Soon after we returned we received confirmation from BAFTS that our application to become a BAFTS member had been successful.
2008…
Our online shop was launched in September, and we have added some really gorgeous fair trade jewellery collections and a selection of fun and useful recycled juice bags to our ranges, and six more producers now benefit from our support.
So, here we are, and though we can't be sure when our journey began, we know we have a long way to go and there is much still to do, as the report below will testify.
Caring for the environment is inextricably linked to fair trade and it is essential to our business and our fair trade policy. We are giving our customers the chance to offset part of the carbon emissions created from their delivery by buying a Jatropha tree. A tree costs £2 but we have given you the choice of paying 50p, £1 or £2. You can add the desired amount to your basket from the jatropha tree product category on the left or the Trees4Good logo on the right, and you can of course buy more than one tree. This is optional but we think it’s a fantastic way to give something back to the planet and the environment at little cost.
We are working closely with the Trees4Good programme to identify other areas of our operations where we can reduce our environmental impact.
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Discover a New Way of Sharing Life
We love what we do and we have a deep-rooted belief in what we are doing, and our incentive is to make a greater impact by making friends with people who care about what we do.
Buy our quality fair trade products and give our producers and artisans the chance of a better quality of life.
As well as selling from our online shop we’re looking to reach other similarly motivated retail outlets, churches and schools and individuals, with a view to converting them into being long-term buyers of fair trade products.
If you would like to stock our products we also offer trade terms to high street and internet retail outlets. For details about our retailer trade accounts please see our How To Buy Fair Trade page.
Help the planet and the environment by offsetting part of the carbon emissions created from your delivery and contribute towards a tree being planted for £2 with Trees4Good.
Help children and animals, and to feed the hungry and support the environment, just by clicking on the American ‘click and donate’ sites at the foot of our Links page. You can click as many times as you want and there is no cost to you, so why not bookmark the site and take two minutes to click on each one and make it a part of your daily routine.
Your comments and suggestions and feedback are most welcome, and for enquiries concerning our website, products and services and fair trade please contact us at info@ambanature.co.uk.
Together we can make an impact and a difference.
If you have a few minutes please read on. The report emphasises and reinforces the need for fair trade and highlights the enormous challenge we face to help to reduce poverty. (RP is Republic of the Philippines)
The article is from the Philippine Daily Inquirer Tuesday, 17 April 2007
15m Pinoys live on $1/day
World Bank: 19% of RP population in 2000 very poor
By Doris C. Dumlao
WASHINGTON – AT LEAST 14.8 million Filipinos try to survive on less than $1 a day, accounting for 1.5 percent of the people in the world currently trapped in extreme poverty, according to latest World Bank estimates.
But some 43 million in the Philippines, based on the country’s population in 2000, live on $2 a day, the less extreme international measure of poverty.
Data from the World Development Indicators (WDI) 2007 showed that global poverty rates continued to fall in the first four years of the 21st century, with the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day falling below the 1 billion mark.
Two-dollar-a-day poverty rates were falling too, but an estimated 2.6 billion people, almost half the population of the developing world were still living below that level in 2004.
The WDI indicator 2007, a publication, was launched here on Sunday on the sidelines of the joint International Monetary Fund-World Bank spring meetings.
People living on less than $1 a day fell to 18.4 percent as a share of the total population in 2004, leaving an estimated 985 million people in extreme poverty.
By comparison, the total number of the worlds extremely poor was 1.25 billion in 1990.
Between 1990 and 2004, dollar-a-day poverty fell by more than 260 million, according to the World Bank.
Filipinos living on the $1-a-day international poverty line accounted for 19 percent of the Philippine population of 76.5 million as of May 2000. (The country’s population today is about 88 million).
Poverty measures, based on an international poverty line, attempt to hold the real value of poverty constant across countries, as done when making comparisons over time.
The commonly used $1-a-day standard, measured in 1985 international prices and adjusted to local currency, is typical of the poverty lines in low-income countries.
