TPP protest songs: CI takes a pop at secretive trade agreement

Jeremy Malcolm blogs on two new music videos launched today which challenge the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and aim to raise awareness of  this consumer rights issue.

 

As negotiators for the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement meet in Bali this week, consumers remain in the dark about how it will affect them. 

Two new music videos that we release today send a strong message to the negotiators – either open up the agreement, or we need to stop the TPP!

The secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement could overturn rules on topics as diverse as intellectual property, food labelling and financial services regulation in twelve countries of the Pacific Rim. 

From today senior officials from those countries are meeting at the APEC meeting in Bali, where they hope to advance the negotiations towards closure this year.

Consumers deserve to be a part of these negotiations.  So until we find out what the officials are planning to agree on our behalf, we need to stop the TPP! 

That is the simple message that Consumers International sends out today with the release of two new shareable music videos to raise public awareness of this impending threat to consumer rights.

The videos could not be more different from each other, either musically or visually, but both brilliantly convey our concerns about this undemocratic treaty under negotiation.

The first is 'No to the TPP' (No Al TPP), a beautiful and stirring bossanova-style song in Spanish by the Grammy Award nominated Chilean musician Ana Tijoux, with an evocative music video directed by Fourd Alzamora.

The second music video is an irresistibly catchy J-pop number called 'Stop the TPP!' (みんなでストップ！TPP) by Japanese musicians Emi Nakada and Citron178.  They released the audio of their original Japanese version earlier in the year, but today CI launches an accompanying animation video as well as an English language vocal version.  We even have a karoke version to which you can sing along!

Emi explains why she made the song: “The subject matter of the TPP is so complicated that people can't easily understand how it affects them.  To alert the people as soon as possible to the risks surrounding the TPP, I wrote lyrics that explain the TPP to everyone in simple terms, while singing happily!  I want you to please use this song as one quick way to simply convey this message to a lot of people!”

Emi collaborated on the track with Citron178 who is a composer of anime (Japanese animation) songs.  This is particularly apt given that the anime fan subculture is one of those threatened by the TPP's rules on intellectual property, which would interfere with the creation of homages such as fan art and “cosplay” (fancy dress) designs.

She writes: “In Japan, not much is known about the effects of the intellectual property chapter of the TPP, but it is likely to regulate the creation of fan fiction.  So in order to send a message to geeks, who like to make secondary creative works like this, I had to make a song in the style of anime songs.”  But the threat of the TPP goes further.  “Once you join the TPP, genetically modified foods come in, food safety is lost, health and life are threatened... The risk of losing everything you need for living is high.  It is no doubt that it is a primary concern for consumers!”

Please share both of these brilliant music videos as widely as you can, to send a strong message that we need to Stop the TPP!  In the words of Ana's song 'No to the TPP':

A treaty is not democratic if it is made behind the people
And your deal is not a deal if it is made secretly and without consensus
We all have the right and we all want to decide
The future and present of our children and how they want to live
No to the TPP

Trust, not green marketing, is key to driving sustainable consumption

CI's Head of Communications Luke Upchurch asks 'As consumers increasingly turn to one another for information, could green marketing campaigns be a thing of the past?'

One of the reasons mainstream consumers do not go weak at the knees for sustainable consumption is the perception of an elephant-sized contradiction at its heart. To most people, consumption means buying more stuff; buying more stuff means making more things; and making more things means unsustainable consumption.

This is not about an inability to grasp the idea: you can explain proven, high-impact sustainable consumption to people on the street and they will understand the benefits put before them. This is about instinct – a feeling that sustainable consumption is just not possible. It's an oxymoron. It's a big marketing fib.

It appears that businesses can do little to shift this current intransigence, with consumer mistrust of corporate sustainability claims the norm. Little wonder, then, that sustainability struggles to move beyond a niche of conscientious consumers and committed companies.

The situation is made more complex by the digital explosion of user-generated content and many-to-many communications. We've all heard how Twitter, Facebook and the like can sink a product range, skew a brand image or defile a corporation in a matter of minutes. It can take just one disreputable supplier, one perceived piece of hypocrisy, or one unintended consequence, and millions of dollars worth of marketing spend goes up in the air. Consumers feed on this background noise when framing opinions about the green and ethical claims made by large companies.

So it is perhaps no wonder that marketing professionals and communications experts bemoan the consumers' lack of enduring interest in sustainable consumption. Perhaps this is simply a behavioural nudge too far. Or, perhaps, the catalyst for change lies elsewhere.

