Local responses to global interactions practice questions.

The Transition Town movement, which began in Totnes, England in 2006, promotes community food growing, a local currency and community-owned energy schemes. Which aim best summarises this kind of local response?

• Attracting foreign direct investment into the town
• Increasing the town's exports to global markets
• Reducing the town's dependence on distant supply chains
• Persuading national government to lower import tariffs on food

Answer: Reducing the town's dependence on distant supply chains

Transition initiatives are a rejection of globalised production at the community scale: they try to shorten supply chains and keep money circulating locally rather than to compete for global flows.

Under Fairtrade certification, a producer organisation receives a guaranteed minimum price and, on top of it, an additional sum called the Fairtrade Premium. What must the Premium be used for?

• Community or business projects chosen by the producers
• Repaying loans held by the certifying body
• Advertising the product in high-income consumer markets
• Compensating the retailer for lower margins on certified lines

Answer: Community or business projects chosen by the producers

The Premium is a collective fund whose spending is decided democratically by the producer organisation, so the mechanism transfers decision-making power and not only money down the supply chain.

In late 1999 tens of thousands of trade unionists, environmental groups and church organisations converged on Seattle, United States, and blockaded the streets around a World Trade Organization ministerial meeting, which ended without agreement on a new round of trade talks. Which kind of response to global interactions does this illustrate?

• A geopolitical constraint imposed by a national government on trade
• Glocalisation of a global service to suit local consumer tastes
• A supply chain disruption caused by a physical chokepoint
• Civil society mobilising against the terms of global trade

Answer: Civil society mobilising against the terms of global trade

The actors are voluntary associations rather than states or firms, and the target is the rules of trade themselves, which is what marks an organised civil society response; a geopolitical constraint would be imposed by a government using its own legal powers.

A town adopts a local currency usable only with participating independent businesses. What is the intended geographical effect?

• Keeping spending circulating locally rather than leaving through chains
• Replacing the national currency for all transactions in the town
• Attracting external investment from national retail chains
• Reducing the town's dependence on its own local businesses

Answer: Keeping spending circulating locally rather than leaving through chains

The scheme raises the local multiplier by restricting where the money can be spent, so each transaction re-circulates instead of being remitted to a distant head office. Its effect is usually modest in scale and substantial in signalling, which is a fair summary of most localisation initiatives.

Indigenous groups have used international legal forums and media attention rather than only national politics to contest resource projects on their territory. Why is this strategy effective?

• It reaches the investors and governments whose reputations and finance the project needs
• International bodies can directly overrule national planning decisions
• National governments have no authority over resource extraction
• Media attention removes the need for any legal argument

Answer: It reaches the investors and governments whose reputations and finance the project needs

Where a national government supports a project, the leverage lies elsewhere: with lenders, insurers, buyers and shareholders who are sensitive to legal risk and reputation. This is scale jumping - moving a dispute to a level where the opponent is weaker.

A campaign leaflet states: "These tomatoes were grown 60 km away, so their carbon footprint must be smaller than that of tomatoes shipped 2 000 km from a warmer country." Which single flaw in that reasoning would an examiner identify first?

• It ignores the fact that shipping distances are usually underestimated.
• It ignores that tomatoes cannot be grown outside their country of origin.
• It ignores the energy used to heat and light a greenhouse out of season.
• It ignores that carbon footprints are only calculated for exported goods.

Answer: It ignores the energy used to heat and light a greenhouse out of season.

Transport is usually a small share of the emissions of a food item; the conditions of production dominate, so a heated local greenhouse can emit more than sea freight from an open field. Food miles measure distance, not emissions - which is why the metric is popular and misleading at the same time.