The Max Havelaar Fairtrade Certification Mark was originally created to certify coffee marketed at a price that was favourable to the producers. The initiative came about in 1988 during negotiations between Mexican coffee farmers and a Dutch relief organization. The name of the certification mark is borrowed from the book Max Havelaar (1860) by Multatuli, in which the abuses resulting from colonial rule in the Dutch East Indies were exposed.
Meanwhile the label is no longer only linked to coffee. Max Havelaar is now the name of the Dutch Fairtrade certification mark for food. It guarantees that organizations of small farmers or plantations have received a fair price for their product. By purchasing Fairtrade products consumers can make, through their lifestyle, a personal contribution to a fairer distribution of wealth, but also to a cleaner environment or better compliance with human rights.
In addition to relief, this conscious consumption behaviour is also a pillar of development cooperation. This kind of do-it-yourself development aid fits a trend in which citizens do not shift the responsibility for a better world to the state, church or relief organizations, but assume responsibility themselves for their behaviour and its consequences. Also part of this trend are private foundations, schools, hospitals, sports clubs or groups of friends that set up their own development projects.
In the business community there is an ongoing trend towards socially responsible enterprise, in which one justifies the influence of one’s own management on sustainability and on the development prospects of the population in the countries where one is active. Through the Global Compact initiative of 2000, the United Nations is seeking to bring businesses together with governments and social organizations to achieve ten goals in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. Four thousand organizations have already joined in. A similar Dutch initiative is the so-called Schokland Agreement, in which several organizations are committed to realizing concrete goals in the field of development cooperation. This was initiated by the Dutch government.
