Sustainable Fair Trade Management System Put To Test

The World Fair Trade Organization is currently developing its own certification scheme, the Sustainable Fair Trade Management System (SFTMS).

Based on management thinking, the SFTMS is designed to be a certification system underlining continuous quality improvement to transform a business into a sustainable fair trade business.

The system aims to empower small producers to meet the increasingly challenging requirements of global markets and thus increase their chances to access new (mainstream) markets for their products.

Compliance with the SFTMS voluntary standard means that an organisation has a proven set of practices, procedures and processes that demonstrate sound behaviour from a social, economic and environmental point of view. After a successful, independent third-party audit the product sold by the certified organisation may carry a label communicating that this item was sourced and produced under Fair Trade principles and practices.

Unlike Certification by the FLO (Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International), which is applied for on a product-by-product basis and which is limited to agricultural products mostly catering to export markets, the SFTMS applies to an entire business and all of its products and services and would be rolled out to cater for both export and local markets.

As such the SFTMS wants to respond to the complexity and variation of products and processes characteristic of the majority of marginalized handicraft producers in the South.

WFTO launched an international, multi-stakeholder (internal and external) consultation process in compliance with the ISEAL Code of Good Practice in Setting Social and Environmental Standards to collaboratively elaborate the Standard Framework.

The SFTMS Standard is now in its second draft.

The finalisation of the SFTMS Standard will be subject to the recommendations following pilot studies. The pilots will be implemented across different countries in Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America.

In its effort to increase professionalism among small-scale producers and enhance their access to markets, the Trade for Development Centre of Belgian Technical Cooperation has committed to financing the pilot studies in Africa and Latin America.

Pilots financed by the Trade for Development Centre will be run in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. WFTO-LA will coordinate the process in Latin America whereas COFTA will coordinate in Africa.

Apart from providing input to the further development of the SFTMS standard and formulating guidelines for the implementation of SFTMS, the pilots need to allow producer organisations to get a better understanding of the process.

The pilot studies will involve 30 producer organisations in Africa and 10 in Latin America. The total cost equals EUR 217,000 of which the Trade for Development Centre finances EUR 133,000.

For more information on SFTMS, go to http://www.wfto.com/sftms