The prospects of fair trade in the context of an asymmetric globalization with increasing social inequalities

Abstract

The most important challenge that faces mankind in the new millennium refers to the quality of economical growth (i.e. the increasement of social welfare levels and the reduction of social and economic inequality), more than of its quantity (i.e., the sole increasement of the product ant the economic welth). Social political and environmental inequalities, particularly those of poverty and the abscense of opportunities in the access to resources, contributes to social disintegration and is one of the main causes of environmental insustainability of the current development models and practices. Many individuals and groups remain in poverty, faced to social and economic privation and excluded from the political processes, while power systems favour a minority, reinforce inequalities and discourage social integration. Likewise, even though the growing homogeneitization of consumption and production generated by globalization processes is bettering slowly the quality of life for many people, the excesive increasement of consumption produces severe pressure to groundline of natural resources and increases the distributive inequalities, which are at the same time transfered to the following generations. The analysis to follow explores the social dimensions that make more difficult the emergence of a sustainable development in many places of the world, specially the increasement of economical and non-economical inequalities in the last decade. In close relation to this subject, the essay intends to identify the transmition mecanisms of such inequalities in a context of asimetric globalization, particularly those related to the international commerce regime.