The first International Banana Conference (IBC1) was held in Brussels in May 1998. It brought together most of the major stakeholders (governments, companies, civil society organisations and research scientists) to debate what was happening in the banana world.  The conference was held in the full heat of the banana “trade wars” of the 1990s. Despite the difficult context, where some players saw others as “enemies”, there was virtual unanimity that environmental and social conditions were unacceptable. Most actors in the chain agreed on the need to find solutions as a matter of urgency. The organisers of IBC1 produced an International Banana Charter which helped to provide a framework for civil society action after the first conference.

In the period between the first and second international conference, most of the big companies instituted or signed up to a series of voluntary standards. Within a short space of time, they reported certification of increasing proportions of their plantations or those of their suppliers. Private audit companies – some of them large multinationals themselves - quickly jumped in to try  and fulfil a need for credible external verifiction of the claims beng made to increasingly demanding supermarket buyers.

The second International Banana Conference (IBC2) was also held in Brussels in April 2005. It brought together the same range of stakeholders as IBC1 with the important addition of a number of representatives of European supermarket chains.  Participants from all the way along the banana chain expressed deep concern about the newly emerged power of the global and multinational retailers to determine prices from the top back down the supply chain, in some cases in direct contradiction with their own aspirations to guarantee decent conditions in the countries from which they buy. 

Far from an improvement in real socio-economic conditions on the ground in the 7 years between the two IBCs, the industry has found itself facing a worsening of conditions in the majority of producer countries. Far from contributing to poverty alleviation, the trends in the global banana economy are leading to further impoverishment. Part of the explanation is the lowering of prices achieved by supermarkets’ use of concentrated buyer power and their increasingly dominant share of profits along the chain; another contributing factor is the increasing liberalisation of the world's main managed banana market (under pressure from various challenges brought to the WTO). Evidence was also presented at the conference that voluntary/private standards initiatives were often ignored by producers on the ground - sometimes for lack of resources to invest in improvements - and that certification was frequently granted inappropriately.

IBC2 adopted a  “Participant Declaration” calling for, among other things, the establishment of a permanent multi-stakeholder banana forum, some form of regulation to limit the impacts of supermarket “buyer power” and for the enforcement in practice of labour legislation, health, safety and environment measures. A “Declaration by the Organisers” – COLSIBA, WINFA, IUF, US/LEAP and EUROBAN – was also issued at the start of the conference.The papers for the conference and both Declarations can be found atthe IBC2 website