Background

In the summer of 1999, nearly a decade after it was first used by environmental activists, the term “greenwash” entered the Concise Oxford Dictionary, defined as: “disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image”.³

The first report on “greenwashing” gave the following examples as illustration: “A leader in ozone destruction takes credit for being a leader in ozone protection. A giant oil company professes to take a ‘precautionary approach’ to global warming…Another giant multinational cuts timber from virgin rainforest, replaces it with monoculture plantations and calls the project ‘sustainable forest development’”.⁴

In the decades since, greenwashing has been employed by most polluting or controversial industries, including oil, chemicals, and nuclear energy.² The tobacco industry has historically greenwashed its reputation and products through programmes such as beach clean-ups,⁵marketing of new products as “eco-friendly”⁶ and funding environmental and disaster-relief organisations,⁷ especially in low and middle income countries (LMICs), as the examples below illustrate. As consumers have grown to care more about corporate environmental performance, and choose more sustainable products,⁸ corporations including the tobacco industry have made environmental sustainability an integral pillar of their corporate social responsibility (CSR)/corporate social investment (CSI) strategies.

• More information on CSR as a tobacco industry tactic can be found on our page CSR Strategy.

From the early 2000s, the industry started pushing its CSR and greenwashing message. For example, in the introduction to British American Tobacco (BAT)’s “Social Report” in 2002/2003, the company Chairman, Sir Martin Broughton, said “Corporate social responsibility is integral to our approach to the management of our businesses globally”.⁹¹⁰ Critics were quick to point out the dichotomy and hypocrisy of this statement. A report by ASH, Christian Aid and Friends of the Earth argued that “British American Tobacco, while trying hard to convince shareholders and government otherwise, flies the flag for corporate social irresponsibility”. If nothing else, the report argued, BAT’s cigarette’s “kill smokers”.¹¹ Since 2009, BAT has published annual “Sustainability Reports” on its website.¹²

In an investor presentation in March 2020, BAT executives highlighted the importance of sustainability and sustainable messaging to consumers. The presentation detailed how BAT plans to put sustainability “front and centre”, including the targets of achieving carbon neutrality and 50 million non-combustible consumers by 2030 (Image 1). Sustainability appears to be a key part of BAT’s 2020 rebranding, which saw the company tagline change to “BAT: A Better Tomorrow”, accompanied by a new logo and rainbow-themed website. “Sustainability” also appears as one of the five featured headers on the top menu bar (Image 2).

• For more information on how BAT’s rebranding fits into its broader product strategy, see our page on Newer Nicotine and Tobacco Products: British American Tobacco.

Since the 1950s, when the connection between smoking and negative health effects was first made, tobacco companies have made significant investments in CSR campaigns. They have also used environmental impact disclosure processes and sustainability awards from external bodies to try to create a sense of legitimacy and present their industry as socially and environmentally friendly. However, tobacco companies have maintained the same harmful framing and production practices. Tobacco companies save considerable amounts of money by not having to pay the full cost of the environmental impact of tobacco cultivation, product manufacturing or cleaning up post-consumer waste. The amount of money companies make while using harmful practices involved in their supply chain, such as child labour and deforestation, dwarfs the amount they spend on sustainability CSR projects.¹⁵

A 2013 collaborative study between TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) for Business, hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme, and TruCost (the risk assessor arm of S&P Global) found that if major industries were held financially accountable for their currently unaccounted, environmental impacts, they would not be profitable.¹⁶¹⁷

• See our pages on Tobacco and the Environment and Tobacco Farming for more information on the harms to global and community environments of tobacco production

In addition to avoiding full financial responsibility for the environmental impact of their business, tobacco companies are able to enhance their reputations and minimise harms through existing environmental impact disclosure organisations and practices.

Environmental impact disclosure

Transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) are eager to position themselves as responsible corporations who care about the environmental sustainability of their products. Philip Morris International (PMI) and British American Tobacco (BAT), for example, both state that reducing the environmental impact of their operations is a key part of their visions for corporate sustainability.⁵¹⁸ Company sustainability reports feature awards and recognitions from organisations such as the Carbon Disclosure Project and Alliance for Water Stewardship in places of prominence.⁵¹⁸⁷¹⁹ All of the ‘big four’ TTCs (BAT, PMI, Japan Tobacco International and Imperial Brands) and Altria have been rated “A”, the highest possible rating, across various indices by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a not-for-profit independent index since 2003, for climate change, water, or forests.¹⁵²⁰ Tobacco companies have also been included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI), which ranks top-performing companies across industries by sustainability performance.²¹

Problem of legitimation

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), and other environmental rankings, featured prominently in the 2018 sustainability reports of each of the ‘big four’ tobacco companies.¹⁸⁵⁷²² Until it was expelled in September 2017, the tobacco industry also participated in the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), a voluntary sustainability pact to encourage sustainable business practices and reporting.²³ In 2016, for the last UNGC at which the tobacco industry was allowed to participate, Philip Morris International (PMI) authored a brief entitled “Communication on Progress”. The brief, as Image 3 illustrates, minimized the amount of water needed to produce tobacco by comparing it with the amounts necessary to produce tea or chocolate, per weight of finished product.²⁴

As the World Health Organization (WHO) noted, “PMI’s comparison attempts to put tobacco on par with these other products, ignoring the differentiator that these other products do not kill one in two of their daily users, as tobacco does”.²⁵ The CDP draws a similar conclusion in its reports on corporate environmental disclosure: “industries tend to deemphasise severity of own transgressions and disagree over what constitutes a ‘significant environmental health’ issue.”²⁶

