"THE MESSAGE OF
SOLIDARITY OF EUROBAN:
OUR RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE PROBLEMS AROUND THE BANANA INDUSTRY"
By EUROBAN Secretariat
We, the organizations that
integrate the European network EUROBAN, wish to express the following to the
public opinion:
Articles and paid
advertisements have been divulged in the mass means of communication which
reproduce opinions about a supposed international campaign to malign Costa
Rica, and whose aim it is to damage the banana industry economy of Costa Rica,
and consequently, the country’s sovereignty and the well being of its people.
On occasions it is insinuated or openly stated that EUROBAN or its member
organizations are accomplices to this supposed international conspiracy.
We would like to point out
that the non-governmental organizations members of EUROBAN, even before forming
part of this network, have been involved in international cooperation and
solidarity, either with sister organizations or with other counterparts of
civil society. This work is based on the principles of human rights,
participative democracy, the right to development and social well being, and
the self determination of all peoples. We see that the current world order does
not permit the realization of these rights in equitable fashion in the North and
South, despite their being proclaimed in international conventions. Our
cooperation is not compatible with the logic of placing our own economic
benefit over the concepts of solidarity with those less favored, or over
concepts of economic and political self determination.
The network of organizations
EUROBAN takes on the same spirit of cooperation and solidarity to propose and
coordinate actions geared to make the international banana market, currently
monopolized by a few consortia, more accessible to national producers;
substitute production techniques that destroy the environment, for others that
are more ecologically acceptable, and guarantee appropriate and stable working
conditions on the plantations, thus contributing to the well being and economic
and environmental sustainability of banana production. ***
A large part of our work is
directed to the consumers in the countries of the European Union, because the
aforementioned goals can only be achieved if certain unconscious attitudes of
consumption change, i.e. the preference for "cosmetic bananas"
produced by an excess of agrochemicals in order to achieve the banana
"prototype", or the demand for ever-cheaper bananas, without
considering the economic stability, and the income or health of the workers.
That is, we honor our own responsibility and we begin our work "at
home", because we consumers are the indispensable complement to the
production and commercialization of bananas in the international banana
economy.
Another responsibility of the
consumers and our organizations is to influence the modification of the Single
Internal Banana Market that the European Union implemented in 1993. EUROBAN, in
general terms salutes the regulation of the banana market in order to counter
the growing oversupply of bananas which cause a double disaster: first, the
deforestation that results from increasing the area dedicated to bananas,
especially when current factors promise greater volumes for sale; and second,
when the companies are forced to close down the banana plantations and sources
of employment, when the markets contract unexpectedly. Likewise, we support
conventions such as the Mark Accord, signed between Costa Rica and other banana
producing countries with the European Union, because we consider it is important
that countries and producers know how many bananas they may be guaranteed to
sell. For this reason, we have positions contrary to those represented by the
USA and Chiquita in the Mark Accord and the regime of the Single Banana Market
in Europe.
These two parts were appealed
before the World Trade Organization, and obtained a resolution in our favor
requiring the European Union to modify its regulations in 1999 regarding the
importation of bananas. We should take advantage of this situation in order to introduce
changes that truly promote the social-economic and environmental sustainability
of production, and equity in commercialization.
We would have liked to
include in the quotas of the Mark Accord, and above all in the regime of the
Single European Market, the individual and associated producers who are
currently marginalized from the world market, and those who introduce
improvements in the social, labor and environmental aspects of their
plantations, by establishing preferential quotas for the most advanced in these
areas. With this aim we are carrying out monumental efforts before the European
Union. In this context we are organizing and calling for participation in the
First International Banana Conference, to be celebrated in May of 1998, in Brussels,
Belgium, headquarters of the authorities of the European Union. ***
EUROBAN is an alliance of
organizations from different countries, with different cultures and languages.
We came together because we have common objectives. Due to the nature of our alliance
and to the reason of our work, we respect the self determination of individuals
and nations. It is well known that a constant factor in the emergence of long
lasting humanist ideals is the confluence of different cultures and ideologies.