Consumers are increasingly turning to each other for trusted information on a whole range of issues. This, however, is happening outside the influence of corporate communications. It is happening between individuals and the people they trust: friends, family, other users, and consumer organisations. This is creating a heady mixture of influencing agents that range from anecdotal evidence to personal experiences to third-party assurance; and it appears corporations have little direct say in the matter.

Tripadvisor, Disqus and Reevoo are all offering consumers the opportunity to share opinion and weigh up the trustworthiness of corporate claims. As Consumer Focus (now Consumer Futures) indicated in its excellent report, In my honest opinion: Consumers and the power of online feedback, 88% of UK consumers consult user reviews before making a purchase.

Of course, such a shift in consumer decision-making is not confined to perceptions of sustainability claims – but sustainable consumption arguably has the biggest hill to climb. The tightening of disposable incomes, the mainstream media's general scepticism about climate change and the mistrust of corporate claims all contribute to an unfavourable environment for changing behaviour  in this area.

Of all these challenges, the issue of trust is the one most open to change in the short term. Companies can alter the public perception about green claims, but it takes coherent, consistent efforts across the business and the supply chain. Third-party certification schemes, and rigorous CSR and sustainability standards such as ISO 26000 or the ISEAL codes are also important foundations that can begin to change the background noise and chip away at the scepticism.

Corporations should stop worrying about the message and focus on mainstreaming sustainability through their business and suppliers, while being totally open about the progress, successes and failures. In a world that increasingly demands instant communications, open data and total transparency, this is the closest one can get to guaranteeing a positive foundation for convincing consumers that sustainable consumption is not one big fib.

What a wonderfully simple irony: companies need to be geared up and running sustainable businesses before they can expect consumers to believe that they are sustainable. Which is exactly as it should be.

This blog first appeared on The Guardian website.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership threatens hard-won consumer rights in Asia and the Americas

CI’s Jeremy Malcolm looks at how the Trans-Pacific Partnership is dismantling a slew of consumer rights from intellectual property laws to food labelling to labour standards.

 

As a global organisation, much of the work that Consumers International (CI) does for and through its members is done at the international level. By setting consumer policies that apply to many countries, we ensure that no country is left behind when best practices are being set. (A good example of this is our work on the ISO 26000 standard on social responsibility.) 

But rather than being a race to the top, sometimes globalisation can be a race to the bottom, in which national laws to protect the public interest are sacrificed on the altar of free trade.

An example of this is found in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an intergovernmental agreement currently under negotiation that threatens to reduce hard-won health, privacy, consumer protection, environmental and labour standards in 11 negotiating countries around the Asia Pacific region.

Here are just some of the areas of the TPP text that are of concern to consumers:

Food and labelling

The existing trade disciplines of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) already limit national and consumer sovereignty when it comes to food. For example, under WTO rules, the European communities were punished for prohibiting imports of beef from cows laced with hormones, because the health risks of the use of artificial hormones on cattle had not been scientifically established.

As a result, Europe was ordered to compensate the United States for the lost imports of hormone-laced beef that European consumers didn't want! Under the TPP, American industry is asking for even tougher powers to limit other countries from regulating products such as genetically-modified food, pesticides and additives.

Intellectual property

Perhaps the most controversial chapter of the TPP, the intellectual property chapter, would also elevate intellectual property protection and enforcement standards above the already-high levels set by the WTO, to the detriment of consumers.

For example, many countries will be required to extend their length of copyright protection by 20 or more years, resulting in works from early last century being locked out of the public domain for decades. Parallel importation will also be restricted, allowing global firms to profiteer.

An Australian parliamentary study shows that such restrictions increase the cost of music downloads in that country by more than 50% compared to the USA.

The right to bypass digital locks in order to exercise fair dealings with copyright works will also be curtailed, and both civil and criminal penalties for copyright infringements will almost certainly balloon.

Investor-state dispute settlement

Under investor-state dispute settlement rules proposed for the TPP, big business can sue governments in an international commercial tribunal, for introducing new laws - such as consumer protection laws - that damage their businesses.

For example, the tobacco giant Philip Morris is currently suing Australia under a similar free trade agreement between Australia and Hong Kong, over Australia's introduction of a law requiring plain packaging of cigarettes.

Even though Australia's High Court already rejected the Philip Morris claim, the company is still pursuing its case in the international tribunal. Unsurprisingly, Australia has rejected an ‘investor-state disputes settlement provision’ for the TPP - but the USA is still insisting upon it.

E-Commerce

The TPP is proposing to adopt and strengthen the problematic APEC cross-border privacy rules, which were developed without adequate input from consumer or privacy groups. These rules provide a streamlined process for the exchange of consumers' private information across borders, possibly into countries where privacy protection is significantly more lax. 

