Smart alliance : how a global corporation and environmental activists transformed a tarnished brand

A profit-driven multinational corporation and an upstart group of environmentalists surprise the world and forge an astonishingly successful partnership Large and wealthy global companies too often fail to acknowledge environmental responsibility or workers’ rights. This book tells the dramatic story of one company—Chiquita Brands International—that decided to change the negative paradigm. Formerly the notorious United Fruit Company, a paternalistic organization that gave the name “Banana Republic” to tropical countries in Central America, Chiquita defied all expectations in the mid-1990s by forming an innovative pact with the Rainforest Alliance that transformed not only the corporation itself but also an important segment of the banana industry. Gary Taylor and Patricia Scharlin reveal the inside story of how corporate executives, banana workers, local leaders, and conservation advocates learned to work together and trust one another. Over the objections of skeptical critics, Chiquita and the Rainforest Alliance established a Better Banana “seal of approval” to certify genuine efforts to improve soil and water quality, ensure rainforest conservation, and enhance worker health and safety. This chronicle of their collaboration, told objectively and with extensive documentation, presents a promising new model of cooperative behavior--a model that shows how multinational companies can become motivated to solve critical global problems. J. Gary Taylor is president and Patricia J. Scharlin is vice president of The Environment Group, New York City. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, a radical change occurred in notions of self and personal identity. This was a sudden transformation, says Dror Wahrman, and nothing short of a revolution in the understanding of selfhood and of identity categories including race, gender, and class. In this pathbreaking book, he offers a fundamentally new interpretation of this critical turning point in Western history. Wahrman demonstrates this transformation with a fascinating variety of cultural evidence from eighteenth-century England, from theatre to beekeeping, fashion to philosophy, art to travel and translations of the classics. He discusses notions of self in the earlier 1700s - what he terms the 'ancien regime of identity' - that seem bizarre, even incomprehensible, to present-day readers. He then examines how this peculiar world came to an abrupt end, and the far-reaching consequences of that change. This unrecognised cultural revolution, the author argues, set the scene for the array of new departures that signaled the onset of Western modernity Contents 8 Timeline 10 Preface 13 Abbreviations 19 Introduction 23 1. Risk, Transparency, and Trust 29 2. Red, White, and Bruised 39 3. Times Change 61 4. Why Bananas and Why Chiquita? 80 5. Strange Bedfellows 94 6. Grass-Roots Snapshots 126 7. Blue Bananas 148 8. Agricultural Antagonists 158 9. ‘‘Daylight Come . . . ’’ 173 10. The Many Faces of Corporate Responsibility 194 11. Leveling the Label Field 210 12. Unfinished Business 223 Appendix A. Fundamental Conventions of the International Labour Organization 259 Appendix B. Chemicals Banned under the Better Banana Program 261 Appendix C. Selected Tables from Chiquita’s 2001 Corporate Responsibility Report 263 Appendix D. Sustainable Agriculture Network Members as of 2003 272 Notes 273 Selected Bibliography 289 Index 293