The 3rd World Banana Forum Conference, held in November 2017 in Geneva (Switzerland), proved to be a great success, bringing together 300 delegates from 40 countries. Hence the process, aimed at leading to a change in both social and environmental practices in the export banana sector, made some headway.
While good intentions, good feelings, unfounded declarations, etc., are always an integral part of this type of UN forum, the strategy of small steps seems nonetheless to be bearing fruit. True, we are still a long way off the much anticipated universal change, but we are moving forward, thanks to two main types of process: (1) individual trials at the initiative of some stakeholders; (2) the development of methodologies aimed at better understanding the workings of the industries and evaluating their effects, especially social, in terms of their organisation.
I will take just two examples. As regards trials, the Banana Occupational Health and Safety Initiative (BOHESI) project developed in Ecuador and Cameroon is worthy of mention. Among other things, it led to the publication in November 2017 by the Ecuadorian government of the first health and safety manual for banana sector labourers (https://goo.gl/18gPuk - shorten URL). In the same vein, we might mention and hail the changes initiated by a big name of the African banana industry, “Compagnie fruitière”, which has expressed its ambitions (organic production wherever possible, aiming to eliminate all synthetic products, renewable energy, etc.) and shared some of its trials in the field of developing more virtuous cropping systems. As regards methodologies, we might mention a number of initiatives in progress, many of which are based on assessing the performances or social impacts of value chains on banana cultivation producers and labourers: Ergon study on wage scales, value distribution (example of the Windward Islands), salary and decent living standard (Anker or Cirad-Irstea method), continuous monitoring of distribution of added value by origin and market (Le Basic-Cirad proposal), etc.
With the sheer number of projects in place, it is difficult for the uninitiated to see things clearly in this array of initiatives. And this conference will not help clear up the picture, with declarations, demands and desires to create such or such a commission or such and such a discussion group, or even the multiple resolution requests which popped up throughout the four days of the conference (two days of plenaries, and two days of ancillary conferences on gender equality in the banana sector and management of TR4 disease). Yet far from criticising this big production, we might prefer to believe that this is the stakeholders’ way of initiating and then developing a culture of dialogue, before ultimately achieving the desired changes. Nevertheless, the secretariat of the Forum, brilliantly run by the FAO, will not be able to fund all these initiatives; choices will need to be made. Resources are limited and the big operators are not making major financial commitments. In any case, it seems that management of Panama disease (Tropical race 4) has already been chosen as a main direction, even though other social problems (distribution of value, living conditions of labourers, etc.) or combating other diseases (e.g. Bunchy Top disease) are also having major negative impacts on the sector. So it is difficult to establish an order of priorities!
While we can be very positive about the ongoing process, we ought to be more rational about its actual direct effects. It is the big operators, the industry’s purchasers, which have the ability to change things. Hence the media noise and public awareness raising provided by the work of the WBF can steer the guidelines and choices of purchasers throughout the chain towards more social and environmental sustainability. The most influential are of course the supermarket & hypermarket purchasers. If they move in the right direction, the system as a whole will move too. Unfortunately, they have dazzled by their absence or silence - which is a great shame! Those few in attendance who spoke up dodged the bothersome questions, especially on purchasing price policies. This made for a deafening silence. In a sort of non-aggression pact, their suppliers did not mention this taboo subject. It must be said that it is difficult to have constructive discussions on prices, since the market rules and mechanisms underpinning price setting are far from well-known, understood and shared by all stakeholders. Hence irrespective of all the market rules, insistent demands aimed at setting a coercive international price again popped up during the conference.
While there is no worldwide governance of the banana industry, which is a no-brainer in terms of the economic and social aspects, exactly the same applies to the environmental aspects. Besides some studies aimed at establishing environmental balances via the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) method, whose results are practically impossible to compare, so different are the calculation hypotheses (study scope, emissions factors, etc.), concrete actions remain restricted to experience sharing and promoting good agricultural practices (www.idhsustainabletrade.com). As elsewhere, there is a blatant lack of commitments that will change things. In this field, the only concrete proposal immediately applicable came from CIRAD. Setting the cat among the pigeons, Thierry Lescot proposed immediately banning use of nematicides and insecticides on all banana plantations worldwide. The negative, even seething reactions, but all the more so the silence of the production sector, starkly highlight the brakes on change. While there are technically operational and economically viable solutions, and they are already in common use (French West Indies, Dominican Republic, etc.) or in the process of being rolled out (Africa), in varied socio-economic and pedoclimatic contexts, the big production systems are refraining from this trend where the application of agro-ecological principles is providing dazzling results. As long as health damage to labourers, residents and natural environments also continue to carry little weight against the massive use of phytosanitary products, major production zones will remain outside of the double or even triple green revolution.
Yet fortunately, soft law players are on the ball! Certifiers of all kinds were in force and highly active, and fortunately understood everything. They are also setting themselves up as the big directors of globalised green and social thinking. A shame that many of these specifications are left back at the idea of performance stage (decision-making), without taking into account the real impacts (consequences of the decisions made). In our media-obsessed and unethical world, the main thing is to communicate on the actions, right?
A shame that during this conference, the Fairtrade movement (including Clac), which often has real effects on the poorest links in the chain, barely made itself heard.
There were so many things said and actions proposed that I would refer the reader to the reports by the various panels and parallel sessions. To touch on the one regarding gender equality, it was a big success in terms of participation and identification of areas to work on. There as in other areas, there is huge scope for progress.
I will end with the main conclusions of the recent “Global Wage Report 2016/17” (https://goo.gl/fjFvd3 - shorten URL) by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Without being specific to the export banana sector, they say a lot about the effects of good or bad commercial practices on the quality of an industry, in particular social quality (wages and working conditions). The “price paid to supplier” criterion is the most obvious to understand. Yet it is accompanied by four others, which have just as big an effect: lack of clarity of information in customer-supplier contracts, imprecision in specifications for merchandise ordered leading to non-compliance, pressure on delivery times, and finally the absence of demand for the social standards and rules applied by the supplier. The ILO evaluated the positive effect of good commercial practices in an industry, and the results are indisputable. In a virtuous industry, wages are 98 % higher and hours worked are 13 % lower. If the idea of cross-industry collaboration still lacked credibility for some, the ILO report praises the multipartite approach of the World Banana Forum. In this long but essential process, it will be vital to give the weakest groups in terms of the negotiations a bigger role, by providing them with the information, analysis tools and methodologies. It is under these conditions that the dissymmetry between members will be overcome and things will get moving for real.
Denis Lœillet and Carolina Dawson, CIRAD
denis.loeillet@cirad.fr / carolina.dawson@cirad.fr
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