Comment: Premium Fair Trade tuna in the Maldives is a sure bet
21 Apr 2010, 6:05 PM
Charles Redfern
In the Alchemist, Paulo Coelho’s young hero, a shepherd, travels great distances in search of a treasure only to find at the end of his adventures that the treasure he seeks is in the very spot where he began.
I am reminded of this parable in considering the Maldives and their fisheries. There you are surrounded by pristine seas, a people moulded by the rhythm of the seas, fed by its bounty over hundreds of years – with amazingly the most sustainable method of tuna fishing in the world.
It is not just sustainable in fishing terms but more importantly in terms of the communities that fish – widely inclusive, fundamentally democratic – this is a treasure buried beneath the sands of your lovely islands.
The problem is that nobody is prepared to pay you properly for this sustainable method. They want to pay you the lowest price possible, determined by an unthinking international market that will never pay the real cost price.
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