Participation in the CDP, DJSI, and UN Global Compact (UNGP) may lead to companies disclosing more environmental information, but it also supports the legitimisation of the tobacco industry, allowing companies “to be seen more as ‘partners’ in public health and environmental sustainability than their deserved reputation as sullying both”.¹⁷ The public and investors may see inclusion on sustainability leader boards as endorsements of companies’ environmental credentials.¹⁵

Mandated reporting by governments can limit the opportunity for “trading data for legitimacy”.¹⁷ In Brazil and Canada, for example, tobacco companies are required to disclose manufacturing practices, product ingredients, toxic constituents and toxic emissions to national health services. In Brazil, the National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA) has the power to impose fines on companies that are not in compliance with tobacco control regulations.²⁷

Problem of voluntary standards

Because environmental impact disclosure is generally voluntary, companies can set their own standards for disclosure. Voluntary disclosure results in environmental impact data that is vague, unclear and inconsistent in its coverage and methodologies.¹⁷ This creates several problems.

Firstly, there is no industry-wide standardised format that disclosed data must follow. This makes it difficult for researchers and external evaluators to track progress over time or make comparisons between companies. Though PMI, BAT and JTI all release yearly sustainability reports,⁵¹⁸⁷ Imperial Brands and the Altria Group only release short summaries on their websites and include minimal information on environmental impact in their annual reports.²²²⁸

Secondly, a lack of standards leads to the creation of new units of measurement that can obscure the true scale of environmental impact. By 2018, for example, tobacco companies reported environmental impact data in units known as “intensity”.¹⁷ “Intensity” refers to units environmental cost per net revenue (e.g. tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions per GBP£ million net revenue from smoked and vapour products).²² By reporting environmental costs in this way, tobacco companies are able to obscure year-on-year rise in resource consumption as product volume rises.¹⁷ For example, even as the environmental harm per cigarette decreases, the total volume of cigarettes produced rises, and therefore so does the total environmental impact.

Third, companies are free to set environmental goals to whatever level they like and choose to disclose on topics that portray their practices in the best light. In 2017, after BAT-owned leaf suppliers exceeded the company’s global target of 1.5kg chemicals per hectare , BAT announced it “would no longer have a global average target”.²⁹ It now discloses no data on the usage of agrochemicals in its leaf cultivation operations.¹⁸ This strategy also applies to external disclosure: BAT, JTI and Imperial Brands have all opted out of CDP Forestry reporting after receiving “F” ratings on disclosure and impact in 2017 (BAT,³⁰ JTI³¹) and 2019 (Imperial³²).

Finally, companies are not required to take responsibility for all environmental impacts associated with the life cycle of their products. Tobacco companies have long placed the responsibility for the disposal of cigarette butts on the shoulders of consumers and local government.³³ Through the CDP’s Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration, companies can encourage their suppliers to disclose their environmental impact data to CDP.³⁴ Tobacco companies have participated in this programme since 2007.¹⁵ PMI, BAT, JTI and Imperial Brands all appear on the CDP Supplier Engagement Leaderboard,²⁶ a fact which they all promote in their sustainability reports. However, these same companies do not always account for “Scope 3” emissions in their sustainability reporting.³⁵ Scope 3 emissions include “indirect” emissions from independent suppliers in the company’s supply chain, purchased goods and services and capital goods.¹⁷ Tobacco companies can thus exclude water used by contracted tobacco suppliers, for example, from their total reported water usages.

Sustainability corporate social responsibility programmes

Tobacco companies implement a variety of environment/sustainability-themed corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes across the world in order to enhance their corporate image. As with disclosure and sustainability awards, tobacco companies use CSR programmes around sustainability to pre-empt regulation and influence policymakers.³⁶³⁷ The cases below detail where tobacco companies have implemented CSR programmes on this topic and the organisations with which they collaborate in greenwashing efforts.

Global tobacco industry-funded programmes

On both a global and regional level, individual tobacco companies often fund the same organisations. The Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Growing (ECLT) Foundation was co-founded in 2000 by British American Tobacco (BAT) and its front group, the International Tobacco Growers’ Association (ITGA), in response to criticism over the incorporation of child labour in its leaf supply chain in Malawi and elsewhere.³⁸ All big four tobacco companies have since joined.³⁹ Until 2019, ECLT had a long-standing partnership contract with the International Labour Organisation (ILO). After pressure from tobacco control organisations, ILO allowed the contract to expire. Both BAT and Imperial Brands are also members of the Slave-Free Alliance (SFA), which is part of a UK-based charity, Hope for Justice.¹⁸⁴⁰ In its 2018 annual report, Imperial Brands stated it was a “founding member” of SFA and that SFA, alongside the ECLT Foundation, received the majority of its charitable contributions.⁴⁰

• For more information, visit our page on the ECLT Foundation.

Another industry-founded initiative is the Sustainable Tobacco Programme (STP). Launched in April 2016, the STP sought to provide a “single sustainability programme for the tobacco industry”.⁴¹ It is managed by independent supply chain consultant AB Sustain, a subsidiary of AB Agri.⁴²

Total LandCare (TLC) is another sustainability NGO popular with tobacco companies. Its mission is “to improve the livelihoods and standards of living of smallholder farm households across the region”.⁴³ Its funders include the Altria Group, PMI, BAT, Japan Tobacco and the ECLT Foundation as well as non-tobacco companies like Coca-Cola. TLC began receiving tobacco industry funding in 2001 from PMI and Philip Morris USA (now a member of the Altria Group).⁴³

From 2001 to 2014, BAT, PMI, Japan Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco spent a combined US$22 million on CSR projects through Total LandCare and ECLT targeting child labour and deforestation. Researchers calculated that this amount was roughly equivalent to 2% of the cost savings these companies derived from deforestation and the use of child labour.¹⁵ TLC has since partnered with international non-governmental organisations, including the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and international development agency USAID, as well as government bodies in southern Africa.⁴³ According to Dr Athena Ramos, public health disparities researcher at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, CSR programmes targeted at child labour “represent more of a public relations strategy than any real meaningful change in practice”.⁴⁴

These partnerships have at times simultaneously involved the tobacco industry and governments. From 2009 to 2014, for example, Imperial Tobacco (now Imperial Brands) funded a TLC project for the Government of Mozambique.⁴⁵ Specific examples of the programmes TLC has implemented with tobacco industry funding are detailed below.

