Innovative approaches to reduce poverty through trade are bringing business, NGOs, government and aid agencies together in new ways.

Rwandan coffee is featured at Starbucks this year. The path to creating a premium, well-branded coffee from a low-return mass product involved both aid agencies and private firms.

The world of fashion has a world of market opportunities. At a time when industries are consolidating and high-volume, low-cost manufacturing is a competitive driver, one new alternative is emerging. “Ethical fashion,” including the luxury segment, is on the rise. Several stories in this issue reflect this new trend.

We looked at four ITC projects, included in this issue as part of our “Portraits of Trade Development” series. We then stepped back to see what they had in common. All four stories reminded us of trends related to fair trade or non-governmental organizations reported in our previous issue. Three of the stories are from least developed countries. Three are linked to fashion.

Mozambique has been losing its forests to poor people who scrape a living from this valuable natural resource. Today, some are producing chic wooden bracelets for the world market while conserving precious woodlands.

“Sustainable development”, “environmental protection” and “trade that works for the poor” may sound like do-gooder slogans, but three totally different projects, involving a plant native to South Africa, a fashionable resort in Brazil and organic spices in India, achieve exactly that.

ITC was one of 44 winning proposals at the World Bank Development Marketplace Competition for Innovative Ideas for Poverty Alleviation (Washington, D.C., February 2000). The project, “Empowerment of Rural Communities to Export Organic Spices”, was developed jointly with the Spices Board of India. The concept sprang from ITC research on how rural communities in developing countries could benefit from trade development.

With this collection of portraits, ITC brings a message of challenge, and of hope. The immense challenge is to bridge the gap between rich and poor. The hope is to build upon practices that work, in the area of trade development, and take action on a broader scale.

In today’s globalized world, new market opportunities abound. But competition is fiercer, so developing countries are asking ITC the same question they asked 40 years ago: “How can we export better?” In essence, these countries need both competitive exports and market access. Helping countries build their capacity to supply world markets is ITC’s contribution to sustainable development, through trade.

For producers in poor countries, tapping into international business can bring access to wider and wealthier markets.