With astonishment we read in newspaper publications, that defenders and
followers of an ideological current in Costa Rica, who consider themselves a
"national and international model", violently reproach the Foro Emaus
and the Social Pastorate of the Diocese of Limon, along with other
international cooperating organizations, among them the NGOs of EUROBAN, for
being carriers of "un-Costa Rican" thoughts. With equal astonishment,
we read that we are supposed puppets who defend the interests of dubious forces,
for which we need to be "investigated". When we learned through the
press that a Costa Rican delegation went to Belgium and Germany, apparently to
"investigate" a local NGO, EUROBAN took the initiative to meet with
this delegation, to which the Embassy of Costa Rica in Bonn can testify, only
to learn that there was no space for that meeting in the agenda of the
delegation. We invited those who criticize us to meet and converse with us. We
suggested that belligerent scenarios should not be drawn based on supposed conspiracies
against the national interests, when such conspiracies do not exist.
In the Foro Emaus, the Social
Pastorate and the labor unions, we have found authentic interlocutors and
national counterparts who are concerned with the social, labor and environmental
conditions in the banana regions. Our interest in jointly finding alternatives,
derives from experiences we have had in similar areas in our own countries. In
these times of globalization and electronic intercommunications, in which
commercial exchange no longer recognizes frontiers, and where information
travels the world over in seconds, it is not possible to ignore realities or
resolve problems independently.
If highly toxic substances
are produced in our countries, and are then employed as pesticides in the
banana zones, exceeding the levels acceptable in our countries, then it is a
moral duty to ask ourselves who is responsible, what are the damages caused,
and to look for alternatives. If we are inhabitants of the region with the
highest levels of banana consumption in the world, and we know that those who
work to produce these bananas cannot satisfy their basic needs, and suffer
employment instability and poor working conditions, it is equally our moral
duty to look for alternatives. The higher the level of development and
technical capacity of the professionals in a particular country, the easier it
will be to find alternatives.
We recognize that there may
be conflicting interests, but we would like to call on intellectual honesty in
the debates and on the disposition to dialogue.
This document is signed by
the following non-governmental organizations, members of EUROBAN: Banana Link,
International Center for Trade Union Rights (ICTUR), World Development Movement
(WDM), England; Irish Fair Trade Network (IFTN), Ireland; Confederation General
du Travail (CGT), France; Centro Nuovo Modellodi Svilupp (CNMS), Italy; Union
Internacional de Trabajadores de la Alimentación, Agrícolas, Hoteles,
Restaurantes, Tabaco y Afines (IUF/UITA/IUL), GEBANA -Association for Fair
Trade, Switzerland; Oxfam Wereldwinkels, Belgium; Plataforma Rural, Spain;
International Movement of Reconciliation, Banana Campaign, Austria;
BanaFair/Banana Campaign, FIAN -Food First Information and Action Network, BUKO
Agrar Koordination- Congress of Development Action Groups, Pro Regen wald,
Development Services of the Lutheran Evangelical Church of Bavaria, Germany;
Naturskyddsforeningen - Swedish Society for the Conservation of Nature, Sweden.
EUROBAN Secretariat, c/o
IFTN, 17 Lower Camden Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. Tel/Fax: +353-1-4753515.
E-Mail: iftn@connect.ie
"SAD RECORD FOR LIMON: BANANAS THAT POISON"
By Marvin Amador of the Costa Rican Ecological Association and Friends
of the Earth
Even though it is practically
unknown to the majority of the national population and possibly to the
consumers of the United States and Europe, the export bananas produced in the
country, require great amounts of toxic chemical products. The use of these
products has grave consequences, not only for the consumers, but for the
workers on the plantations, as well as for the natural ecosystems and even for
the human populations near the plantations. For a long time, large scale export
banana production by the activities carried out by national and transnational
companies have generated serious economic, social and environmental problems,
especially in the Atlantic Zone of the country. With respect to the
environment, the intensive and indiscriminate use of toxic chemical products,
especially pesticides, stands out, among other grave damages to natural and
human ecosystems.
For the most part, given the
demands of the market, and the high levels of utility required by their
producers, bananas are a crop that need the application of large amounts of
artificial agrochemicals that are highly toxic and persistent in the
environment. For this reason, besides many other environmental problems, large
scale export banana cultivation has a grave effect on the health of humans and
on the natural environment, caused by the contamination of the soil, of the
atmosphere, of superficial and subterranean waters, which consequently cause
severe acute and chronic effects on the health of the workers.
