Raising environmental awareness – Becoming a member of Fairtrade schools

Situation

You are a group of motivated FOS/BOS students who think that your school kiosk should stop selling chocolate bars and cacao from brands such as Mars and Nestlé as they contribute to the deforestation of the rainforest in West African countries.

You want to start a campaign to inform other students.

Your aim is a school kiosk which only sells fair trade products to become a member of „fairtrade-school“.

Getting informed

See: https://www.fairtrade-schools.de/

Watch the short video on the effects of our chocolate and cacao consumption.

Text: Chocolate industry drives rainforest disaster in Ivory Coast

The following text is supposed to show the main problems that are connected to our(?) chocolate and cacao consumption.

A) The world’s chocolate industry is driving deforestation on a devastating scale in West Africa, the Guardian can reveal.

B) Cocoa traders who sell to Mars, Nestlé, Mondelez and other big brands buy beans grown illegally inside protected areas in the Ivory Coast, where rainforest cover has been reduced by more than 80% since 1960. Illegal product is mixed in with “clean” beans in the supply chain, meaning that Mars bars, Ferrero Rocher chocolates and Milka bars could all be tainted with “dirty” cocoa. As much as 40% of the world’s cocoa comes from Ivory Coast.

C) The Guardian travelled across Ivory Coast and documented rainforests cleared for cocoa plantation: farmers occupying supposedly protected national parks; enforcement officials taking kickbacks for turning a blind eye to infractions and trading middlemen who supply the big brands indifferent to the provenance of beans.

D) When approached for comment, Mars, Mondelez and Nestlé did not deny the specific allegation that illegal deforestation cocoa had entered their supply chains. All said they were working hard to eradicate the commodity from their products.

E) Up to 70% of the world’s cocoa is produced by 2 million farmers in a belt that stretches from Sierra Leone to Cameroon, but Ivory Coast and Ghana are the giants, the world’s first and second biggest producers. They are also the biggest victims of deforestation. Ivory Coast is losing its forests at a faster rate than any other African country – less than 4% of the country is covered in rainforest. Once, one quarter was.

F) The ballooning global demand for chocolate means that if nothing is done, by 2030 there will be no forest left, according to the environmental group Mighty Earth which today publishes an investigation into deforestation caused by chocolate. The final, insulting irony is that locals are so poor they could never afford to eat a Mars bar.

G) Evidence of deforestation is not hard to find. Inside the Mount Tia protected forest, Salam Sawadougou, a Burkinabé farmer, is hacking a yellow cocoa pod off one of his plants in a four hectare (10 acre) plot. Here, the grey stumps of enormous ancient trees are all that is left of the forest. In recent years, the annual rate of deforestation inside parks has doubled, and in both Ivory Coast and Ghana, it is going twice as fast as deforestation in unprotected areas.

H) Cocoa is a monster that will eventually eat itself, scientists say. Farmers will miss the trees they cut and burned down for the very reason that their shade would have protected their cocoa plants from increasingly parched, dry seasons, driven by cutting down trees.

I) It is the responsibility of the Conseil Café Cacao, the state regulator for coffee and cocoa, to oversee the industry, checking the quality of the cocoa, ensuring the right prices are being paid, and seeing that none of it is grown using child labour or in protected areas. Responding to the Guardian, the Conseil Café Cacao said that it was committed to “good governance and ethics” in its activities and pointed to a programme it started, Cocoa, Friend of the Forest. However, there is little evidence of the programme on the ground.

(524 words) The Guardian, 13 Sept. 2017 (adapted)

Reading comprehension: Short answer questions

Reading comprehension: Mediation

Creating a poster

To inform the students of your school you create posters that show the central problems of the consumption of chocolate and cacao. The poster that is going to be choosen in the group discussion will be shown at the school kiosk. Use the text above and the structured information gained in the exercises. If you want to add further aspects, do research on the internet.

Mighty earth: http://www.mightyearth.org/

National Geographic on deforestation

Group discussion

You have created different posters that highlight the problems of the consumption of chocolate and cacao.

SITUATION:

Your group needs to agree on one poster for the information campaign on the impacts of our cacao and chocolate consumption.

PRESENTATION STAGE:

Present your poster and try to convince the group that it is the best for your campaign.

DISCUSSION STAGE:

Now it is the task of the team to decide which poster will be chosen and used for the campaign. If you think that another poster is better, you should admit it and be ready to compromise.

Material-based writing

Source 1

https://www.jkgeography.com/fair-trade.html

Source 2

Um zu einer Fairtrade-School ausgezeichnet zu werden müssen folgende fünf Kriterien erfüllt sein:

Kriterium 1
Gründung eines Fairtrade-Schulteams bestehend aus Lehrerinnen, Lehrern, Schülerinnen, Schülern, Eltern sowie weiteren Interessierten.

Kriterium 2
Erstellen eines Fairtrade-Kompasses, der vom Rektor/der Rektorin unterzeichnet werden muss.

Kriterium 3
Verkauf und Verzehr von fair gehandelten Produkten an der Schule.

Kriterium 4
In mindestens zwei Klassenstufen muss in mindestens zwei unterschiedlichen Fächern der Faire Handel im Unterricht behandelt werden.

Kriterium 5
Mindestens einmal im Schuljahr muss es eine Schulaktion zum Thema Fairtrade geben

https://www.fairtrade-schools.de/wie-mitmachen/die-5-kriterien/