Country-level programmes

Transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) also fund specific country- or community-level programmes. Below are examples of CSR programmes implemented by TTCs from countries across the globe, alongside information on in-country tobacco industry activity.

Bangladesh

In 1980, British American Tobacco Bangladesh’s (BATB) launched the afforestation project Bonayan, in collaboration with the Ministry of Forest and Environment, Government of Bangladesh. BATB reported that it had distributed 5 million saplings in 2019.⁴⁶⁴⁷ BATB also runs a project, launched in 2009, entitled Probaho, to provide safe drinking water.⁴⁷ In 2021, BATB expanded the project to the remote areas of Bandarban, launching in the Langi Para area. The Minister for Hill Tracts Bir Bahadur Ushaising MP inaugurated the local 5,000-liter capacity clean water plant, alongside a representative from BATB.⁴⁸

The company has received awards for this work, including from the Prime Minister of Bangladesh.⁴⁹⁵⁰ In 2021, for example,  it received award in the Asia Corporate Excellence and Sustainability Awards,⁵¹ and in 2022 another from the Social Enterprise Research Academy.⁵² BATB has stated that they plan to continue working with the government.⁵³

Bangladesh is the 12^th largest tobacco producer in the world,⁵⁴ due, in part, to BAT’s investments in the 1970s.⁵⁵ Over 45,000 hectares of land are used for tobacco cultivation in the country.⁵⁶ Tobacco farmers are being encouraged to continue to expand cultivation, thanks to incentives like loans and buy back guarantees from tobacco companies.⁵⁴

Tobacco curing uses firewood sourced from local community forests. This leads to widespread deforestation throughout the world. In Bangladesh, an estimated 170,000 individual trees are logged for this purpose each season, in the districts of Bandarban and Cox’s Bazar alone.⁵⁶ In the district of Kushtia, deforestation has meant that local forests can no longer supply the firewood needed for curing plants. Farmers have to rely on imported straw and jute instead.⁵⁷ Tobacco cultivation also leads to water contamination due to the use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers, as well as soil contamination and depletion of nutrients. A 2020 study by Hussain et al found that, in Bangladesh, levels of water and soil contamination were higher for bodies of water next to tobacco cultivating land.⁵⁴

Brazil

Souza Cruz, British American Tobacco (BAT)’s Brazilian subsidiary, has partnered with the National Service of Rural Learning (SENAR) since 1999 to implement the “Growing Up Right” programme intended to minimise the risk of child labour.¹⁸ Since 2011, BAT has also been involved with the Brazilian Tobacco Growers Association, the Brazilian Institute of Environment and the Ministry of the Environment for the preservation of forest on the south coast of the country.¹⁹

In Brazil, where criticism of the soybean industry for its contribution to deforestation has led to global outcry, tobacco farming ranks alongside soybeans and wheat as one of the leading causes of vegetation loss.⁵⁸ In the south of the country, British American Tobacco’s biggest operational area in the world, tobacco shares responsibility for the reduction of native forest cover to less than 2% of its original extent.⁵⁹ During the same period of escalation of industry forestation CSR programmes, the scale of destruction of forests actually increased in LMICs during the same period as escalating CSR promotion, providing an “entrée for the tobacco industry into civil society and CSR, thus avoiding direct responsibility for the environmental consequences of the industry” according to Professor Kelley Lee, widely cited Canadian global health scholar.⁵⁸

Canada

Unsmoke Canada Cleanups is an initiative which raises awareness of cigarette butt waste and organises litter clean-ups. Launched in September 2020, this grant-giving programme operates through a partnership between the national nonprofit The Great Outdoors Fund⁶⁰ and Unsmoke Canada, an initiative of Rothmans, Benson & Hedges Inc., a Philip Morris International subsidiary.⁶¹⁶² KAB has attracted criticism for being a corporate greenwashing front group.⁶³

China

In 2020, the China National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC), donated CNY 40 million (US$ 6.3 million) to support the development of a water supply system in the Yonghe County Shanxi Province of China, with a capacity of 5,000 cubic meters of clean water per day.⁶⁴.

China produces 40% of the world’s tobacco as well as holding nearly one-third of the world’s smokers. As the single largest tobacco producer in the world, the China National Tobacco Corporation produces as many as 2.5 trillion cigarettes per year.⁶⁵ Tobacco growing and the manufacturing of cigarettes are extremely water-intensive activities.A 2018 study estimated that the water footprint of a single cigarette is around 3.7 litres.⁶⁶ CNTC could be using as much as 9.25 trillion litres of water for cigarette production.