In Costa Rica, among all the
agricultural activities, the large scale monocrop cultivation of export bananas
uses the greatest amounts of agrochemicals. On average, up to 44 kg of active
substances are applied per hectare per year on the banana plantations. In 1987,
the cultivation of bananas consumed 35 percent of the important pesticides of
the country. The cost of fighting pests re-presents 35 percent of the total
cost of the commercial production of bananas (Von Duszlen, 1988. Thrupp, 1988).
Types of chemical products
used in banana production
The majority of the chemical products
used on the banana plantations has been classified as highly toxic, according
to the table of toxicity classification of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Among the pesticides most
utilized on the banana plantations, the most prevalent are different
nematicides, such as Terbuphos, Ethoprophos, Phenamiphos,, Oxamil, Carbofuran,
and Aldicarb. These nematicides are organophosphates and carbamides of the type
that easily cause acute intoxications. The use of the majority of these
nematicides is severely restricted in developed countries, due to their high
acute toxicity. These nematicides are, moreover, highly toxic to different
types of fauna (aquatic organisms, birds, reptiles, bees, cattle, etc.).
Another chemical that is
commonly utilized is the herbicide Paraquat (Gramoxone). Despite the fact that
it is considered moderately toxic by the WHO, there is evidence that Paraquat
is extremely dangerous to human health, so much so, that it was included in the
PIC list (Principle of Informed Consent), of the Conduct Code of the FAO. This
chemical is a product that can cause intoxications, burns, dermatitis, and
possibly, pulmonary lesions in exposed workers. Besides, it is very persistent
in the soil.
Pesticide management on the
banana plantations
The banana companies select
the pesticides according to the fruit residue tolerance of the buying
countries, and not according to the level of toxicity to the environment or to
human health. Thus, Paraquat, Aldicarb and others of minor use, such as
Carbofuran, Methomyl, and Methyl-Parathion are included in the PIC list,
besides being part of the Dirty Dozen of the Pesticide Action Network.
Generally, on the banana
plantations there is no adequate control of transportation, storage, mixture
preparations, and pesticide applications. These products are applied with
ground aspersions (in the case of nematicides and herbicides), air aspersions
(in the case of fungicides), by bag-wrapping the bunches (in the case of
insecticides), and finally at the packing plant (in the case of fungicides and
disinfectants).
On the plantations, the
application of pesticides without adequate control equipment is commonplace;
during the process of aerial fumigation, the presence of workers in the fields
is not avoided, nor are homes nor bodies of water.
The effects of pesticides on
human health and the environment
The toxicity of the
pesticides used in the banana plantation activities has received notoriety by
their effects on the health of workers. Reports of burns and other skin and eye
lesions caused by the application of the herbicide Paraquat have been common.
Likewise, reports of the killing off of aquatic organisms after fumigation and
after heavy rains, caused by the runoff of pesticides, have also been common.
For these reasons, aerial
fumigation is considered one of the most serious causes of environmental and
human health problems generated in the banana activities.
In the packing plants, men
and women workers suffer lesions on the skin, which are difficult to cure.
These are caused by the continual contact with the toxic substances in the
water, such as aluminum sulfate and potash, as well as the fungicide
Thyabendazol (Mertect).
According to the Department
of Toxic Substances of the Ministry of Health, 58 percent of the systems of
application on the plantations show deficiencies regarding security for workers
and for the environment.
In the Valley of La Estrella,
Abarca and Ruepert (1992) detected residues of Chlorpyriphos (used in the
plastic bags to protect the banana bunches), and Cholrthalonyl (used to combat
Black Sigatoka) in superficial waters. The latter was found in concentrations
up to 8 micrograms per liter, where concentrations of 3 to 6.5 micrograms per
liter are considered chronic for fish. In the same zone, in seven out of nine
samples of subterranean water, Cholrthalonyl was detected in concentrations up
to 0.98 micrograms. In seven out of eight samples of sediments, Cholrthalonyl,
Chlorpyriphos, Terbuphos and Ethoprop were detected. These levels drastically
surpass the permissible levels established by the European Union for potable
water, which are 0.1 microgram per liter for individual pesticides and 0.5
microgram per liter for total pesticides.