As part of this, TPP is proposing to outlaw government policies that require consumers' information to be physically hosted on local servers. The intent is to allow web companies from the United States to host such private data, even though US law notoriously allows warrantless wiretapping and surveillance of its citizens.

This unnerving practice will now extend across the region if this TPP proposal makes it through.

Consumer groups shut out

There are probably many other areas of the text that are of concern to consumers too. But we can only say "probably", because the text has not been released. We only know what we do about the agreement because two of its 20 chapters have been leaked, and from public statements by negotiators and lobbyists. 

In particular, the US government has claimed that the "Competition" and "E-Commerce" chapters both include text on consumer protection, and there also exists a chapter on "Financial services" that is doubtless of relevance to consumers. Yet CI, and all other consumer organisations, have been denied access to these texts, whilst cleared corporate lobbyists have been allowed to see them.

CI’s involvement

CI attended the most recent meeting of the TPP negotiators in Virginia, USA, earlier this month with our member ODECU from Chile, where we were allowed a token 10-minute presentation slot, and a table from which to distribute publications.

Whilst this is a pitiful excuse for public engagement, the meetings have provided a useful mobilisation point for civil society, and are an occasion for well-connected NGOs to arrange informal private meetings with negotiators. (CI attended such a meeting in Virginia.)

The next TPP negotiation meeting will be taking place in New Zealand from 3 to 12 December 2012, and we are again inviting interested CI members to participate, with coaching and support from CI.

If you are interested in hearing more, and are from Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States or Vietnam, contact me or Farooq Ahmed Jam from CI's Office for Asia Pacific and the Middle East. 

We will provide you with a detailed briefing document that we have prepared, and put you in touch with your country's negotiators. 

Even if you can't attend the next negotiating session, there are still many ways in which you can have an impact, such as talking with your negotiators, and linking up with other NGOs in your country who are already engaged in TPP advocacy.

With the agreement slated for completion in 2013, now is the time for CI members from the Asia-Pacific region to defend themselves against the TPP's many threats to consumers.

Lack of transparency is the path to corporate corruption

As recently highlighted in CI’s new report on supermarket supply chains, consumer organisations can play a vital role in holding corporations to account. However, this job is not made easy when companies disclose too little about their policies and operations. Guest blogger Angela McClellan from Transparency International explains the importance of corporate transparency and the right of consumers to be informed.

Holdings, subsidiaries, affiliates and entities—this is the landscape of modern corporations. To the consumer, they are opaque, complex entities and seeing what lies behind them is never easy.

Information on multinational corporations and their operations is often inaccessible or incomprehensible, leaving the average consumer confused and in the dark—a clear violation of the consumer’s right to be informed.

In addition, as the recent banking scandals have demonstrated, lack of access to information also means a lack of accountability, which creates an enabling environment for, as Transparency International (TI) puts it, “the misuse of publicly entrusted power for private gain”. In other words: corruption.

Whether it is interest rate manipulation such as in the alleged Libor affair at Barclays or multi-billion dollar money laundering such as accusations against global subsidiaries of HSBC, corruption can take many forms.

But in all cases, corruption damages public trust, undermines corporate credibility, and hurts the consumer who pays the price for a lack of sound risk management and individual bankers gambling for personal gain.

TI recently released its Transparency in Corporate Reporting study in which it assesses the country-by-country reporting, organisational transparency, and disclosure of anti-corruption programmes among the 105 largest companies in the world, based on publicly available information.

Its methodology is based on the assumption that companies which disclose this information have less to hide. The more transparent companies become, the less space there will be for shady deals and private enrichment.

Together, the companies surveyed in this report are worth more than 11 trillion USD and play a vital role in the global economy, wielding enormous political leverage. Not only that, but many are household names that touch the lives of people all across the world, carrying an important social responsibility.

The impact of these companies and their actions goes beyond investors or shareholders and has a profound effect on the individual, the consumer and the worker. Our report sheds a negative light on financial companies, described as the least transparent. This is particularly worrisome given that the financial sector has received copious amounts of public funds through bail-out programmes in recent years.

To avoid the continuing privatisation of win and socialisation of loss, consumers and other stakeholders, including investors, shareholders, tax payers and regulators, need sufficient information to be able to assess the risks to which they are exposed. Country-by-country financial reporting enables citizens in host countries to hold their governments to account on contracts, tax exemptions as well as on the use of received revenues.

Organisational transparency is necessary to shed light on the network of interconnected subsidiaries and affiliates that may be incorporated in diverse jurisdictions, including secret jurisdictions with low tax regimes. And finally, the disclosure of anti-corruption policies is key as it indicates a corporate commitment to protecting against corruption.

