--Gary (gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us) ]
FROM EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL, SUMMER (WINTER) 1993
Reprinted without permission.
RAINFOREST MARKETING: WHO REALLY BENEFITS?
BY: Susan Meeker-Lowry
When a 1989 article in Nature established that an intact rainforest has
more economic value than a burned one, many environmentalists were
thrilled. They no longer had to justify saving the rainforest in terms of
ecological, human, or spiritual values - it made sense even when
scrutinized by the "hard science" of economics. However, turning the
rainforest - or any ecosystem - into a commodity for the wealthy in order
to justify its protection is bogus. The end does not justify the means.
"Sell it to save it" is fast-becoming a major strategy for protecting
endangered habitats. Articles in Newsweek, The Economist, The Wall Street
Journal, Fortune, The Washington Post and The New York Times, have all
touted dollars-and-cents reasons for saving tropical forests. By contrast,
stories featuring tribal peoples' struggle for land rights have all but
disappeared, except in the pages of advocacy newsletters and alternative
press publications.
The question of "value" dominates the current debate between supporters and
opponents of "rainforest marketing." The best-known of these rainforest
marketing projects is sponsored by Cultural Survival (CS). This Cambridge,
Massachusetts-based group has been an advocate for Indigenous peoples since
1972. Cultural Survival Enterprises (CSE) is the brainchild of
anthropologist Jason Clay and was initiated in 1989 to "creat[e] a market
model that proves living forests to be more valuable than cattle pastures
and single-crop farms."
CSE aims to eliminate exploitative commercial intermediaries and increase
the income of forest peoples by enabling them to participate in the forest
economy. CSE's first exports were Brazil and cashew nuts from the Amazon
region. These have been incorporated into the now-famous "Rainforest
Crunch" candy made by Community Products. The Body Shop, a socially
responsible cosmetics company that favors a "trade not aid" approach to
assist forest peoples, obtains some ingredients for its cosmetics from the
rainforest-dwelling Kayapo tribe of Brazil. Another recent addition to the
"save the rainforest" product line is dog biscuits made from Brazil-nut
flour, which sell for roughly $8.00 / lb. The future of these efforts,
economically-speaking, looks bright as more and more people seek to make
a "green" statement with their purchases.
However, Survival International (SI) and some Indigenous organizations
contend that these products may do more harm than good. From its base in
the United Kingdom, SI has been supporting the rights of tribal peoples
since to determine their own futures since 1969. In 1989 the organization
received the Right Livelihood Award for its efforts.
In June, 1992, SI issued a press release expressing "grave reservations"
about rainforest marketing projects "both in theory and practice." SI was
particularly concerned that the projects were "seriously diverting
attention from the real and urgent problems facing tribal peoples today"
and that they might actually contribute to the destruction of tribal
peoples by "encouraging more colonists to seek a living in the forest."
SI contends that rainforest marketing offers to help tribal peoples "by
tying them to international, western markets, but it ignores the fact that
demand for the product can fluctuate or even collapse. The real problem, as
tribal peoples are unanimous in asserting, is that their lands and
resources should be recognized as their own."
The SI press release sparked a long and vicious debate between CS's Clay
and SI's Stephen Corry. Unfortunately, the personal nature of the debate
served to obscure the important issues raised: the ethics of the market,
the terms under which Indigenous peoples enter the market and who really
benefits.
According to MarketAlert Publications, "in 1991 [CSE] did $1.3 million in
business. For 1992, the company projects $2.5 million in sales. Five years
down the road, projected revenues are in the $20-25 million range." CSE
revenue levels will require massive amounts of marketing and, as Corry
observes, "Such publicity is bound to eclipse serious human rights
concerns."
Back in 1990, Clay responded to criticism of the CSE marketing project by
saying "If we weren't doing it, someone else would." He felt it was better
for CSE to set up the marketing of rainforest products than leave it to a
typical intermediary who might cheat the Indians. Clay said that without
the income from marketing projects, forest peoples "would be forced to
degredate their forests to meet their material needs or abandon them to
others who would."
But if destruction and exploitation are inevitable, it is only becuase
Indigenous people do not have ownership or control of their lands. Money
is not the issue for tribal peoples: land is.
In his book, The Illusion of Choice: How the Market Economy Shapes Our
Destiny, Andrew Bard Schmookler writes: "Over time, the system, because of
its biases and distortions, carries us to a destination chosen by that
system and not us." It is only the largest corporations and governments
that have the resources and power to dominate international markets..
Rainforest dwellers do not have this power. Instead, the market will
control them.
SELLING THE EARTH TO SAVE IT
What could the impact of this foreign notion of capitalism be on complex,
non-linear, land-based cultures? We are beginning to find out, and the news
is not good.
