AGROECOLOGY AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE GLOSSARY

AGROECOLOGY describes a social movement, academic discipline, and agricultural practice. They all share the notion of adapting agriculture to prevailing natural conditions, cycles, and local needs. As an approach, agroecology combines traditional and local knowledge with modern scientific methods.*

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BIODIVERSITY describes biological diversity, such as the diversity of species.*

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CARBON FOOTPRINT is the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions caused by the activities of a person, organization, event, service, or area. It includes direct emissions, such as those that result from fossil-fuel combustion in, for example, transportation. It also includes indirect emissions required to produce the electricity needed for the provision of goods and services.

CLIMATE CRISIS describes the consequences of global warming due to the heavy CO2 emissions of specific countries. The increasing occurrences of droughts or floods have already been noticeable for years, especially for countries in the GLOBAL SOUTH.**

CLIMATE JUSTICE implies that countries which bear the primary responsibility for global warming must be held accountable for their impacts on a global scale. The global upper and middle classes contribute most to climate change. However, the ones who suffer from its consequences most acutely tend to contribute the least to global warming. Currently, it is mostly the populations of the GLOBAL SOUTH who suffer from the effects of the climate crisis, despite their small contribution to global warming.**
 

COMMON GOOD is something that belongs to or is shared by all (like clean air and water). Doing something for the common good means doing it for the benefit of all people in a society.

FOOD SECURITY/SOVEREIGNTY is the right of all people to decide over the processes of food production, distribution, and consumption. Key to this concept is the development of a socially just and sustainable form of agriculture.*

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GLOBAL NORTH/GLOBAL SOUTH describe the different position of countries in the global political and economic order. They are not geographic terms. Global South describes countries and places in a disadvantaged social, political, and economic position in the global system. Global North, on the other hand, defines an advantaged, privileged position.*
 

GOOD FOOD PHILOSOPHY is an umbrella term used in some parts of Europe for concepts such as agroecology, regenerative agriculture and food sovereignty. Its main idea is that food should be good for the environment (because of the way it is produced), good for the food producers (who can earn enough to live well, and who are appreciated much more by society for the essential work that they do), good for the local economy, and good for the consumer and their health.

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TARIFF ESCALATION describes a customs policy often used by economically powerful nations. Nations, or common markets such as the European Union, usually impose tariffs on the import of foreign goods. In the case of tariff escalation, they set a low tax on the import of unprocessed products (such as raw coffee beans) but a high tax on processed products (such as roasted coffee).
In this way, many African countries, for example, can easily sell their raw coffee beans to the EU. However, if they choose to export roasted coffee to the EU, this becomes unprofitable due to the higher tariffs on processed coffee. This leads to a situation in which poorer countries sell the cheap raw coffee beans to the EU, while companies in the EU then roast these coffee beans and sell the more expensive roasted coffee to other countries.
Thanks to this mechanism, Germany is the fourth largest exporter of coffee, while Tanzania, where the coffee is grown, is “only” the 28th largest. This also implies that the coffee industry in Germany earns more money than the coffee industry in Tanzania.
Although there are other details to this policy (so called “least developed countries” are exempt from paying tariffs on most goods, but may still face non-tariff barriers to trade such as compliance with costly regulations), tariff escalation is a policy that economically strengthens the GLOBAL NORTH and weakens the GLOBAL SOUTH.