India

Imperial Brands funds education, sanitation and health through its leaf partnership with Alliance One in the Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh, including environmental education through PROTECT, a local NGO, and an after-school programme, which Imperial said was intended to “minimize the risk of child labour”.⁶⁷

Individual interventions on a community level do not address the structural, ecological and financial harms that tobacco cultivation causes to local communities. In India, where tobacco cultivation causes the loss of 45 kg of topsoil per acre cultivated per year, a government report called mono-cropped tobacco “the most erosive crop”, beating out cotton (7.5 kg), grapes (11 kg) and groundnut (12.5) (Reddy & Gupta, 2001).⁶⁸ Child labour in the tobacco industry has also been documented in Andhra Pradesh as well as across the country.⁶⁹ According to Dr Ramos, tobacco industry CSR programmes that propose to address child labour “represent more of a public relations strategy than any real meaningful change in practice” and disincentivise external monitoring efforts, especially in LMICs.⁴⁴

Indonesia

Sampoerna, PMI’s Indonesian subsidiary, operates a wide number of environmentally-focussed CSR programmes under its “Sampoerna untuk Indonesia” scheme. These include a two-year (2018-2020) production sludge waste to fertiliser research project with Insitut Peranian Bogor (IPB) and Indonesian Agricultural Department in East Java (BPTP). A second major programme is the “Hope Project”, which re-purposes factory materials like pallets for its “adult consumer events” and forms a key part of Sampoerna’s marketing strategy. The company stated that: “In 2018, this project successfully recycled 52 tons worth of materials while simultaneously reducing 20% in marketing costs”.⁷⁰ Sampoerna has won national and international awards for these programmes, such as the Green Company Performance Rating Program from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry in 2022,⁷¹, a Global CSR Award and a Global Good Governance Award in 2021.⁷²

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that in the course of a 2014-2015 study on child labour in Indonesian tobacco fields, nearly half of all children interviewed reported symptoms consistent with acute nicotine poisoning. HRW concluded that “companies’ human rights due diligence practices were not sufficient to eliminate hazardous child labor in the supply chain” and therefore tobacco companies “risk contributing to the use of, and benefitting from, hazardous child labor”.⁷³ Both BAT and PMI have major operations in this area: PT Bentoel Internasional Investama (Bentoel) and PT Hanjaya Mandala Sampoerna Tbk (Sampoerna), respectively.⁷⁴

Malawi

From 2001 to at least 2013, Total LandCare (TLC) received millions of dollars of funding from the tobacco industry and ECLT Foundation for forestry,⁷⁵⁷⁶ crop diversification⁷⁷⁷⁸ and child labour⁷⁹⁸⁰ projects in Malawi.

Malawi and Mozambique are “strategic leaf sourcing locations” for Imperial Brands in Africa. In Malawi, Imperial has been piloted many sustainability initiatives across areas including water conservation,⁴⁰⁸¹⁸² afforestation,⁸³ combatting soil erosion,⁸⁴ and crop diversification.⁸⁵

In 2018, PMI signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Palladium, the in-country implementer of USAID’s Feed the Future Malawi Agricultural Diversification project,⁸⁶ to implement “select initiatives” in Malawi.⁵ It is unclear whether this partnership includes funding. Palladium is also funded by the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, a foundation funded solely by PMI. Read more on our page on the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World Grantees.

Tobacco industry harms to the environment and to smallholder farmer communities are well-documented in Malawi. Estimates have placed responsibility for 70% of national deforestation in Malawi on the shoulders of the tobacco industry, making it the main cause of deforestation in the country.⁸⁷ In 2015, Malawi devoted 5% of its agricultural land to farming tobacco, the highest proportion in the world, but also had the fourth fastest deforestation rate in the world.⁸⁸ BAT is also being sued by the British legal firm, Leigh Day, for deriving “unjust enrichment” from underpayment and forced/child labour in tobacco farming operations in Malawi. Although BAT and Imperial Brands are named on the lawsuit filed on behalf of tenant farmers in Malawi, this case could protect children and serve as legal precedent to force tobacco supply chain reform, according to Margaret Wurth, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.⁸⁹⁹⁰

Mexico

Philip Morris International (PMI) runs an initiative in Mexico which involves collecting lighters and other litter to prevent fires. It also helps to promote “smoke-free” messaging and its heated tobacco product, IQOS. Participants collect used lighters and take them to PMI stores and other “strategic points.”⁹¹

Mozambique

From 2009 to 2014, TLC was one of a several organisations implementing the government initiative “Promoting Rural Investment in Smallholder Enterprises” (PRISE) in Mozambique. This project was majority funded by Imperial Tobacco (now Imperial Brands).⁴⁵

Food insecurity has been tied to tobacco cultivation in Mozambique. In 2019, the Global Hunger Index rated the situation in Mozambique as “serious”: 27.9% of the population was undernourished. Tobacco farming takes arable land away from food crops, depletes soil nutrients and contaminates local water supplies, further harming staple crop production. This in turn further diminishes food security and contributes to malnutrition in communities.⁹²⁹³

New Zealand

British American Tobacco New Zealand (BATNZ) provides funding to Keep New Zealand Beautiful for its anti-littering education programmes.¹⁸

More than six million cigarette butts are discarded in the environment in New Zealand each year. Researchers have called initiatives that encourage individual-level interventions to address tobacco product waste largely ineffective: “Fundamentally, these ’corporate social responsibility’ initiatives position butt disposal as a smokers’ problem, reinforce negative stereotypes of smokers, and relocating responsibility away from tobacco companies”.⁹⁴

Portugal

PMI has funded ABAE’s “#Breakthehabit” anti-littering education campaign since 2018 in Portugal.⁵ PMI is not, however, listed as a partner on the organisation’s website.⁹⁵ Beach clean-up initiatives sponsored by tobacco industry in the United States, for example, have attracted criticism for contributing to greenwashing.⁶³