According to the diagnosis
carried out by the Ministry of Health in 1992, at that time 82 percent of the
banana plantations did not have systems to treat the liquid residues
contaminated with agrochemical products.
Bananas: toxicity record in
Costa Rica
The incidence of worker
intoxications with pesticides in the Province of Limon (the principal producer
of bananas for export), is 77 percent of the entire country. The incidence of
work related intoxications in banana plantations, relative to other
agricultural crops in Costa Rica, was of 59.5 percent and 63.9 percent in 1995
and 1996, respectively.
The areas of greatest banana
production, which include the Atlantic Region and the county of Sarapiqui in
the Northern Huetar Region, present the greatest incidence of intoxications by
pesticides in Costa Rica: 63 of every 1000 banana workers present problems.
Nationally, in 1990, 75
percent of the intoxicated field workers were from Limon and 78 percent from
Guapiles (in the Atlantic Region). Of these, 25 percent and 20 percent
respectively, were from the packing plants. Moreover, 17 percent of the
denunciations corresponded to women, including pregnant women.
Due to the high incidence of
intoxications, it has been determined that women have greater problems in
packing plants (79%), while the men present greater accidents during the
application of pesticides (62%) (Vergara, 1991).
The calculated rate of work
related pesticide intoxications in the banana plantations is of 6.4 percent per
year. This is more than a 100 percent difference with the rate of 3 percent of
intoxications presented by agricultural workers in developed countries
(WHO/UNEP, 1990).
With respect to chronic
intoxications and long term effects, the most notorious case has been that of
the sterilization of more than 2000 workers in the banana zones of Costa Rica,
who were exposed to DBCP during the 1970s (Ramirez y Ramirez, 1980; Thrupp,
1991).
"TWO ECONOMIES COME FACE TO FACE:BANANA PLANTATIONS TRANSFORM THE
LANDSCAPE"
By Gerardo
Alfaro, Fundación Güilombé
For many decades in Costa
Rica and in all of Latin America, politicians, intellectuals, technicians and
promoters have visualized rural populations and their surrounding environment
as cold objects of study or as simple targets of their policies. The promotion
of modernization, development, progress and civilization policies was justified
in this supposed backward world. They covered up, with less than good
intentions, the fact that these humble inhabitants were rooted in ancestral
cultures carriers of knowledge and productive practices that move with the
forces of Mother Jungle, and that generally, they are in balance with them.
This caused the proliferation
of myths regarding the superiority of the urban-industrial-capitalist world
over the rural world, and the superiority of Occidental science and technology,
over these local knowledges and practices. Education and technical extension
campaigns were promoted in the means of mass communication. In these, all this
beautiful magical-natural world of the countryside was ridiculed, as a way to
create conditions to promote repeated policies of "modernization of
agriculture", which has not been more than simply a process of dismantling
peasant and local traditional economies, and their productive and life
practices, in order to give way to the concentration of thousands of hectares
in hands of transnational companies, along with the simultaneous impulse of
productive practices based on monocultures and chemical agriculture. This
implied the destruction of vast ecosystems of tropical humid forests, the
impoverishment, proletarianization and/or peasantification of thousands of
rural families, and loss of food security of these families and of their
countries.
This article hopes to
describe the characteristics of these two antagonistic worlds and to suggest
possible explanations about how the world of markets imposes itself upon the
"natural" economies, and how this has caused a radical change, in
only a few years, in the natural and human landscape in the majority of the
rural scenarios of the Costa Rican Caribbean. We will take the case of the
expansion of the banana industry towards the end of the 1980s and beginning of
the 1990s as an example. Monoculture versus organic bananas
It is important to
conceptualize what we understand by these two economies, as this will help us understand
the process of transformation of space to which the monoculture of banana is
taking Costa Rica.
The open market natural
economies are those peasant economies in which the families depend more on the
exchange of resources and energy with the ecosystems, and less with the
exchange of merchandise in the national market. On the contrary, the economies
open only to capitalist market carry out a minimum exchange of energy and
resources with the ecosystems, but do carry out a strong exchange of merchandise
with the markets.
