Much of our wealth in Europe and North America has been acquired by exploiting the labour of people in our former colonies. Should we give it back? Complex theories can be woven about the way the world developed as it did, the reasons why some nations are poor and others rich. I’m not the kind of person who can argue all the details. I just know that when people work long hours in dreadful conditions, for a pittance, and the companies that sell their goods make billions – then it’s wrong. When most of us in Britain can afford to buy more clothing than we will ever wear, when the prices are low because the goods are made in sweatshops by children – that’s wrong. We have a debt to pay the Third World. We have a responsibility to see that things change.

Poverty is not necessary. It’s no more necessary than the exploitation of children was in Britain in the nineteenth century. It could be eradicated easily – throughout the world – if international trade were conducted more fairly. It would not require great personal sacrifices. The average household in Britain throws away over £400 worth of food in a year. What a waste! That’s more than most families earn in a year in many developing countries. If we cut down that waste, and spent the money saved on more fair trade products, it would be just one thing we could do to improve the lot of those who make the food we eat.

Sainsbury’s have shown that it’s possible to sell fair trade food at normal prices. Their fair trade bananas are often cheaper than in local markets. It’s a great example of what one supermarket can do, and still their sales and profits go up. Multinational companies make enormous profits; a fairer share should go back to the producers.

As individuals, we are voting with our wallets by buying fair trade products. Politicians know this. They should heed our call. None of us want people abroad to starve. We’ve shown, by our support for fair trade food, that we’re prepared to pay a bit more. But that’s just on a personal level. To eradicate poverty we need government action. We need legislation now, to make the terms of trade fairer between the rich and poor countries of the world.

Fortunately, people are becoming more aware of the links between the fair trade and green agendas. We all know that well-off countries are consuming more resources than the planet can cope with: but poverty is harmful to the environment, too. When people have no security, they have more children to look after them when they are old or unable to work. This leads to population growth and a greater demand for food and land. Many live in slums, shanty towns or villages without electricity; more trees are cut down for fuel. As global resources shrink, this is becoming a bigger and bigger problem.

It’s a vicious circle. Increased consumption of resources contributes to global warming, which in turn increases poverty. There’s no point in finding people jobs, fairly or unfairly paid, if their land is swept away by flooding. Cyclones, tsunamis and other extreme weather phenomena are becoming increasingly common; droughts are destroying crops, and with sea levels rising, some people in low-lying countries are already losing their homes.

In addition, the pressure on land and increasing oil prices is pushing up the cost of food. If people are suffering in Britain, where we only spend a small proportion of our income on food, how many more are suffering in the Third World? A billion people are struggling to live on less than a dollar a day, and they spend more than half their income on food. For them, rising food prices may be catastrophic.

The answer is simple. The market for fair trade products is still not big enough. The more customers insist on fair trade, the more orders can be placed abroad, and the more work there will be for artisans – on fair trade terms.

Many producers sell only a small percentage of their work to fair trade – twenty or thirty percent, perhaps. The rest goes to normal commercial buyers, whose terms are far worse. They only pay when an order is completed, so the producers may have to borrow money at extortionate rates to buy the raw materials. They allow insufficient time for production. They may even cancel orders after they’ve been completed, leaving the artisan with no income and a pile of dead stock; “Sorry, that’s your problem, not ours. Our customer changed their mind.”

Once in Dilli Haat I found a stall selling handmade woollen jumpers, similar to those you see from Nepal or Peru. I agreed a price for one, and – at the last minute – decided I ought to try it on first. It was a good job I did. I could hardly get my head through the neck of the jumper.

I put my money back in my pocket and was about to leave; but the woman running the stall would have none of it. “Nahi, nahi!” she said – “No, no!” A flood of Hindi followed as she put her hands round my neck and started squeezing in and out.

For a minute I thought she was trying to strangle me. I tried to protest, but it was the end of a long day and my thought processes weren’t working very fast. After a while, I realised she was telling me the jumper was too tight around my neck – which of course I already knew. She pointed at her wrist – she didn’t have a watch but was obviously referring to one – and put ten fingers in the air. Then she waved a pair of knitting needles at me, smiling and nodding her head vigorously up and down.

I gathered from this that she could alter the jumper in ten minutes. I nodded and smiled myself; “Acha, acha” – “Good, good” – and started to walk away. This was not to her liking. Her right hand shot out and she beckoned significantly. Money please! She wasn’t having me going away and not coming back. Ten minutes later I returned, to find the jumper had been altered; it fitted perfectly.

Can you imagine getting that kind of service in Britain? How many sales assistants can even use a knitting needle?? The time when tailors, watch-menders, blacksmiths and other tradesmen were around is long gone. We live in a throw-away society where if something breaks or wears out, it’s easier to buy a new one than to have it mended.Fair trade and environmental concerns are inextricably linked. In the fair trade movement we need to become more aware of how global warming and other environmental problems are increasingly affecting the people we are trying to help. We need to make environmental issues a major priority, for instance by examining our operational policies and reducing our carbon emissions. We need to understand the issues better, campaign to raise awareness and work closely with the environmental movement.

Environmentalists need to be aware of the issues of poverty, the effect it has on the environment, and how trade can influence all of this. The depletion of the earth’s resources has come about because of our demand for ever more products, sourced further and further away from where we live. Trade is at the heart of this. There is an excellent opportunity today for environmentalists to work more closely with the fair trade movement as it develops sustainable alternatives to normal commercial trade.

How is Shared Earth coping? Recession is obviously worrying. Property values may be shrinking, but I am confident that fair trade is growing; and Shared Earth seems to have a formula which works. In the last two years, we have increased from five to eight shops, including one in Stratford-upon-Avon in November 2008.

Our efforts are concentrating now on seeing us through a difficult economic time. But it would be a mistake to stand still. If anything is growing faster than support for fair trade, it’s concern about the environment. My next ambition is to open an ‘eco’ shop, combining fair trade products, especially those made from recycled materials, with energy-saving devices, ecological household accessories and the like. Most of Shared Earth’s products are already made from sustainable or recycled materials, but the environment is a number one priority and we want to go a step further.

How have fair traders changed their attitudes towards the environment over the last few years? Twenty years ago a customer came into the One World Shop in Edinburgh and complained about their recycled writing sets. Traidcraft had always carried a wide selection and distributed them to many fair trade shops at the time. She thought they were out of place.

“This is a Third World shop,” she complained. “If you keep pushing these things you’ll damage my commitment to you.”

Such a response would be unlikely today; we’re beginning to see how closely the problems of poverty and the environment are linked. Fair trade can be both part of the problem and part of the solution.

As fair trade importers and consumers, we’re getting better all the time at making demands of our suppliers. We have good reason to question producers about their practices, because environmental legislation is generally more stringent and more strictly enforced in the First World than in the Third. However, the problems we face with the environment today are largely caused by over-consumption and that’s our responsibility. Both the environmental and financial cost of the products we buy should be taken into account – and we should be paying for it.