A report critical of banana farm expansion for causing environmental and social problems at the beginning of this decade was kept from the public for years by the Costa Rican environmental ministry - after the banana industry, including Chiquita, attacked the study.
Now that the report has been released, banana plantation owners continue to criticize the internationally-respected group that wrote it.
In the early 1990s, almost 100 square miles of Costa Rican grazing land and forests in the northeastern section of the country were bought by banana companies like Chiquita and turned into banana fields. According to Costa Rican government statistics, 70,740 acres were in banana production nationwide in 1990. By 1995, that number had jumped to 131,117.5 acres, an increase of more than 85 percent.
A Catholic bishop near the region, labor leaders and conservationists publicly expressed concerns about the expansion's effect on the environment and the treatment of workers. In response, the Costa Rican ministry for environmental affairs commissioned a report on the banana industry from the Central American office of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 1991. The IUCN, one of the oldest international conservation groups, runs conservation projects around the world and counts agencies of 74 governments as members, including the United States, Panama, Japan and the United Kingdom.
The 129-page report - parts of which were leaked in 1993 - discussed various problems caused by an increase in banana cultivation.
Deforestation
One of the biggest problems cited was deforestation. The huge increase meant the loss of thousands of acres of cattle farms and more than 13 square miles of primary rain forest, according to the report.
Another issue was that the increase in banana plantations led to a dramatic rise in pesticide use in an area permeated by rivers and creeks that flow into the Caribbean, according to the report. The new plantations also were located near many sensitive forest preserves and conservation areas. Environmentalists were concerned about pollution from pesticides causing fish kills and other environmental problems, the report said.
The report also dealt with unemployment prompted by the expansion. While workers were brought in initially to build the plantations, many were fired afterward because it took fewer people to maintain the farms. As a result, many people moving to a remote area of the country found themselves unemployed.
Goal was awareness
The goal of the report was to raise awareness of these issues among government officials, the public and the banana industry leaders.
"What we would like to see is a more environmentally and socially aware banana industry," Enrique Lahmann, regional director of the IUCN, said.
But the public didn't get to see the report for years. When some draft findings were leaked, the banana companies declared open opposition and set up their own commission, Comision Ambiental Bananera, to coordinate the industry's response.A new administration came into office in 1996 and the report was released in early 1997.
Asked if the government endorsed the report, the Costa Rican embassy in Washington D.C. sent the Enquirer an old press release from CORBANA, a state-owned banana company, condemning the report. Asked if that represented the government's position, the Costa Rican embassy referred all questions to MINAE, Costa Rica's environmental department. That agency did not respond to repeated phone calls, e-mails and fascimile transmissions.
In its 1997 official statement on the final IUCN report, the commission reiterated its longstanding recommendation that "the (environmental) minister must not endorse the diagnostic report as an updated document" and suggested that it only be considered "an historical document" (translation). If the document was not considered updated, it could not be considered by the environmental ministry in its policy decisions as relevant to the banana industry today, the statement said.
Mr. Lahmann said powerful American banana interests have operated in Costa Rica for more than 100 years, and their political influence was applied to hold the report for years.
"There is no question that the banana industry has a lot of weight in national politics in Costa Rica," Mr. Lahmann said.
Chiquita officials refused to be interviewed by the Enquirer about this project, including the IUCN report. Through attorneys the company released a statement that it never tried to keep the report from the public. The statement condemned the IUCN report as "unbalanced" and "not based on scientific method but, instead, solely on casual observation."
The research team was comprised of 16 scientific and academic teams looking at different aspects of the expansion like pesticide use, agro-ecology, legal issues, social impact, refuse, economics and forestry. The "environmental diagnostic" included analysis of high-grade maps of the region as well as satellite photographs.
Visited region
The teams made numerous visits to the region to interview workers, conservation groups, medical personnel, local government officials, health ministry officials and environment ministry officials. The teams also held numerous talks with administrators from all the major multinational companies, including Chiquita's main Costa Rican subsidiary, Compania Bananera Atlantica Ltda. (COBAL).
"I don't think that it is unscientific. Well-known professionals participated in the report," said the IUCN's Mr. Lahmann, who has a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Miami and who is an expert in wetlands pollution.
Mr. Lahmann said that while the IUCN came under a lot of criticism from the banana companies, the report helped raise awareness of environmental issues in Costa Rica.
"I wonder if that would have happened without this report," he said. Chiquita dismissed the IUCN as "a confederation of environmental interest groups."
The IUCN is a federation of conservation groups and government agencies with several important U.S. institutions as official members. These members include the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Oceans, International Environment and Scientific Affairs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service and the Nature Conservancy.
Conservation International, which Chiquita itself described as a "highly respected independent environmental organization" when it paid the organization last year to critique the company's own environmental program, also is a member.
Chiquita also said the IUCN would not endorse the report. Mr. Lahmann said preliminary drafts carried a label that the opinions expressed in the report were those of the consultants during discussion. Once the environment ministry officially released the report this year, it was endorsed publicly by the IUCN, according to Mr. Lahmann.
Report suppressed
While Chiquita stated that it had nothing to do with keeping the IUCN report from the public, the company has kept an environmental report in Honduras from public review.
In 1995, the Honduran Centro de Estudios y Control de Contaminantes (the Center for the Study and Control of Contaminants) audited the banana industry throughout Honduras, including Chiquita plantations. Dr. Luis Munguia Guerrero, CESCCO's director, said the audit found serious problems on Chiquita's farms, but he said he could not release the report because of a confidentiality agreement signed with the company. He said, however, that Chiquita could release it if it chose. The Enquirer asked Chiquita to see the report.
The company declined to release it. In a response issued through its attorneys, it stated that "CESCCO conducted an initial audit of the banana industry in 1995, identifying several general areas in which improvement was needed ... For its part, Chiquita has taken affirmative steps to address issues raised in the 1995 CESCCO report."
(Copyright 1998)
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