In the process of imposition
of the latter over the former, as is the case of the expansion of banana
monocultures, this is the key that explains how this transformation of the
human and natural landscape as lived in the Costa Rican Caribbean in the last
years occurs.
The strategy of imposition of
the market economies over the economies based on the exchange with Nature has
been based on:
1. Press and educational
campaigns regarding the economy and society of Costa Rica, trying to dislodge
the ancestral dialogue among the traditional population, its productive and
life practices and the forces and resources of Mother Nature that surrounds
them. Peasant knowledge is ridiculed, regarding aspects of climate prediction,
soil management, management of ecogeographic units, cycles of
flowering-fruiting-reproduction of tree species, plants, insects, birds,
animals, cultivation practices related with the lunar phases, curing with
botanical remedies, animal husbandry, association of crops, etc. The official
agronomists, until recently, looked down on the peasants who still practiced
their naturalist knowledge.
2. The promotion of agrarian
policies conducive to placing traditional producers at a disadvantage when
faced with markets, by fixing the prices of their products, by increasing the
prices of agricultural inputs, by not providing basic services such as roads,
transportation, markets, health, etc.
3. The promotion of policies
which favor large transnational companies producers of bananas, pineapples,
etc. with the aim of pressuring the small traditional producers to sell their
lands, or for the use of the few zones still with forest ecosystems, in order
to cut them down.
This was the context in which
transnational companies such as Standard Fruit Company, Chiquita Brands,
Banacol and other pressured the Government at the beginning of the 1990s to
promote a Plan of Banana Promotion. This plan gave them great fiscal and
tributary benefits, favorable exchange rates policies, authorization to use new
lands, deregulation in environmental and labor norms, freedom to eliminate
workers Unions pressures by means of implementing pro-management Solidarismo.
Under this plan, in the early
1990s, there was a massive, aggressive and uncontrolled expansion of banana
monocultures, at the expense of displacing small diversified farms of thousands
of small traditional producers in the forest regions where they co-inhabited
harmoniously.
This process brought on the
transformation of a human-natural landscape with banana production in the midst
of tropical agro-ecosystems immersed in Black, Indigenous and Mestizo Peasant
cultures, to a landscape characterized by the deterioration of the balances of
ecosystems, and banana workers and their families with a very low quality of
life.
Green Gold or "Green
Hell"
The uncontrolled expansion of
banana monocultures in the Caribbean promoted by large transnational companies
in the last 10 years, is recognized today as a radical change of Dantesque
dimensions, in the natural and agrarian, ecological and human landscape! Those
happy and healthy peasants with their small farms, resembling beautiful
diversified gardens that dominated much of the area along the Saopin Highway to
Limon, in Matina, Cuba Creek, Siquirres during the first years of the 1990s,
were erased with one sweep, and replaced with a hideous landscape, an
interminable sea of banana plantations, tattered banana workers with sad faces,
women and children with pale semblances and anguished by the psychological
pressures of this green hell. Where are those little houses surrounded by dense
forests, cacao crops where the monkeys and birds, and butterflies lived?
Annihilated! For ever, annihilated by the greediness of powerful Mr. Banana
Dollar.
We have only taken the recent
expansion of banana plantations as an example of these processes, however, this
history is but the last link in a process that historically began 100 years ago
in the Atlantic. We can imagine now the dimensions of the changes that the
"green gold" has had on our original Caribbean of a Black cadence,
mixed with the whispers of the interminable chants of the Bribris or Cabecars,
spiced with the Mestizos, and having as a backdrop the gigantic, shady magical
tropical forests that our valiant and combative writer Carlos Luis Fallas
Sibaja (Calufa) described in his book "Mamita Yunai", when the banana
plantations only were beginning to transform this natural landscape.
To conclude, this landscape
is the one that dominates today in the majority of the Caribbean regions of
Costa Rica; it is a model of exploitation that erodes, contaminates and
violates the biodiversity of the planet, including human life.
