BANANAS – EXOTIC FRUITS: SOZIALLY AND ECOLOGICALLY UNSOUND?

Lázlo Máráz, Pro Regenwald

Maybe some of you will be surprised that I won’t be talking much about bananas today.

First, I would like to make a short introduction to our exhibition. It is a travelling exhibition which is our main contribution to the conference. Pro Regenwald is one of the sponsors of the campaign. Pro Regenwald is originally an environmental association. Our motivation to become an active part in the banana campaign was, first of all, due of some of our friends who also have the honour to be here today. Second, because of the experience we had already gained with other travelling exhibitions and, last but not least the fact that for us, an environmental association, protection of the environment is never the sole criteria for sustainable production. Protection of the environment definitely has to go hand in hand with social justice, fair trade and human rights. These factors are inseparably combined with each other and are very important to us: it is intolerable that the production and purchase of biobananas jeopardize the freedom of organization of the farmers’ trade unions. It is also unbearble that there are fair-traded bananas whose farmers are exposed to massive pesticides.

Some parts of the exhibition are really effective - due to the successful cooperation with other associations of the banana campaign. We also cooperated closely with our collegues from the trade union ‘Setrap’ from Costa Rica who lent us working documents, so that it was possible to present original documents to the public and to facilitate direct communication, instead of getting and presenting ‘filtered’ information from America.

However, the exhibition does not show the backgrounds. We present and explain the reasons why pesticides are used, who uses them and why those bananas are cheaper. However, we failed to present and explain backgrounds, but rather show how democracy works- how decisions are made and why the average diameter of a banana must be 27mm, 25mm or 30mm. In this context you often hear the statement: ‘Representatives of the respective country took part in the decision making proces and voted for it.’ This statement normally satisfies pupils and politicians and they are convinced that the countries have succeeded in representing their own interests. But people never ask whose interests are represented. It is surely no trade unionist of ‘Setrap’ who raises his voice; I don’t know that for sure but I can’t imagine it to be the case. Of course, political and lobby interests are deeply involved in this process. To discover these backgrounds would definitely make up for a seperate exhibition or another publication.

Another positive aspect of our exhibition is (and this is the interesting part of Fair Trade organizations and environmental organizations) that different experiences are being presented and combined because we can learn a lot from each other. Therefore I would like to tell you about a case that took place during our tropical wood campaign. It is an example of how environmental organizations, PR-firms, private companies or politicians try to establish an opposing opinion among the population. In this case it took quite a long time but finally the Malaysian timber industry was successful with its campaign. Here is the background of the story:

There are numerous organizations that reject the purchase and use of tropical wood because in most cases this wood comes from rain forests. One of the main export countries is Malaysia. After campaigns against the purchase of tropical wood had shown first results (polls showed that about 40% of consumers clearly reject the purchase of tropical wood which led to massive export losses), Malaysia reacted by calling in a PR-firm (‘Shandwick’) whose task was to establish an opposing opinion. We became aware of that only after receiving numerous telephone calls - the first call came from another company called Hiller & Norlton. They wanted to get some information about this firm concerning membership, the amount of donations and so on. It didn’t take long until we found out who was behind it all. In response, the Malaysians changed the firm again - it was then the Bonn-based firm Shandwick Communications. Then they managed to produce and finance a film for schools costing 30.000 DM, and exerted major influence on its contents. We received documents which easily prove this and found out that the film- which is currently being distributed at German schools- was financed by the Malaysian timber industry. The film includes statements like ‘These are extremist opinions, in reality the Malaysian timber industry is really wonderful’ and others. Unfortunately, nobody prevented the films from being distributed at schools; nor did anyone insist on printing the film sponsor on the tape. In this case teachers might have realized that a film sponsored by the Malaysian timber industry is to be handled with kid gloves. The results might not have been so bad.

Back to bananas: As far as bananas are concerned, we don’t have this problem in Germany yet. It will only become a relevant problem for us and harm the industry when fair trade and bioproduction will have gained a considerable market share. So far it seems that the industry can handle and tolerate existing initiatives. An example of this kind of anti-campaign is shown in the experience of our collegues from Costa Rica of last year when trade unionists and representatives of Foro Emaus were confronted with serious allegations. One of the most common swearwords in Costa Rica is ‘sandias’- which means ‘watermelons’- green outside and red inside, an allusion to extremist communists.

Nowadays, all environmental and social organizations have to face these problems more and more often. The more success environmental and social organization have, the higher the industry’s efforts to make opposite opinions popular among the public will be. And since you are definitely better experts in the area of bananas, I decided to concentrate my contribution on this aspect and I really recommend to direct your attention to this development that began a couple of years ago.

Finally, I would like to present you two interesting books: The first one is called ‘Toxic sludge is good for you’, which is a presentation of how PR-firms manage to make the opposition popular. The second one is called ‘Green backlash - global subversion of the environment movement’. The latter presents numerous firms, partly PR-firms, their clients, methods and campaigns that have in part been quite successful, especially in the US. Furthermore, I brought an interesting article which is an exerpt from different books, called ‘Democracy for hire’. This article shows how you can establish a pseudo-democracy by calling in publicity firms or by making use of political parties in order to put up resistance to good and sensible actions of environmental and social orgaizations. I think that it might be interesting for some of you to give this topic some consideration.

Thank you for your attention.