of origin tags. The thing is, all the products/ingredients need to be taken to account. If you’ve got 35 ingredients in a cosmetic product, you have to hold them all to the same standard, right?
The group mutually agreed that we need to shift culture, values, and mindset around consumption. We live at a time that we value a surplus, an abundance. In today’s time, tt’s not enough to sustain you and yours with “enough” - we want “more” and “more”. Linked to that is the impact of a lack of connection and responsibility. Evotia mentioned that when she was working with a Māori-owned business, they were thinking about working with iwi on a 100-year plan and how it completely changed the view of their responsibilities in this life time. What today will impact the tomorrow of our children and our children’s children?
We also talked about how we are just one of the stakeholders in the society. It needs to be a collective action. We need private companies to shift their mindset with society from short term goals to long term goals. There needs to be an attitude shift from an individualist culture to a more collective focus. We need to change from a want-based to a need-based culture.
Round 2: What are the risks, limitations or inconsistencies of ethical consumption?
There were three main points summarised by the group: 1) Why do we think we have a moral high ground to tell other countries what is ethical? 2) It’s also about collective action. We need to get business to change with us. 3) And we have become very, very disconnected from nature.
One big limitation to ethical consumerism is the limited access to reliable information for the consumer. What is the reliability of certification bodies? How can we genuinely trust what we’ve been told about a product? There are always agendas, lobbying, etc. Also, ethical consumerism is a MIDDLE CLASS LUXURY. Who has the luxury to engage in ethical behavior? We (the participants of this event) are incredibly privileged to be able to even have this discussion. But also it’s important that we don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Even making some ethical decisions is inherently good.
We spoke about opportunity cost, e.g. walking to work vs driving. Time is a limited resource, and ethical consumerism takes time. Also, who determines the principles of ethical consumption is part of its limitation. What’s at the top of the list? Climate? Social issues? What comes first? Developed nations often come and tell developing nations the “right way” to do things ethically, but who are we to do so?
Finally, there’s a lot of information out there, and we’re unable to choose between items. Sometimes people are overwhelmed – what can I do to have a real impact? Is the decision I make every week going to impact the climate?
Round 3: Is ethical consumption an ideal way forward? If not, what’s the alternative?
“Consumerism” as a mindset is a problem in and of itself. If we keep the same mindset, we will still over-consume, and we may not solve the environmental and social problems we want to solve. Even if every product in the grocery store is “ethical”, consuming at the same level we are is not sustainable.
The research mentions that there are so many influencing factors on what drives people’s decision making behavior, and some of which we’re not conscious. We spoke briefly on the fact that your ability to make ethical decisions is dependent on perfect environmental factors, and when those don’t exist, you’re likely to make more personally strategic decisions. The research shows that for some of those factors, we aren’t even conscious.
As was said repetitively, there are communities all over the country that are priced out of buying organic. Ethical consumers is a middle class privilege. But actually, as a whole population, we just need to consume less.
But how do you do that and be fair to all parties? If we stop buying bananas, what happens to the economy of Ecuador?
One table brought up that we should to model our economy after nature. We need to deal with the consumerism culture, full stop. But then we need to model our economy after an ecological circle. Sustaining what we’ve got is not enough. We need to invest in regenerative products. We need to stop thinking about ourselves as consumers. If we’re trying to change supply chains structurally, we need to see ourselves as active players within that system.
We talked about the upcycle mall. A “mall” is a traditional model that people are familiar with, but it has been innovated. How do you innovate where you don’t have to change people’s behaviors, but you change their impact? We need to take two steps back and ask what we are actually selling.
We talked about the power of the employee being a strong leverage point, for changing the way companies and organizations work. These terms and certifications didn’t actually exist until consumers were asking for it and it can work the same way in the workplace.
All around, one final conclusion was that any actions can have negative and positive effects. It is impossible to make a perfect decision, but we do need to stay curious about the impacts of our decisions.
A huge thank you to everyone who made it out for this engaging discussion, and especially to our Table Hosts for facilitating the discussion, and again to Sustainable Coastlines for providing the free space and the alcohol.
If you attended, you can give us feedback through this link. If you’d like to support Sustainable Coastline’s awesome mission (and generous donation of free space & alcohol), you can donate here.