Corruption is a risk for multinational corporations as much as it is for governments and consumers. It distorts markets, undermines economic growth and perpetuates social inequality. This affects each of us. Companies may recognise this but must now more than ever unequivocally commit themselves to measures to prevent corruption.

The help of civil society and individual consumers can make an enormous difference. Most corporate reporting is purely voluntary and companies may not see the need to increase their transparency.

Therefore, we need to remind companies and governments that we, as consumers and tax payers, do indeed care and want access to information. Using the data from the Transparency in Corporate Reporting, we can demonstrate to companies that what they have been doing so far against corruption is not enough to ensure that consumers are protected.

Through tweeting, blogging and campaigning, we can show that we will hold companies to their commitments and monitor their operations. We can show that we will hold them accountable.

Angela McClellan, Senior Programme Coordinator in TI’s Global Outreach and Campaigns Department, coordinates TI’s advocacy work on issues relating to the Group of 20 leading economies.

How group action is reinventing consumer activism

Richard Bates, from CI member Consumer Focus, explains how social technologies are revolutionising consumer action—an important lesson for consumer groups around the world

Here’s a theory I’m sure you’re familiar with: foster competition within a market and its benefits – prices held down, service driven up and thriving innovation – will follow, as engaged consumers work to maximise their own interest and seek out better deals.

It’s a notion that underpins our energy, telecoms and financial services markets here in Britain. 

And here’s a reality that I suspect won’t be unique to Britain: mass inertia is the norm across these sectors. It’s a predictable and understandable consumer response in markets where engagement is not a high priority and which suffer from being archetypal ‘confusopolies’.

The result is an impasse. Consumers stay put and competition gives way to complacency on the provider side. The benefits that competition should deliver for consumers are then in short supply. The fabled invisible hand is, well, all too invisible.

But, what if we created an alternative, much simpler, more powerful way of making these markets work for consumers? One where an intermediary works on behalf of consumers to:

• Provide a focal point around which consumers who want better value, but reject the conventional ‘go it alone’ route to market can cluster
• Convert mass inertia into a competitive impetus by grouping participating consumers’ aggregate demand into a winnable block of market share
• Leverage that aggregate demand to secure a better deal
• Manage the mass switch of participating consumers to the provider who makes the best offer to the group

In a new report for Consumer Focus, I’ve argued the possibility of doing just that. The report expands on a trend I termed ‘Get it, together’ in a previous CI blog. At the core of this trend are the opportunities for new forms of group action enabled by social technologies.

Of course, coming together as a group in order to pursue a shared objective is nothing new. 

History is rich with examples of people organising in groups and using the consequent power of numbers to advance collective interests and press for change – whether social, political, or economic.

But the costs associated with large-scale group formation and, subsequently, the co-ordination and management of group action meant that only large organisations with hierarchies and management structures could act in this way. And only then if the benefits achieved outweighed the costs incurred.

Instances of people collaborating as a group outside the bounds of an organisation were mostly limited to small scale, local initiatives.

But social technologies have eroded those costs, meaning it’s not only easy for people to form groups now, it’s also easy for the group to achieve critical mass and to co-ordinate and synchronise its actions to achieve a shared goal.

As a result, we are seeing a proliferation of new kinds of groups, including consumers working together or through intermediaries to achieve a shared objective in the marketplace. The Bank Transfer Day campaigns in the USA harness precisely these dynamics, as do local Carrotmob initiatives.

What’s more, in the past effective group effort often depended on a division of labour that assigned all members a task to undertake in pursuit of the group’s aims. Not anymore.

An active intermediary can now work on behalf of the group and harness the power of its numbers - rather than the efforts of its members - to achieve the shared goal. Other than aligning with the group and signalling assent to an action being undertaken on their behalf, individual members can now be effective in aggregate while remaining largely passive in practice.

In a consumer context, this solves the problem of inertia and minimises the costs of market participation for consumers, offering them the attractive proposition of better outcomes for less effort.

Today, we’re seeing the first wave of initiatives that look to put these ideas into practice and disrupt the markets to which they’re applied. Within the next three to five years collective switching could well turn the status quo on its head and create a situation where providers will have to work much harder to win and retain the custom of large groups of consumers.

Already, collective switching pioneer – iChoosr – has secured significant savings on energy bills for hundreds of thousands of consumers in Belgium and the Netherlands. Consumentenbond has also applied the approach successfully in the Dutch energy market. Which? has just overseen the first instance of collective switching in the British energy market, resulting in a straightforward route to an average saving of £123  for up to 200,000 participating consumers. Choice provided a much needed jolt to the Australian mortgage market by applying a variation of the approach there. 

