A DISPUTE BETWEEN TWO INTERNATIONAL indigenous rights organizations is raising questions about the role played by outside advocates in representing the interests of indigenous communities. The conflict between London-based Survival International and Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Cultural Survival has led the two organizations to articulate differences in working philosophy and in their visions of the future for indigenous communities.
The dispute revolves around Cultural Survival's "rainforest harvest" projects, which involve selling non-timber forest products on the international market. Cultural Survival has worked with the natural cosmetic company, The Body Shop, on several high-profile projects, contracting with the Kayapo in Brazil to supply ingredients for Body Shop cosmetics. Cultural Survival also promotes "Rainforest Crunch," a snack containing nuts from the Brazilian rainforest (used in Ben & Jerry's Rainforest Crunch ice-cream), and has worked with several other companies to sell rainforest products in U.S. markets.
Cultural Survival views the marketing strategy as a means of generating income for impoverished indigenous communities while helping these communities to protect the environment. "By developing markets for products that are harvested without destroying rain forests, we provide indigenous producers, First and Third World governments, NGOs [non-governmental organizations], international banking organizations and development agencies with a compelling economic incentive to protect the rainforest and its residents," writes Jason Clay, director of research at Cultural Survival, in a recent issue of the organization's quarterly publication.
Survival International, however, has recently released statements expressing "grave reservations about the current �rainforest harvest' concept, both in theory and practice," charging that marketing schemes promote the dangerous notion that the future of indigenous communities should be tied to their economic viability, and that the harvest projects divert attention away from more urgent issues like land demarcation. "Are we really going to let business and profits dictate conservation and human rights strategies and goals?" asks Stephen Corry, director-general of Survival International.
"It's a �use it or lose it' proposition for most of the world's rainforests; residents must make a living," responds Marc Miller, director of communications at Cultural Survival, in a letter to Multinational Monitor addressing questions about rainforest harvesting.
Forest enterprises
Cultural Survival was formed in 1972 to protect the human rights of indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities. It engages in research, public education, policy-making and advocacy and in direct financial and technical assistance to indigenous communities to support indigenous efforts to develop organizations, protect land rights and manage natural resources. Among several projects in Brazil funded by Cultural Survival in 1991 were the successful effort to force 40,000 gold miners off Yanomami lands and a project run by a Brazilian human rights organization to identify and halt illegal invasions of indigenous land using digitalized maps and satellite photos.
Cultural Survival has made the marketing concept central to its operating philosophy. Rainforest harvest projects are based on the idea that forest resources will be exploited one way or another, but that non-timber marketing projects allow for indigenous control and sustainable management. Miller writes, "Without income from sustainably harvested forest products, most forest residents would be forced to degrade their environments to meet their material needs - or abandon them to others who would."
In 1989, the organization established Cultural Survival Enterprises (CSE) to test its marketing concept by working with rainforest communities in the Amazon. CSE is a non-profit trading division that purchases fruits, nuts, oils, essences, pigments, spices and fibers for international sale, but has refused to trade in medicinal plants until indigenous peoples are guaranteed rights and royalties to these products.
CSE is involved in all aspects of marketing the goods, including identifying products; working with local groups - so far, Brazil's indigenous communities and rubber tappers - which harvest and produce the goods; locating markets and distributing the products to North American and European companies. According to the group's annual report, sales of forest products reached $1.2 million in 1991 and CSE plans to sell an estimated $2.5 million in forest products to 26 companies in 1992.
Survival International has objected to the way that some programs have operated. It contends that certain rainforest harvest projects "began not as ... as small-scale projects buying from local indigenous people and paying fair prices. Cultural Survival has promoted its work largely through a snack containing Brazil nuts ... . But the nuts were actually bought through normal commercial suppliers - not Indians. An added problem is that the Brazil nut industry is a big business in Brazil and is serviced by underpaid and exploited labor."
Miller counters that there were no collector-owned nut factories from which to purchase when CSE launched its rainforest harvest project in Brazil. He further points out that Cultural Survival used profits from the commercial market to finance the building of a nut-processing plant in Xapuri, Brazil, which is the first such factory owned as a collective by the forest dwellers who collect the nuts.
Miller writes, "Because of the co-op, nut gatherers in Acre State [where the factory is located] doubled their revenues last year from nut sales, from $600,000 to $1,200,000, according to local estimates. As a result of the co-op's pricing structure, gatherers throughout Acre have learned the potential value of their nuts and demanded higher prices."
Diversion from demarcation?
But Survival International has deeper concerns about the schemes, which the organization claims tie the future of indigenous peoples to their ability to compete economically in the North. The group is opposed to accepting the idea that some sort of development of the world's rainforests is inevitable, and that conservation of the forest will only be assured if indigenous communities are able to show that non-timber products are more "valuable" - in terms of the international market - in the long run than timber or agriculture. "We should be very wary of the idea that rainforests and forest tribes can only have a future if they are able to pay their way on our terms," says Corry.
Survival International also argues that it is risky to tie indigenous peoples' viability to Northern markets as demand for rainforest products may fluctuate or even collapse. Corry says, "Binding the economic future of tribal peoples to the creation of ephemeral, foreign markets in non-essential luxuries such as ice-cream or shampoo with added rainforest ingredients will not solve their problems."
Cultural Survival's Clay, writing in the organization's publication, agrees the programs will not work if they have to be subsidized, but argues that current environmental concern in the North, particularly concern over the fate of the rainforests, provides an opportunity to expand markets for these products. "Today's attention helps CSE capture a corner of the marketplace, so that taste and demand won't disappear when environmental concerns fade," he writes.
Survival International is most concerned that promoting marketing schemes will serve to divert public attention - and government response - away from more fundamental issues like land demarcation. Corry says, "If this ideology goes unchallenged and becomes progressively accepted as the way forward, it undermines those tribal peoples who are trying to drum up worldwide support in their opposition to governments and companies who are stealing their land." Survival International insists that indigenous communities will only survive if their legal rights to land are fully recognized and enforced.
Miller responds in his letter to the Monitor that Cultural Survival does not believe that rainforest harvest projects conflict with efforts to demarcate land. "To us, it's not an either/or proposition. The survival of forests and forest people are linked," he says. "To protect both, the people living in forests need land rights, local organizations and systems of sustainable resource management. Yet efforts can't stop there."
Miller also points out that Cultural Survival is not forcing its trading concept on any communities. He writes, "Many forest peoples will never want to be part of global markets, and we don't intend to change that. Still, forest peoples can benefit from trade that already exists."
Survival International materials stress that the organization is not opposed to marketing schemes per se but that these type of projects will not lead to long- term solutions. It claims, "Even the most appropriate [marketing] schemes ... do not lead to a solution to the desperately urgent problems tribal peoples face as their lands are invaded and their resources ransacked. ... [They] have no future unless their ownership rights over their land and resources are secured."