Growth, China factor cut poverty
The World Development Indicators 2007 pointed out that an average 3.9 percent annual growth in per capita gross domestic product since 2000 among developing countries helped cut poverty rates.
Another key reason for the decline in dollar-a-day poverty was China’s massive poverty reduction between 1990 and 2004 that trimmed East Asia’s extreme poverty rate to 9 percent in 2004.
In the rest of the developing world, good economic performance and a lower poverty incidence offset a rise in the sheer number of poor people.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, 298 million people were living in extreme poverty in 2004, practically the same as that in 1999. But the number of poor people had increased continuously in the previous two decades.
Inequality worsened despite growth
The report found that, in the past decade, economic growth did not automatically lead to poverty reduction.
In some countries and regions, inequality worsened because poor people did not reap the fruits of economic expansion. A lack of job opportunities, limited education or poor health aggravated the situation.
“Growth is essential to reducing poverty, but it isn’t the only factor. The WDI [goes] beyond growth and poverty rates to ask how income is distributed, whether health care and education are improving, and to assess the business environment. These factors all affect the quality of people’s lives”, said Francois Bourguignon, World Bank chief economist and senior vice president for development economics.
The WDI estimated that the share of the poorest quintile in the Philippines national consumption or income was only 5.4 percent.
A quintile refers to any of five equal groups into which a population can be divided according to the distribution of values of a particular variable like poverty.
Other indicators for RP
Other development indicators for the Philippines were:
- Malnutrition under age 5 averaged about 28 percent from 2000 to 2005, only modestly slowing from 30 percent in 1990-1995
- Elementary school completion rate increased to 97 percent as of 2005 from 86 percent in 1991.
- Ratio of female to male enrolments in elementary and high school was 106 in 2005 compared with 104 in 1991.
- Mortality rate of children below age 5 per 1,000 births fell to 33 in 2005 from 63 in 1990.
Detailed Picture
Through data, WDI 2007 provides a detailed picture of the world.
It includes, for example, information on health expenditures, on transport and other infrastructure services, on the quality of public sector management, on internet access, on access to improved water resources, and on carbon dioxide emissions.
The World Bank has used performance assessments of governments as a basis for allocating funds on easy terms since mid-1970s.
In the annual Country Policy and Institutional Assessments, or CPIA, bank staff evaluated country policies and institutions covering four main clusters – economic management, structural policies, policies for social inclusion and equity, and public sector management and institutions.
WDI 2007 listed the most recent CPIA data for the 76 countries eligible to receive grants or credits from the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank’s funding arm for the poorest countries.
CPIA indicators measure the extent to which a country’s policy and institutional framework supports sustainable growth and poverty reduction and consequently, the effective use of development assistance.
The 11th edition of the WDI looked at countries that have done unusually well over the past decade. It found strong performers in all regions, with notably fast growth per GDP per capita among many states of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Worrying
But it also found that the countries with highest rates of under-mortality a decade ago had, on average, made the slowest reduction in mortality.
“These results are worrying”, said Alan Gelb, World Bank director of development policy. “The fact that under-5 mortality is 15 times higher in low income countries than in wealthy ones is a stark example of how far we still need to go”.
The World Bank acknowledged that international comparisons of poverty estimates both conceptual and practical problems as countries have different definitions of poverty.
Local poverty lines tend to have higher purchasing power in rich countries, where more generous standards were used, than in poor countries.
Citing national benchmarks in the Philippines as of survey year 1997, for instance, the World Bank report said the percentage of the population below the poverty line was 36.8 percent.
Rural areas had a higher poverty rate of 50.7 percent compared with 21.5 percent in urban areas.
[amba nature] We'll just leave you with your own thoughts. Thanks for reading this page and finding out about us and what we do, and we hope we’ve given you enough reasons and choices to encourage you to help the less fortunate and needy and the planet in some way.
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