labour

Feast and famine

Submitted by ni-radio on December 26, 2007 - 12:00am.

With the Christmas parties and New Year feasting that's featuring in many millions of homes this week, the Radio New Internationalist team wants to get it's teeth into some of the interviews that we've done during 2007 about the food we're finding on our dinner tables:

• Angus Calder - a company director in search of more efficient agriculture - takes us through the problems that threaten our food supplies. As rising populations face falling levels of both water and agriculture land, he explains the conflicting choices that are about to be served to us.

• New Internationalist co-editor Troth Wells dishes up some tantalizing chocolate tastes to try on our New Year's guests.

• On chocolate's darker side, Bama Athreya from the International Labor Rights Forum outlines a plan for wiping out slavery and forced labour in the supply of cocoa by paying producers properly, and why manufactuers' aren't responding.

• While Coca Cola has been marketed as the holiday drink, Amit Srivastava from the India Resource Center explains how it's no holiday for Indians, where cola plants have been stealing water and polluting land causing community outrage strong enough to close Coke plants in India and start the ball rolling on the laying of criminal charges;

• Cooking up some solutions to impending food supply problems, permaculturalist Pam Morgan explains how it could be as simple as looking at our living spaces and maximizing their potential for growing food - as Cuba has done to avoid starvation.

Accompanying the food for thought that's been on today's program is a smorgasbord of sweet and saucy strains from the World Music Network's Riverboat records.

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Filed under:

• agriculture
• chocolate
• Coca-Cola
• corporate power
• farming
• food
• hunger
• labour
• ni-radio
• permaculture
• population
• poverty

Dreaming of a Fair Trade Christmas

Submitted by ni-radio on November 28, 2007 - 5:25pm.

This week, as the holiday shopping season gets into full swing, we examine some of the impacts our consumption patterns have on people and planet. We take a look at some of the food we eat, the clothes we wear and what gadgets we use and ask whether 'ethical shopping' is a way out of the quagmire. Today's co-host is New Internationalist co-editor Jess Worth who's done some research into the ethical shopping sector and has found that all is not as simple as it seems at first glance. We also hear from a number of guests from all over the world:

• Albert Tucker, Fair Trade consultant from Sierra Leonne and Barbara Crowther from the UK's Fair Trade Foundation, discuss the pros and cons of big business involvement in the Fair Trade sector.

• NI co-editor David Ransom speaks with Greenpeace's Sarah Holden about the fishy business of pirate fishing and its impacts on our oceans and the workers who get caught in the nets of the global seafood industry.

• The vast majority of electronic goods end up as waste in Asia - mostly China - where they may have been manufactured in the first place. Greenpeace China's toxics campaigner, Jamie Choi, describes the impacts this enormous e-waste burden is having on human health and the environment in China.

• Australian author/activist Sharon Beder diagnoses the CSD (Compulsive Selling Disorder) epidemic afflicting the politicians and governments around the world, as read by Radio New Internationalist producer Rachel Maher.

Today's music comes from two CD's from the World Music Network - Riverboat Records series. Granada-born vocalist and lyricist Benjamín Escoriza's Carambola delves into Spain's Moorish roots blending Flamenco and North African traditions. Meanwhile, take two volcanic island nations of Hawaii and Reunion and what do you have? The explosive combination of master accordionist and guitarist Rene Lacaille with the eclectic genre-defying talent of Bob Brozman erupting hot musical magma in the form of their album Digdig.

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Filed under:

• Australia
• china
• consumerism
• environment
• ethical business
• fair trade
• labour
• ni-radio
• oceans
• Sierra Leonne
• UK

Chocolate

Submitted by ni-radio on November 14, 2007 - 12:00am.

This program's full of tasty treats. It's all about chocolate. Luscious and lovely, it's a product that's starting to light up the fair trade lists. Sweet and satisfying, it's been hailed over the centuries as a sexual stimulant. But when it comes to chocolate desserts, there's little that's just. The country producing over forty per cent of the cocoa to make the world's chocolate is still relying on child slaves and forced labourers. Today's co-host - Troth Wells - is one of the authors of The BitterSweet World of Chocolate. As she shares with us some secrets of sweet and savoury treats, she serves up a taste of both the light and dark sides of the global chocolate trade.

• Bama Athreya and her colleagues from the International Labor Rights Forum have calculated the cost of wiping out slavery and forced labour in the supply of chocolate by paying producers properly. It's an extra .02 cents on the price of each chocolate bar. She tells us why cocoa and chocolate companies aren't prepared to pay.

• Nikki van der Gaag takes us through the many health benefits that history hands to out to chocolate consumption.

• The Grenada Chocolate Company is revolutionizing the supply chain from cocoa to chocolate block. Company founder Mott Green tells us about the dynamic impact that this will have on Grenada's economy.

Today's CD - Canta Bovea y Sus Vallenatos con Alberto Fernandez - celebrates that Colombian style of music called vallenato. It's sweet and saucy strains should provide an ideal accompaniment to any chocolate dish.

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Filed under:

• chocolate
• fair trade
• free trade
• health
• labour
• ni-radio

Labour the point

Submitted by ni-radio on August 15, 2007 - 12:00am.

Each time a person becomes rich, you can bet your bottom dollar that it has come at a cost to the wealth or health of others. As an upper class of millionaires emerges in any country, they often do so off the backs of imported labour, creating a layer of second-class citizens. China is no exception. More than 120 million rural workers have now left their land and migrated to factories and developments both inside and outside their country. Once there, they can earn a better living than in their fields by mortgaging their bodies to their bosses. But what are these capitalist realities doing to socialist principles? And is the Chinese Communist Party bringing their people out of poverty or throwing away a whole generation of its citizens to feed capitalism's new machines? Through a range of revealing discussions, Monina Wong, from Labour Action China, helps us find some answers.

• In foreign policy, the Chinese Government is substituting development aid for diplomacy. Nicola Bullard, a senior associate with Focus on the Global South, and Daniel Bibiero from the Mozambiquen NGO Justicia Ambientale investigate the results.

• When Chinese state-owned enterprises export Chinese workers to develop and construct their overseas projects, cultural clashes and conflict result. Yat Paol, who works with the NGO called the Bismark Ramu Group in Madang Province in Papua New Guinea, lays out the concerns held by Papuans about the Ramu nickel mine development, owned and operated from China.

• Then today's microphones turn to Iran, to hear Pakistani sociologist Farida Shaheed explain why women are still being stoned to death, and the international campaign that's now developing to stop it.

Carrying on with the Asian and Pacific themes in today's program, the music that you'll be listening to comes from the CD Nankuru Naisa - in which Bob Brozman's island-beats intertwine with the Japanese songs of Takashi Hirayasu. 

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Filed under:

• china
• class
• Iran
• Japan
• labour
• mining
• Mozambique
• ni-radio
• Pakistan
• Papua New Guinea
• poverty