TWO ADVERSARY CONCEPTIONS:
CARIBBEAN TROPICAL GARDEN VS BANANA MONOCULTURE:
Caribbean Tropical Garden
The central social actors are
the peasant families (mestizo-black-indigenous), carriers of ancestral
knowledge and naturalist practices. 2.Bananas are cultivated under forest shade
cover with up to five vegetational levels (they are veritable domesticated
tropical forests), within the agroecosystem of the tropical garden of
Talamanca: mixture of trees, crops, medicinal plants and an enormous
biodiversity of flora and fauna in equilibrium. 3.Low density of crops combined
with other crops: keeps the richness of the soil. 4.Selection and natural cure
of seeds that are most adapted, and that promote genetic diversity and generate
natural resistance against "pests" and diseases. 5.Use of lands with
moderate inclines which take advantage of the natural drainage and avoid fungal
diseases. 6.The fertility of the soil is maintained by a recycling of organic
matter, the optimum use of solar illumination and of the soil. Moreover, green
manures, vegetable cover and compost are used. 7.The workers are the owners of
the means and the products, there being a just and dignified relation with
work, providing a healthier life. 8.A vital relationship of co-existence and
rootedness is established with Mother Earth. 9.Because these families come from
a mystic dialogue with Mother Tropical Jungle (whose occult and eternal message
is: "Be ye diverse"), they apply a management of the farm based on a
strategy of multiple use of the natural resources and ways to appropriate them.
In such a way that the farm becomes a mosaic agro-ecosystem where everything is
mixed with everything (bananas with cacao, coffee with wood trees, fruit trees
for firewood, medicinal plants, tubers, insects, birds, animals, human beings,
etc.), in a great holistic equilibrium. The absence of a rupture between Human Being
and Nature in the process of work with the environment, implies the presence of
a great emotional equilibrium. In this way, the natural and balanced landscape
of the small Caribbean farms and their people, offers us an unmeasurable
benefit by any economistic calculation: a profound psychic equilibrium!
Banana Monoculture
1.Systems of production where
the main social actors are the banana entrepreneurs (owners of the means of
production and merchandise); on a second plane, the banana workers, uprooted from
their link to the land and their ethnoecological ancestral knowledge, and
subject to the exploitation of their work, intoxicated by agrochemicals, in the
midst of an unhealthy environment, unbalanced, and without a real quality of
life. 2.The system of production is carried out by the planting of enormous
extensions, resulting in the erosion and total elimination of the biodiversity.
This model of plantation is used by the large companies, both in conventional
plantations, as well as in supposedly alternative plantations, in which only a
few of the poisons are avoided. 3.Indiscriminate use of poisons in the form of
insecticides, nematicides, fungicides and herbicides, which cause disasters in
the ecosystems even in places far away from the point of contact. 4.Methods and
practices of aerial fumigation, highly contaminant of air and water sources.
Many of the communities around the banana plantations are very affected.
5.Deforestation on the margins of the rivers, speeding up problems of
sedimentation. 6.Death of animal life where the contaminated canals discharge
their waters. 7.Deforestation and erosion of extensive regions considered to be
a sample on the most rich biodiversity of the planet. 8.Acute, as well as
chronic damages to the health of workers of the banana plantations. 9.Thousands
of tons of plastic wastes, such as bags (impregnated with insecticides), boxes
and ropes, as well as thousands of tons of organic wastes which often end up in
the nearby rivers. 10.The production and commercialization of export bananas
are in the hands of three companies that control 60 percent of the world
market. 11.Violation of labor union rights and environmental rights of workers.
12.This system of production comes from a break between Humans and Nature,
implying a break of the workers with themselves (negative self image and self
esteem), and a break, consequently, with the rest of the fellow workers. This
implies profound emotional imbalances which generally pass through the workers,
generating acute problems of alcoholism, drug addiction, prostitution,
delinquency, violence, and family instability and disintegration. This is the
daily world in which the banana worker and his family lives! The monotonous
landscape of the omnipresent banana greenery, the foul smelling gutters, the
stench of poison, garbage scattered about everywhere, the buzzards, the houses
each one like the next, each quadrant like the other, each banana plantation
like the rest, all contribute to a psychologically asphyxiating environment
lived and expressed by the worker and his family day to day, and which forms
part of this infernal game of rupture and self negation.