Cigarette filters are commonly the most collected item on beach clean-ups. Worldwide, an estimated 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are deposited each year.⁹⁶ The industry has consistently and disingenuously marketed cigarette filters as “biodegradable”, with the explicit aim of pre-empting environmental legislation.⁹⁷

Pakistan

In 2021, BAT subsidiary Pakistan Tobacco Company (PTC) donated 500,000 seed balls to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Forest Department for the governmental afforestation project “Ten Billion Trees”.⁹⁸ In 2022, PTC ran a project comprising free distribution of saplings of indigenous species.⁹⁹ The company received awards for these initiatives, including for Clean Energy Transition, Responsible Investment, Community Impact and Environment –Carbon footprint reduction.¹⁰⁰

To produce cigarettes, raw tobacco is cured using wood for fuel. Farmers either obtain this wood from the market, or by cutting down local and indigenous trees. One study observed 4,500 tobacco-curing kilns in just one tobacco-growing village, servicing around 11,000 acres of land under tobacco cultivation. Combined, these kilns burn about 6,300 tons of fuel wood each curing cycle.¹⁰¹ In 2020, around 125,500 acres (50,800 hectares) of land in Pakistan was devoted to tobacco growing.¹⁰²

For World Cleanup Day 2022, Philip Morris (Pakistan) Limited (PMPKL) launched a litter clean-up project titled #MissionCleanerPakistan, including a litter pick on Clifton Beach, Sea View, Karachi, volunteers collected over 3300 kilograms (3.3 tonnes) of trash for this project.¹⁰³ PMPKL has won awards for its CSR activities in Pakistan, including in “Employee Volunteerism” and “Waste Management/Recycling”¹⁰⁴ and “Green Energy Initiatives”.¹⁰³¹⁰⁵

After the Sri Lankan government publicly announced its intention to ban tobacco cultivation by 2020, Ceylon Tobacco Company (CTC) engaged in spreading misleading information about the contribution of tobacco cultivation to sustainable development, attempted to interfere in the policymaking process, organised a Buddhist ritual against the ban and promoted its SADP programme through media tours.¹⁰⁶

Tanzania

The JT Group (JTI parent company) partnered with TLC from 2007 to 2014 to fund the Community Reforestation and Support Program in Tanzania and Malawi.¹⁰⁷

Loss of biodiversity due to tobacco cultivation deforestation-driven habitat fragmentation is well-documented in Tanzania. Excessive wood use during tobacco curing and uncontrolled land clearing are important factors leading to deforestation and desertification. The tobacco industry has a history of funding and promoting afforestation programmes in order to distract and refute research that shows the negative effects of tobacco cultivation on forest cover, biodiversity, soil erosion and ground water retention.¹⁰⁸

United Kingdom

In January 2021, Philip Morris Limited entered a multi-year agreement with the non-for-profit, Clean Up Britain (CLUB) to “tackle cigarette butt litter”. Within this voluntary agreement, CLUB acts as independent administrator for a PMI-funded project. ¹⁰⁹ PMI reportedly paid a “seven-figure sum” to fund the project, which consists in applying “emotional” pressure on smokers caught littering cigarette ends.¹¹⁰ The campaign was launched in January 2022 in Bristol, under the title “Get Your Butt Off Our Streets”, to be later rolled out across Britain.¹¹¹ An estimated 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are discarded every years in the environment, making them the most littered item on Earth.⁹⁶ Post-consumer waste, largely in the form of discarded cigarette butts, and its disposal, is however only the last step of life-cycle of a cigarette. Each step of the tobacco supply chain, from agriculture to distribution, contributes substantially to climate change and environmental degradation.

United States 

Altria, Reynolds American International (BAT) and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company (BAT) all provide funding for the Cigarette Litter Prevention Programme run by Keep America Beautiful (KAB).¹¹². The Cumberland Plateau Stewardship Fund, of which Altria is a member along with US government departments, has provided a total of US$3.1 million to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to fund conservation programmes in the US Cumberland Plateau, which spans parts of eastern Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia, from 2017-2019.^113114115 RAI and Altria are also both members of the Supply Chain Resource Cooperative hosted at North Carolina State University (NC State).¹⁸²⁸ The Cumberland Plateau is located in key tobacco growing states. A 2013 investigation by Human Rights Watch revealed that, of 133 children interviewed in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, where over 90% of tobacco grown in the US is cultivated, 66% reported symptoms consistent with acute nicotine poisoning. At least eight major cigarette manufacturers, including BAT, PMI, Altria, Imperial Brands, JTI and China National Tobacco Company all sourced tobacco leaf from the US at the time.¹¹⁶

Philippines

In 2019, PMFTC, the Philippine affiliate of PMI, donated 30 waste bins to the Armed forces at camp Servillano Aquino, Tarclac City.Tobacco accounts for 2 million tons of solid waste worldwide, every year.⁹⁶

Tobacco industry charitable donations

Charitable donations are a key part of tobacco industry CSR strategy Though companies are not always obliged to disclose the amounts and destinations of their charitable donations, both Philip Morris International and the Altria Group publish information on their funding of third-party organisations online.¹¹⁷¹¹⁸

The tobacco industry also commonly donates to disaster relief efforts where they operate, including: Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti,¹¹⁷ Indonesia,^7119117 Italy, Japan, Malaysia,¹¹⁷ Mexico,⁷¹¹⁷ Mozambique,¹²⁰ the Philippines,⁷¹¹⁷ Romania, Senegal and Serbia.¹¹⁷

These lists are not comprehensive. Evidence of funding for sustainability programmes in Australia, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Japan, South Africa, South Korea and Ukraine is also given in PMI’s charitable donations disclosure for 2014-2018.¹¹⁷

In the United States, the Altria Group has funded various environmental sustainability organisations. Donations disclosed in 2018 and 2019 appear in the table below.

