Rain forest chic: saving the rain forest was the hot cause of the '80s, but does anyone still care?

Vegetarian Times, May, 1995 by Jeremy Schlosberg

The fate of the rain forest became a cause celebre almost overnight. Seemingly out of the blue came the realization that 50 million irreplaceable acres of rain forest were being cleared every year, anywhere from 4,000 to 6,000 species extinguished annually. Deforestation for ignorant, short-term gain, we learned, was leading to long-term worldwide calamity.

Also appearing practically overnight was a swarm of products pledging to donate profits to help preserve the rain forest. The idea seemed inspired: Gather rain forest commodities without harming the environment and turn them into stuff people win buy. Show the people living in and near the rain forest that they can earn a better living by sustainably harvesting the forest, and you might slow or even stop the deforestation.

"It's market forces that have worked to destroy the rain forest," says Ben Cohen, the Ben of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, "and it's market forces that can save the rain forest."

If only it were that simple.

At a time when the practices of such eco-friendly companies as The Body Shop have been questioned, one begins to see how the "Help Save the Rain Forest" declarations on rain forest products from ice cream to body gel belie a commitment that is as complicated as it is compassionate. Just what can companies that contribute profits to rain forest conservation efforts actually accomplish?

Cohen, for one, believes that such companies can accomplish a lot. In 1989, he formed Community Products, a company with a mission to encourage progressive social change. His first product, he decided, would be a nut brittle that he hoped to make from sustainably harvested rain forest nuts.

At a Grateful Dead concert - a benefit for the rain forest - Cohen met Jason Clay, then-marketing director at Cultural Survival, a Cambridge, Mass.-based non-profit organization founded in 1972 to defend and promote the rights of indigenous people around the world. While at Cultural Survival, Clay pioneered the idea of helping indigenous populations harvest rain forest goods, without harming the land, for a self-sustaining wage. This ecologically attractive idea received a boost from a 1989 study by the New York Botanical Garden's Institute of Economic Botany, which found that a rain forest family could pocket an annual wage of $422 year after year from harvesting the fruits and rubber from two and one-half acres of rain forest compared to selling the wood cleared from the same land for a one-time-only $1,000.

Cultural Survival began purchasing rain forest yields - beginning with a shipment of Brazil nuts harvested them above commodity market prices to American manufacturers who would pay extra to help the cause. This 5 percent "environmental premium" is returned to the indigenous people involved in the harvest.

Cohen bought Clay's Brazil nuts. And because Brazil nuts make a better crunch than brittle, he created Rainforest Crunch. Cohen's candy-with-a-conscience was launched to much acclaim. From the start, 60 percent of its profits were committed to causes, including a 20 percent portion for Cultural Survival beyond the automatic environmental premium.

Many chocolate bars, lotions, breakfast cereals, shampoos and other products with rain forest ingredients followed the high-profile Rainforest Crunch lead. Michael Goldman, owner of Toucan Chocolates, hitched his company to the rain forest wagon in 1991 after reading about Cultural Survival's work right around the time he and his wife were deciding to start their own company. "We wanted it to have a social connection," says Goldman, who spent four years working as an agricultural economist with small-scale farmers in Cameroon. Goldman's boxed chocolate assortment features nuts sourced through Cultural Survival. In addition to the environmental premium, Goldman contributes a percentage of Toucan's sales back to Cultural Survival, a figure that to date is working out to somewhere between 5 cents and 20 cents a box. The still-tiny company has given Cultural Survival more than $10,000, according to Goldman.

Cultural Survival uncovers worthy recipients through a long-established network of on-site contacts to help determine where the funds go. "[Companies such as Toucan] see us as a trustworthy organization," says Cultural Survival's sourcing and marketing manager, Peggy Eulensen. "They can give us the money and not worry about it. We disburse it to the projects that need it."

Buying Cultural Survival-sourced commodities is perhaps the easiest way for natural products companies to make a commitment to the rain forest cause, but it's not the only way. Kate Priest, long-time environmentalist and co-founder of Emerald Forest, a maker of beauty products featuring rain forest ingredients, has enough experience and personal contacts in the field to source her own rain forest goods. For example, Priest began buying sapayul oil, a key component in her company's products, after a contact of hers - a German wildlife biologist married to a Guatemalan woman - recognized it as a traditional element in Mayan hair care. Priest's contact made weekly visits to the village of San Augustin in the Montagua River V45vt76.psalley in Guatemala to buy the sapayul, which is traditionally extracted from the seeds of the sapote fruit by women of the village. Now that the sapayul oil production is up to a consistent level, the full economic impact on the village is discernible. Where monthly household incomes were once the equivalent of $50, they now stand at $400.