As you may have noticed, three of those four initiatives have been offered by consumer bodies. The success of the exception, iChoosr, has been built on working in partnership with community organisations that consumers know and trust.

This suggests that integrity – a quality with which consumer and community bodies are strongly associated – will be key for consumer adoption of this approach. That’s hardly a surprise given that having the confidence to engage with an intermediary platform on a novel approach to markets that can represent a major financial commitment, will be a key issue for consumers.

Collective switching and wider initiatives harnessing the group dynamic have the potential to disrupt and rebalance how power and information flows in markets. Therefore, existing players who have most to lose are likely to resist the sea change rather than make the running in developing this kind of service.

Bodies working in the consumer interest therefore have vital roles to play as catalysts for collective switching. This could take the form of supporting pioneering intermediary services that work on behalf of consumers in markets; or, wherever necessary, involve the direct development and deployment of the platforms that can open this alternative approach up for consumers.

Richard Bates leads the Consumer Empowerment Programme at Consumer Focus @rchrdbts

Consumers can make a difference to conditions in the banana trade

Eliana Guarnoni of CI’s Italian member organisation Altroconsumo explores the production conditions behind the world’s most popular fruit.

Bananas are the world’s most popular and internationally-traded fruit. The industry is an important source of employment and income for millions of people in developing countries, but all too often is associated with negative economic, social and environmental impacts.

With more and more of us concerned about the story behind the food we buy, consumer rights groups are increasingly looking at the ethics of the tropical fruit trade.  CI recently examined conditions within the pineapple supply chain, and this has led us to take a closer look at the altogether bigger banana trade.

The World Banana Forum (WBF) is the centre for action on this issue. It is a multi-stakeholder initiative that aims to improve conditions within the banana supply chain by bringing together producers, retailers, trade unions, NGOs, academics and exporters to share good practice and come up with solutions to the most urgent problems.

Working conditions

While attending the Second Conference of the WBF in Ecuador, I visited banana plantations in El Oro and Los Rios. It was particularly interesting to learn about the intensive use of chemicals in both the plantations and the packing areas.

Workers and the local communities surrounding the plantations have reported increasing levels of disease and believe that these chemicals are responsible.

Specifically, they say a lack of protective equipment and inadequate measures to prevent contamination in surrounding areas are to blame.

Discussing strategies to reduce the negative impact of chemicals on human beings and the environment is a top WBF priority, and in El Oro and Los Rios it was clear to see why.

But chemicals aren’t the only thing that poses a health risk on a banana plantation. The weight of a bunch of bananas is around 40 kilos. Workers in the packing area are required to move hundreds of banana boxes (each weighing 18 kilos) every day.

But workers are paid a piece-rate and in many cases they cannot earn enough to satisfy their family’s basic needs, even if they work 12 hours a day.

Women on the banana plantation

I also attended a meeting focusing specifically on conditions for female workers. Around 30 women from morethan 15 countries shared their views and experiences. It was striking to see how many of the issues facing women are common across borders.  

For example, women find it more difficult than men to get hired by banana producers – even though they could be easily employed in the washing area – and are often dismissed when they get pregnant. Challenges like this make it much harder for women in the major banana-exporting countries to make a significant contribution to their family’s livelihood.

The role of consumers

It was not uncommon to hear consumers used as an excuse to avoid taking responsibility for making real improvements to supply chain conditions.

One of the most recurrent arguments is that increased costs translate into higher prices for consumers, which, in turn, causes demand to decrease so that in the end nobody benefits.

But, in fact, studies conducted in several EU countries show that a significant proportion of consumers are ready to pay more for more sustainable products.

In any case, the price increase is often negligible. It is estimated that plantation workers only receive around 3%-4% of the final retail price paid by consumers.

Raising this share to 5% would mean either asking consumers to pay 0.05 Euros more per kilo or requiring companies and supermarkets to decrease their profits by 1%.

Consumers as a key stakeholder

WBF demonstrated to me that taking part in multi-stakeholder initiatives can be a useful strategy for consumer organisations.

It is clear that the consumer voice – which is so often missing in platforms like this – is very much respected and appreciated by other stakeholders.

WBF also shows how multi-stakeholder initiatives can be a really effective way to focus on the most relevant and urgent issues in a specific sector and to improve the research methodologies used by consumer organisations.

It is also important to demonstrate to other key stakeholders – whether its producers, exporters, trade unions, supermarket chains, intergovernmental organisations, research institutions or NGOs –  that consumer groups are monitoring how products bought by consumers are produced.

This scrutiny can play a vital part in bringing about better conditions in production and trade, while at the same time fostering constructive partnerships between stakeholders to achieve common goals.