Co-option of “sustainability”

In sustainability reports, tobacco companies use “sustainability” as a rhetorical strategy to align themselves with both environmental sustainability and sustainable development. All major TTCs are at least rhetorically supportive of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); examples from 2018 and 2019 tobacco company sustainability reports can be seen in Image 4.

For example, in the company’s 2016 sustainability report, BAT CEO (at the time) Nicandro Durante said there was a “clear alignment between the SDGs and our own sustainability priorities”.²⁹ However, since 2017, WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which prevents the tobacco industry from having influence on health policy, has been explicitly included in SDG 3 (Human Health) through Target 3A: “Strengthen the implementation of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in all countries, as appropriate”.¹²³ Notably, none of these reports mention the incorporation of the WHO FCTC into the SDGs as part of Target 3.

In Highjacking the SDGs? The Private Sector and the Sustainable Development Goals, German tobacco control expert Laura Graen argued that references to the SDGs form “part of a broader, multi-layered strategy with the aim of stopping tobacco control measures such as taxation, advertising bans or plain packaging”.²³ An internal Philip Morris International (PMI) document, leaked to Reuters in 2017, revealed that the potential inclusion of additional tobacco control measures in the SDGs were seen by PMI as an “alarming development” because the company feared “that it could lead to the creation of another international body at the UN that would deal specifically with tobacco issues”.¹²⁴

Tobacco companies take advantage of conflicting goals (e.g. economy and health) within SDGs. In particular, tobacco companies point to SDG 17 (on Public-Private Engagement) to justify and advocate for tobacco industry involvement in government, which is prohibited by Article 5.3 of the FCTC.¹⁸⁵²²⁷ The industry has formed relationships with other government departments after being excluded from health through “sustainable development” partnerships and programmes: BAT Bangladesh has partnered with the Bangladeshi Department for Agricultural Extension to implement sustainability CSR projects.¹²⁵ The industry uses SDGs to further circumvent regulation and perpetuate its harmful business practices, undermining sustainable development rather than helping it.²³

• For more detail on how the tobacco industry aligns itself with sustainable development in smallholder farmer communities, read our page on Tobacco Farming.

Impact on regulation

On one hand, encouraging companies to disclose more information on the environmental impact of their products (through their life cycle and supply chains) can be seen as increasing transparency and supporting improvement of inefficient and harmful practices. On the other hand, increasing disclosure can also be seen as a form of CSR self-promotion. Academic research on governance suggests that these “proactive moves by the industry to stave off regulation that would require them to adhere to externally wrought environmental standards and practices”.¹²⁶

Voluntary disclosure and other “ethical and green business” practices have been criticised as CSR and public relations campaigns designed to rehabilitate corporate image and increase product sales without addressing the fundamental changes necessary to core business practices.^15127128 An additional challenge is that regulations differ by location. Tobacco companies have also historically taken advantage of differing regulation to avoid bearing the weight of corporate responsibility for their products. This includes avoiding and evading tax as well as environmental regulations.¹²⁹¹³⁰

For example, in March 2016, BAT announced it would close a cigarette manufacturing plant in Malaysia due to the government’s implementation of an increased excise tax and consideration of plain packaging.¹³¹ However, it had really made plans to open up another manufacturing plant in southern Vietnam, well before the excise taxes or discussions on plain packaging commenced.¹³²

The tactic of moving production facilities has been used by tobacco companies around the world, often when governments have sought to introduce tobacco control regulations. For example, when faced with the prospect of increased taxes and government’ support for tobacco control, Philip Morris International has closed, or threatened to close, manufacturing plants in Argentina.¹³³¹³⁴ and Colombia.¹³⁵ BAT used the same tactic in Chile in 2015.¹³⁶

Industry-funded sustainability programmes pre-empt criticism and make it difficult to advocate for external regulation. When commenting on the efficacy and intent of tobacco industry reforestation schemes, prominent tobacco control researchers Dr Marty Otañez and Dr Stanton Glantz said that industry-funded programmes facilitate an environment where government officials LMICs who lack revenues to fund their own initiatives are hesitant to criticise tobacco industry schemes or refuse funding. Additionally, “association with social and environmental responsibility may weaken opposition from public health and civil society groups to industry interference in tobacco control policy by making it politically more difficult to criticize tobacco companies”.¹⁵

The tobacco industry has also moved to distance itself from tobacco cultivation through establishing “leaf partnerships” with third-party companies. Instead of direct contracts with farmers, this has had the effect of transferring responsibility for monitoring and addressing problems from tobacco companies to leaf companies, while continuing to reap the benefits of cheap leaf products and escaping culpability for harmful practices. Especially in LMICs, where there may be less infrastructure to support monitoring and corporate financial contributions may have a greater impact, tobacco companies can use these kinds of initiatives to increase political support and weaken opposition.⁴⁴

The WHO’s 2017 report on the environmental harms of tobacco says that this practice of evading tax and regulation “epitomizes how, in many instances, when citizens petition for better environmental practices or more socially responsible business conduct, transnational tobacco companies simply uproot their operations and ignore the long-term environmental damage that they have caused, and take them to a new location where they can repeat the environmental damage”.⁸⁷ When companies relocate away from taxation and regulation, they impoverish already cash-strapped central governments. The current and historical tax evasion and anti-tax lobbying of tobacco companies makes it all the more difficult for LMICs with developing economies to devise and implement effective environmental regulatory regimes.