In 1991, a confidential report to CSE by the Alliance of Forest Peoples (a
coalition of Indigenous and non-Indigenous forest dwellers now working in
the upper-Jurua region of the Amazonian state of Acre) became public. In
the paper, "Evaluation of the Cultural Survival Rainforest Marketing
Project," the alliance complained that Cultural Survival's "concrete help
has been minimal and their negative repurcussions enormous. [CS] has shown
itself ready to help us only if it 'establishes the priorities instead of
us'... CS reveals that 40 percent of its profits from sales of products
would go back to grassroots organizations. We have not ... seen any
return."
Lack of an income may be a blessing. As Daniella Spiwak of the South and
Meso American Indian Information Center explains: "Money creates tensions
that were not there before and deteriorates the structure of [native]
society."
One popular product label reads: "The nuts used in Rainforest Crunch are
purchased directly, with the aid of Cultural Survival, from forest
peoples..." However, the idea that Brazil nuts are being harvested and
shelled by Indians living deep in the forest is false. Today the nuts are
harvested by seringuerios (rubber tappers), who are primarily Brazilians of
Portugueses or mixed-blood heritage.
Neilly Buckalew, a Native American who interned with CS during the summer
of 1992, reports that members of the Xapuri Brazil-nut-harvesting co-op
have complained that they do not have enough control of the business. CSE
sees its role as advisory, but co-op members feel CSE is el patron - "the
boss." CSE pays the director's salary, Clay explained, but the co-op
chooses the director.
David Maybury-Lewis, the founder and director of CS has argued that, "It is
romantic to imagine there is a pure Indigenous culture that cannot be
changed ... The Indians on the ground are not interested in maintaining a
romantic past, but in establishing a legitimate claim [to] their future. Of
course there are problems as people come into a market system. There always
are."
SI director Stephen Corry, has a different opinion: "We should be very wary
of the idea that rainforests and forest tribes can only have a future if
they are able to pay their own way on our terms... Don't believe for a
moment that encouraging some tribal peoples at the marketplace will mean
they will end up trading on any other terms other than our own."
It all comes back to land, according to John Hemming, director of the UK's
Royal Geographical Society. "Land is fundamental. Without land, the tribes
disintegrate. Land ownership is the cushion that gives them time to change
and do so at their own pace ... All we must ask is that they are given the
choice."
If one agrees that business-as-usual is killing the Earth, then one should
also agree that we should find new models to save the planet and its
peoples. Cooperative economic models are positive alternatives to
business-as-usual in developed countries, and in the developing nations
they often provide real benefits for Third World peoples who are
marginalized in the cash economy. However, for Fourth World peoples,
cooperative economies may not be the answer. What seems most inappropriate
is that some projects are predicated on fitting into an export-oriented
market economy; the very model that many critics deplore when criticizing
the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade.
Certainly, CSE is not the World Bank and the cooperative projects that it
has set up are not multinational corporations; nor are the companies that
produce and purchase the rainforest products - yet. However, the day will
come when corporations much bigger than Ben and Jerry's Homemade and The
Body Shop will want to cash in on the "save-the-rainforest-by-buying-it"
scheme.
When this happens, the impact on forest peoples and their homelands will
not be positive. The "valuable" products will be saved, the rest will
become expendable and Indians will be "valued" only as workers or
repositories of valuable information.
What can we do? First, we must ask ourselves the questions that SI's
Stephen Corry poses: "Are we really only going to conserve those
wildernesses that can pay their way" Are we really only going to stand up
for the dispossessed if they can start produci ng something we want? Are we
really going to let business and profits dictate conservation and human
rights goals?"
Activists must challenge the institutions and corporations that think it is
their right to turn the whole planet into a resource base. While the scale
and intent of rainforest marketing projects is different from corporate
America's business-as-usual approach, the thinking is similar.
Why do people want to "save the rainforest" anyway? Is it to assuage guilt
or to prove how "good" we are? Is it to save the planet? Is it because
people like eating Brazil nuts or because doing so is politically correct?
All of us must examine our motives carefully. If motives are selfish, the
means will be inappropriate and destructive.
There are no easy answers. But conventional business, even with a "kinder,
gentler face," is not it. The answer lies deep in the minds and hearts of
the forest peoples themselves - far from the export markets, the shopping
malls and the ecological catalogs.
The solution is to undertake the hardest task of all - to support
Indigenous peoples in their struggles to gain ownership and control over
their lands and lives. We must take on a similar struggle for ourselves: to
create sustainable communities at home and to develop relationships with
each other based on our common relationship wiith the land on which we
live.
CS: 215 First Street.
Cambridge, MA 02142 USA
SI: 310 Edgeware Road
London W2 1DY
UK