Video: ISO 26000, COPOLCO and corporate social responsibility, interview with Sadie Homer

In a video interview, Sadie Homer explains ISO 26000, COPOLCO and why corporate social responsibility is important to both companies and consumers.

Summary: session 4 - Consumer Rights and Corporate Responsibility

Robert Michel provides his observations:

This proved to be a fascinating session. While the first speaker, Diana Tsui talked about the drastic fall in the trust in business and thus the resulting growing interest by consumers in companies’ CSR, the next speaker, Jonathon Hanks, an academic from South Africa, questioned the CSR commitment by big companies.

Hanks doubted that consumers still had any trust in business and thus said that consumers are not sufficiently interested in CSR. As CSR is not at the core of a business, CSR cannot sufficiently deliver sustainable development. What was needed he said as a new concept of shared values and despite the mistrust in big companies, they were in fact able to solve problems as long as they understood that their own, long-term values were at risk. The way forward for COs really was not to support green consumerism as it had failed but rather less consumption.

The third speaker, Guido Adriaenssens talked about research projects into companies’ CSR and mentioned that three types of companies can usually be found: the no responders (about 10%), the so-called collaborators, who often have good sounding policies on paper but very little on the ground to show for and the third group, the so-called positive group of companies that engages with the researchers, allows plant visits and even acts on certain research recommendations.

How socially responsible are Belgium's biggest supermarkets?

Christian Rousseau is the Project Coordinator for Test Achats’ Supermarket Project. Here he gives an insight into his team’s continued dialogue with the three biggest supermarkets in Belgium.

Since the publication of the retailer survey in April 2010, Test Achats has engaged in dialogue with the three leading supermarkets in Belgium, which represent over 70% of the country’s groceries market. The goal has been to stimulate change inspired by our 10 point recommendations, and to address more specifically the priorities for each supermarket.

Eventually the supermarkets took the results of the retailer survey quite seriously - the ranking of supermarkets in the report and our benchmark for this being an implicit driver (eg Lidl was included in the top 4, how so?!). We found that goodwill and openness to ethical concerns is generally present in the mind of spokespersons, but discussions also revealed a lack of insight into specific food chains like pineapples (read more in French). Consumers and retailers are however, not on an equal footing - we are still facing good intentions from supermarkets, but not enough proven facts and actions. Taking responsibility for the full supply-chain remains a sensitive point.

Here is a snapshot of our findings:
Colruyt is the most active in the social responsibility field, although a discrete player (no green-wash addict!). The supermarket has made significant achievements since 2009 when our campaign began, including developing a new purchasing charter with full supply-chain commitments. It is also mainstreaming its own line of ethically labelled products and embedding sustainability in the private label product specifications. The management is also involved in capacity building and support for small scale food suppliers in developing countries.

Delhaize was at first rather, err, unenthusiastic about the survey results and the 'unbalanced' picture regarding supermarket power. However the company has now moved a step further and answered each of our ten action points. Significant achievements since 2009 include the supermarket signing up to a BSCI-based retailer code of conduct for social compliance; providing training for all its buyers; moving towards responsible sourcing of its fish; and a greater focus on fair-trade on the shop shelves.

Carrefour Belgium is willing to move forwards but seems impeded by the inertia of the wider mother company. Its social agenda is lagging behind the environmental one. There has been no significant achievement since 2009.

I’d like to leave you with these thoughts....
Food supply chains are clearly challenging by their complexity. It is therefore the task of all stakeholders to collaborate about the prioritisation of social issues. Local European suppliers of food, too, deserve the attention of both retailers and consumers. They are often the supermarkets’ main business partners, especially for basic products like milk, fruit and vegetables and they must not be forgotten.

Test-Achats will definitely have to update its baseline survey to hold supermarkets to account in the coming years, and hopefully achieve further progress. The case of local producers should also be included in the wider picture.

In the meantime our awareness-raising campaign is running, with the practical help of a responsible shopping guide – the first of its kind for Test Achats and for Belgium. So let’s go shopping…but shop differently!

Pineapple workers: dignity in the face of oppression

Anna Cooper of Banana Link talks about her experiences meeting workers in Costa Rica.

I arrived in Siquirres in the South Atlantic coast of Costa Rica, with my Banana Link colleague Iain Farquhar, after a long and slow journey of multiple planes, taxis and buses. We were welcomed by the friendly and familiar faces at the SITRAP office – our base during the Consumers International case study research.

Tom, Felicity, Anna, Jenny, Carlos

Despite working for Banana Link for a number of years on issues along banana and pineapple supply chains, I arrived with what seemed like a daunting number of questions about the realities on the ground in the Costa Rican pineapple industry. It was exciting to think of what lay ahead in the next two weeks, after which these questions would all be answered - hopefully!