It its 2017 report, WHO recommended that steps to limit greenwashing include legislating at international and local levels to require companies meet specific disclosure requirements for material emissions, water usage, waste disposal, chemical use, child labour and other targets. It is particularly important that these regulations apply equally across countries; tobacco companies have a history of moving their operations to avoid scrutiny and environmental regulations.⁸⁷ The evaluation of disclosed data should be performed by independent evaluators, such as government, who do not require or accept payment from companies for this service.¹⁷ The WHO also recommends that countries ban tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship (TAPS) that include bans on advertising CSR programmes, in accordance with the FCTC.

Researchers and international non-governmental organisations, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and European Union (EU), have suggested that implementing and strengthening existing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes to make producers responsible for the physical and financial costs of disposing of waste of post-consumer products.¹³⁷¹³⁸ EPR will be implemented in the EU, with increasing targets for recycling, prevention and use from 2025 to 2035.¹³⁹ The “Single Use Plastics Directive” will include cellulose acetate products, including cigarette filters, which do not biodegrade.³³

Tobacco Tactics Resources

• Tobacco and the Environment
• Tobacco Farming
• ECLT Foundation
• CSR Strategy
• United Nations Global Compact (UNGC)

Relevant Links

• BAT sustainability webpage
• PMI sustainability webpage
• JTI sustainability webpage
• Altria Group sustainability webpage
• Imperial Brands sustainability webpage

TCRG Research

• J. Hoek, P. Gendall, M. Blank, L. Robertson & L. Marsh, Butting out: an analysis of support for measures to address tobacco product waste, Tobacco Control, 2020;29:131-137, doi: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2019-054956
• B.K. Matthes & M. Zatoński, Addressing the tobacco epidemic as a sustainable development priority: the need for cross-disciplinary thinking, University of Bath Centre for Development Studies Blog, 31 May 2019
• B.K. Matthes & M. Zatoński, Tobacco control and sustainable development: shared challenges and future opportunities, J Health Inequal, 2019;5(1):71-79, doi:10.5114/jhi.2019.87840
• S. Ulucanlar, G.J. Fooks, A.B. Gilmore, The Policy Dystopia Model: An Interpretive Analysis of Tobacco Industry Political Activity, PLOS Medicine, 20 September 2016, doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002125
• A.B. Gilmore, G. Fooks, J. Drope, S.A. Bialous & R.R. Jackson, Exposing and Addressing Tobacco Industry Conduct in Low-Income and Middle-Income Countries, The Lancet, 2015;385(9972):1029 – 1043, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60312-9
• G. Fooks & A. Gilmore, Corporate Philanthropy, Political Influence, and Health Policy, PLoS ONE, 2013, 8(11):5, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0080864
• G. Fooks, A. Gilmore, J. Collin, C. Holden & K. Lee, The limits of corporate social responsibility: Techniques of neutralization, stakeholder management and political CSR, J Bus Ethics, 2013;112(2):283-299, doi: 10.1007/s10551-012-1250-5

References

The post Greenwashing appeared first on TobaccoTactics.

In reality, the ECLT Foundation is both funded and governed by tobacco companies, and is a vital part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy.

All four major Transnational Tobacco Companies (TTCs) have been part of ECLT’s board from its creation in 2000: British American Tobacco (BAT), Imperial Brands (IMB), Japan Tobacco International (JTI), and Philip Morris International (PMI). Other organisations that are, or have been, on the ECLT board include Swedish Match, Gallaher (now JTI), Scandinavian Tobacco and the International Tobacco Growers Association, as well as other national tobacco companies and tobacco growers.¹⁴²For a full list of current ECLT Board members, see the section below.

In 2001, the year after it was formed, ECLT reported income from members, the bulk of its income source, as CHF247,000 (approximately USD$247,000). Twenty years later, in 2021, its reported income had grown to USD $5,737,521, which came entirely from “donor contributions”.^143144145146 According to the ECLT’s internal regulations, organisations and companies represented on the Board “must commit themselves to a financial contribution in favor of the Foundation”.¹⁴⁷

ECLT states that its “sole purpose and mandate is to prevent and protect children from child labour wherever tobacco is grown”.¹⁴¹ It promotes itself, and its public-private partnerships (PPPs) with the United Nations (UN), as part of the solution to tackling child labour in low and middle-income countries.

History

The ECLT Foundation was set up in Geneva in September 2000 as part of a wider strategy by the major tobacco companies, particularly BAT, to protect their corporate reputations and position themselves as “socially responsible”.¹⁴⁸

Its establishment followed high profile exposés of child labour on tobacco farms in the late 1990s, notably in Malawi, and the adoption of International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 182 in June 1999, which outlawed the “worst forms of child labour”.¹⁴⁹

ECLT grew out of a joint agreement in 2000 between BAT and the tobacco industry front group the International Tobacco Growers Association (ITGA),¹⁵⁰ with The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF), to develop a programme of research and education aimed at eradicating child labour.¹⁵¹

BAT: “A Good Opportunity to Move to the Moral High Ground”

A peer-reviewed 2006 academic study on the ECLT Foundation’s pilot project in Malawi concluded, after analysing relevant BAT internal documents from 1998-2002, that the tobacco giant was using child labour projects as a means of enhancing its reputation. It argued that:

“rather than actively and responsibly working to solve the problem of child labour in growing tobacco, the company acted to co-opt the issue to present themselves over as a ‘socially responsible corporation’ by releasing a policy statement claiming the company’s commitment to end harmful child labour practices, holding a global child labour conference with trade unions and other key stakeholders, and contributing nominal sums of money for development projects largely unrelated to efforts to end child labour.”¹⁴⁸

