A meeting held in Broome, North Western Australia, between major stakeholders in the area of fair trade, agreed to evaluate kakadu plum and desert raisin from Aboriginal communities for fair trade certification. This is the first time this has been considered outside a third world country.
Over the past 12 months Juleigh Robins, managing director of Outback Spirit Holdings, owners of the Outback Spirit Botanicals brand and Dr Luigi Palombi, Centre for the Governance of Knowledge and Development of The Australian National University, have worked together to further the establishment of a fair-trade certification system for the benefit of Australia’s Aboriginal producers.
Discussions with ISEAL (London), the Fair Labelling Organisation (Bonn, Australia and New Zealand) and the World Fair Trade Organisation (Australia) culminated in a gathering in Broome in North Western Australia. The delegates came from all over Australia to learn about two exciting native ingredients – the kakadu plum and the desert raisin (bush tomato) and the role that fair trade certification can play in the economic development of Aboriginal communities and suppliers who grow and harvest these crops for Commercial application.
The principal objective of this meeting, to explore if fair trade can be applied in a first world country, was achieved and a study to determine how this certification may be developed to suit the unique conditions of Australian Aboriginal culture and practices.
Juleigh Robins announced: “In August 2009, Australian representatives of the Fair Labelling Organisation and the World Fair Trade Organisation came together with Aboriginal people in Broome – a town on the north west coast of Australia, in a region called the Kimberly, one of the world’s most pristine ecological areas. Until now fair trade certification has been focused on third world producers in third world countries. But we have come to appreciate that fair-trade has the capacity to improve the lives and outcomes for not only these people but of Indigenous people that live in first world countries, like Australian Aboriginal people. This study will be a world’s first because it seeks to bring fair-trade to Indigenous people in a first world country."