The first week was spent travelling round the plantations and communities in the Atlantic coast, visiting workers and community activists in their homes, at plantation accommodation or at the local trade union offices. Carlos Arguedas, the SITRAP Health and Safety Officer, was our devoted and dependable guide.

Many of the workers lived with their families in very basic housing made out of wood and corrugated iron with mud floors. Some did have concrete houses but generally only when the wives were working too, bringing in two incomes into the household. Some of the bachelor workers – mainly Nicaraguans who had left their families to come and work in Costa Rica – lived in accommodation provided by the company.

The interviews with workers were very open – they all had their own story to tell and different information about the working conditions on the plantations depending on their role, how long they’d been there, whether or not they were union members etc.

It was quite difficult to find women workers that were prepared to talk to us; there was a lot of fear amongst workers who were worried that if they spoke to us and the company found out, then they may lose their jobs. However, we luckily managed to find a number of workers who were glad of the opportunity to speak out and share their experiences of working on the plantations, in the knowledge that this information would get back to the consumers in Europe who are buying the pineapples they produce.

On return to the UK I then had the mammoth task of writing up the case study research into a full technical report - I won’t bore you with the details of this bit! The report was then used to inform Consumers International and the Guardian filmmakers in preparation for the filming trip to Costa Rica in June.

I returned to Costa Rica with the Guardian journalist, Felicity Lawrence, and the film director, Tom Pearson (both pictured) – all of us with worries of torrential rain in the middle of the Costa Rican monsoon season! I was really looking forward to seeing everyone again back in Costa Rica, this time with the very different role of assisting the filming trip on the ground and doing the translation for the journalist and director.

We had ten days to make the film and luckily this time, due to the previous research done in March, we had a pretty good idea of the people we needed to visit and the questions we needed to ask to get the right footage for the film.

This time the experience in Costa Rica was very different – rather than sitting down with workers and community activists for a few hours to talk about their story in their own time, everything had to be much more precise and well planned. The task of language translation therefore seemed to also be one of cultural translation too; mediating the laid back and relaxed tempo of Costa Rican life with the fast and exact demands of UK film production! Thanks to the unwavering support from our local guide, Carlos (pictured), the filming trip was a real success and an amazing experience to be a part of.

Looking back, the most inspiring part of the research and filming process for me has got to be the people I met in Costa Rica – the workers, their families, trade unionists, community activists – all with their own story to tell. Many of them had suffered life times of poverty and repression but their dignity, morality and generosity in the face of these struggles was a powerful reminder of the strength of the human spirit, and one I will never forget.

Costa Rica will pay the price for cheap fruit

The Guardian's Felicity Lawrence on making Pineapples: Luxury fruit at what price for Consumers International.



While making our film about the pineapple industry in Costa Rica, I interviewed the buyer of one of the major European supermarket chains, who wanted to remain anonymous(they usually do).
He was worried that the most intense production of pineapples is based in Costa Rica's flat Atlantic region where the humidity is highest and pests on the monoculture plantations are the most troublesome. They need more pesticides there than the farms in the hilly, more windy area further west, but without the same economies of scale and with the extra distance from the port, it's more expensive to produce where the environmental cost is lower.
When it came to growing bananas, he wasn't sure Costa Rica was even the right country from an environmental point of view. The humidity of the region meant that 54 agrochemical treatments are typically needed in a cycle compared to only 14 or 15 in parts of Ecuador where the climate is less favourable to the sigatoka fungus that is ravaging the crop around the world.
Agrochemicals are an issue for pineapples too. Clearing old pineapple plants after harvest so that you can replant the next crop again is done fastest and mostly cheaply with very high doses of paraquat. Paraquat is banned in Europe because it is so acutely toxic. Some Costa Rican plantations avoid it – notably those with Rainforest Alliance or Fairtrade certifications, but they then have to plough in the old stalks and wait for the plant matter to decompose. Time is money and if no one will pay a premium for your efforts, it's harder to justify.
Other environmentally beneficial techniques don't come cheap either: buffer zones between the edge of plantations and water ways, protection of rainforest areas, making sure workers who spray agrochemicals only do so for a couple of hours at a time so that they are not out sweating in the heat and therefore more exposed to toxic effects – all these things cost money.
One of the greatest problems is that the transnational traders' and retailers' power outstrips the government's ability to regulate. Costa Rica is more stable, democratic and ecologically minded than many developing countries, which is precisely why it is so attractive to foreign investors, yet its environmental laws remain weak and have barely kept up with an industry that has seen explosive growth.
And, of course, the situation isn't helped by price wars that are driving producers towards the kind of industrial agriculture that takes a heavy toll both on the environment and on the lives of those who live and work in the plantations' shadow.

