Broken Promises - `Aid Not Trade, a Play on the Body...

Broken promises Thanks in great part to its green image British company Body Shop has prospered in the 80s. In the 90s the firm tried to increase its world visibility linking its image to Brazil s rainforest and approaching the Brazilian Kayapo Indians with a program they called `Trade Not Aid. The association generated a barrage of free and laudatory media stories about the activities of Body Shop. More recently however this image has been bruised. Is the Body Shop social conscience just a sham? Saulo Petean* Body Shop s much vaunted `Trade Not Aid policy with indigenous peoples is running into serious problems in the Amazon where it sources Brazil nut oil for one of its best-selling beauty products. Since 1991, Body†¦show more content†¦Of this, $100,000 went toward the purchase of a used aircraft and initial expenses. The rest of the money was never accounted for. In 92 and 93, Gordon Roddick, Anita s husband and BSI s executive director, brought four Body Shop country head franchisers to the Indian communities, charging them $25,000 each. Again, the Indians never saw any of this money. After one of Anita Roddick s earliest visits, she announced that Body Shop would extend the project to other Mebengokre villages. They began competing for Body Shop s favor, which strained relations among the traditionally egalitarian culture. Roddick and Body Shop never made good on their promise. In the meantime, Body Shop began heavily promoting its links to the Kayapo. It announced what it called the first ever intellectual property rights agreement. However, the Kayapo had agreed to nothing. In 1993, a group of 30 Kayapo chiefs were hastily called by Gordon Roddick to a meeting in Brasà ­lia, capital of Brazil. The chiefs happily believed that Body Shop was at last going to make good on its promise to expand purchases of nut oil. What they did not know was that Body Shop had recently gotten word that the press was about to report that it had never reached an intellectual property rights agreement with the Kayapo. The chiefs were stunned and frustrated when it became clear that Body Shop was trying to get the chiefs to legitimize the agreement, which still had not been negotiated.Show MoreRelatedOne Significant Change That Has Occurred in the World Between 1900 and 2005. Explain the Impact This Change Has Made on Our Lives and Why It Is an Important Change.163893 Words   |  656 PagesIN TR OD UC TIO N Michael Adas B y any of the customary measures we deploy to demarcate historical epochs, the twentieth century does not appear to be a very coherent unit. The beginnings and ends of what we choose to call centuries are almost invariably years of little significance. But there is little agreement over when the twentieth century c.e. arrived, and there were several points both before the year 2000 (the collapse of the Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany, the surge