A proposal by a Japanese woman to introduce a fair-trade policy for exporting coconut oil from a small Indonesian island has changed the lives of people there, prompting them to abandon blast fishing that destroys the surrounding ecosystem.
Ai Fujiwara, 30, was amazed by the quality of the coconut oil made on Kapoposang Island when she visited Sulawesi Island as an interpreter in summer 2014, as the oil made her dry skin smooth.
She also learned that Kapoposang, a small island six hours west of Sulawesi by boat, had virtually no source of income other than marine produce caught using blast fishing.