This blog first appeared on the Guardian's Green Living blog. Find out more about the CI's work on Corporate Social Responsibility.

Rio Earth Summit 2012: Anything less than visionary action from our world leaders is greenwashing

Luke Upchurch of Consumers International on the aims of the Green Economy Coalition

Let's get one thing straight: the “Green Economy” is not a buzz word, nor a sound bite, nor the nom du jour. It is not a distraction to the discussions on sustainable development – it fundamentally underpins sustainable development.

While some may rightly argue that the UN's focus on the Green Economy here at the UNCSD Rio 2012 preparations meeting does not mean government delegates necessarily understand or support the concept, we have seen some genuine attempts by some countries and UN bodies to engage with the issue. The issue now needs to be advanced in a way that recognises the fundamental flaws in our economic system that have led to the crises we are experiencing today. As the NGO statement to the negotiations put it today “anything less is just greenwash”.

So what does Green Economy mean? And what can it achieve? One group that is trying to put workable ideas and tangible solutions on the table is the Green Economy Coalition (GEC).

The GEC brings together environment, development, trade union, consumer and business sectors, North and South committed to a common cause: accelerating a transition to a new green inclusive economy. Leading members of the GEC are here in New York to launch Green, fair and productive: How the 2012 Rio Conference can move the world towards sustainability. It provides an explanation of the practical actions needed to tackle these shared concerns.

The GEC argues that in the current global economic framework, perverse incentives, weak legislation and poor labour standards have not only neutralised many potential benefits of globalisation, but have accelerated negative impacts on the environment, workers, consumers and economic stability. While global poverty has become entrenched, unsustainable consumption has increased.

These problems are complex and widespread, but the GEC believes real solutions exist and that Rio 2012 offers a precious opportunity for world leaders to turn around the failed approaches of the recent past.

By focusing on accountability, national dialogue, the transformation of current governing systems, and a collective effort to learn from what actually works, the GEC believes Rio 2012 can put us on a path towards the new economic paradigm needed to finally achieve the goals of Rio 1992.

At the 18 May launch of Green, fair and productive at the UN in New York, Tom Bigg of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED, the secretariat of the GEC) laid out the shared vision of the Coalition: “ A resilient economy that provides a better quality of life for all within the ecological limits of one planet.” A clear goal, made only more compelling by the range of partners in the coalition; represented on the panel by leaders from the Global South, the consumer movement and trade unions.

Shrashtant Patara of Development Alternatives in India explained how the GEC principles were set to become practice through the Coalition's focus on national dialogue as a catalyst for transformation. Patara stressed the importance of this aspect, as without national policy change the objectives of the GEC would remain above the political and legislative arenas in which they needed to work. These include national awareness raising activities and a focus on 'roadmapping' the changes needed. Embedded in this process is a condition to share these experiences with other countries, a key part of the GEC national dialogue vision.

Consumers International's Bjarne Pedersen outlined the coalition's specific asks, emphasising the importance of addressing the demand-side of the problems we face. This included a 'sharper focus' on corporate accountability and using Rio 2012 as a platform for further formalising standards for sustainable corporate behaviour. Pedersen also highlighted some of the critical steps: bold political leadership, regulating industry to better protect and serve consumer protection and labour rights, an end to GDP as the main benchmark measurement of progress, and an internalisation of the real costs of goods and services so sustainable lifestyle choices become the mainstream.

And Anabella Rosemberg of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) explained how green and decent jobs are a real opportunity in the transition towards a more sustainable society, but that simply developing new sectors will not be enough: we need to speed up our efforts to green all our economic sectors. The GEC stresses that a "just transition" needs investments, education and training, social protection and dialogue and local diversification strategies.

The Green Economy Coalition has managed to fuse a myriad of approaches into a coherent set of shared concerns. The focus on increasing action and accountability stands in marked contrast to the difficulty in achieving change through current negotiating frameworks – a point recognised by several participants at the event. Respondents from the Danish and Brazilian governments, the ILO, UNEP and UNDP also welcomed the creation of the Coalition and its plans over the next two years.

The GEC is providing bold and specific details for change. Wholesale transformation of financial regulation, an end to short-term incentives, and a phasing out of fossil fuelled, consumption-based growth are approaches that can put us on a path towards the new green economic paradigm that the vast majority of the world knows we need. This is not token tinkering around the edges, not another set of conditions forced on the Global South, and not greenwash. Governments would do well to take note.