The study, by Otañez et al, revealed how the IUF, ILO and International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) had commissioned a film that showed children as young as five working on tobacco farms in Malawi during the spring harvest in 1999. The idea was to put pressure on the companies and the Confederation of European Community Cigarette Manufacturers (CECCM, now Tobacco Europe) over its denials that child labour was occurring there. However, internal BAT documents released to the public through a litigation settlement in the United States and now online at the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents database show that IUF General Secretary Ron Oswald had promised that the film would not be anti-tobacco and “would be consigned to the archives” if the CECCM and companies cooperated and acknowledged the child labour problem in Malawi.¹⁵²¹⁴⁸

The IUF signed a joint declaration on child labour in June 1999 with the ITGA, witnessed by ILO Executive Director Kari Tapiola.¹⁵³ Correspondence that year between BAT and Hallmark, its UK public relations agency, showed a series of revised draft statements between IUF and ITGA. The final published version on the conference website¹⁵⁴ – drafted by Hallmark and BAT – notably dropped the IUF’s proposed inclusion of “respect for worker’s rights to freedom of association (as defined in ILO Convention 97)”.¹⁵⁵

In October 2000, BAT co-organised a conference in Nairobi, Kenya, with the IUF and ITGA, titled “Eliminating Child Labour: Establishing Best Practices in Tobacco Farming”.^156157158 According to the event brochure, the ILO’s Kari Tapiola was a keynote speaker, alongside two BAT staff, the ITGA’s president and the IUF’s Ron Oswald.¹⁵⁶¹⁵⁹ A BAT executive later deemed the conference “a huge success” in countering rising international concern among the UN, OECD, ILO and EU over human rights and labour standards – an agenda BAT described as being pushed by NGOs and other stakeholders “who seemed to be winning”. BAT’s international development affairs manager Shabanji Opukah wrote on 9 November 2000:

“Clearly, the successful launch of the ECLT has given us an excellent and rare opportunity to engage with our stakeholders on major platforms around what are today amongst some of the high profile and contentious global issues affecting reputation of international business.”

adding that:

“Our partnership with the IUF and ITGA gives us a good opportunity to move to the moral high ground on this particular issue and we would like to make use of it in line with the BAT CORA Consumer and Regulatory Affairs strategy for recognition as a responsible tobacco company. This strategy identifies corporate conduct and accountability as one of the six reputation management initiatives. Stakeholder engagement and communication is in this platform.”¹⁴⁸¹⁶⁰

According to the minutes of an October 2001 Tobacco Workers Trade Group Meeting at which ECLT’s first Executive Director Marc Hofstetter and project manager Alain Berthoud introduced themselves, the IUF was to hold the rotating presidency of the ECLT Foundation for the first two years. Ron Oswald was its first president.¹⁶¹

The IUF is no longer a board member of the ECLT Foundation. An ILO document on its tobacco industry partnerships in 2017 stated:

“the IUF served as ECLT’s President until 2013, when it withdrew, citing the viability and success of the Foundation as reasons for its decision to direct its capacity devoted to eliminating child labour elsewhere”.¹⁶²

In explaining their decision to withdraw, the IUF also cited the time and resources needed to ensure “our totally uncompromising position that child labour should not be used in any form stay a core feature of the ECLT’s work”, given ECLT’s inclusion of “all major industry players” on its executive board.¹⁶³

Funding Agreements with the ILO

From 2002 until 2018, the ECLT Foundation had a Public-Private Partnership agreement with the International Labour Organization (ILO). The ILO acted as advisor to the Foundation’s board alongside Save the Children Switzerland.

In March 2017, the ILO disclosed that it had received more than US$5.3 million from ECLT since 2002, but did not provide details on how this funding had been spent.¹⁶²Its relationship with ECLT, beyond acting as an advisor and observer to ECLT’s board, included the following agreements:

• The first agreement between ILO and ECLT covered the period 2002 to 2010 and aimed to fund research on child labour practices in Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, East Africa, and specifically, to eliminate child labour in Tanzania.¹⁶⁴
• The second agreement, covering the period between 2011 and 2015, focused on child labour in Malawi.¹⁶⁴
• The third agreement from 2015 until June 2018 was aimed at reducing child labour practices in Malawi, Uganda and Tanzania, promoting dialogue among tobacco growers’ organisations, and developing advice on hazardous tobacco farming work.¹⁶²

Following sustained pressure from the World Health Organization and more than 100 global groups, the ILO finally announced in November 2018 that it would stop accepting tobacco industry funding for its projects and would also not renew ECLT’s contract, which had expired in June of that year.¹⁶⁵¹⁶⁶

However, the ILO remains listed as “non-executive advisor” to the ECLT Board, as of 2022.¹⁴⁴¹⁶⁷

Membership of the UN Global Compact

As of June 2022, the ECLT Foundation remains a member of the Child Labour Platform of the voluntary UN Global Compact (UNGC) Human Rights and Labour Working Group – for which the ILO provides the secretariat. It became a member in 2015.¹⁶⁸

This is despite the UNGC’s decision in 2017 to permanently sever ties with tobacco companies, following the adoption of a breakthrough United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) resolution (E/2017/L.21) that encouraged UN agencies to develop policies to prevent tobacco industry interference.¹⁶⁹

The UNGC Integrity policy review, published in October 2017, stated:

“the UN Global Compact will de-list participating companies which fall under the tobacco exclusion. This new exclusionary criterion is strictly limited to companies that produce and/or manufacture tobacco or are part of a joint venture, have a subsidiary or affiliate stake in a company that produces and/or manufactures tobacco.”¹⁷⁰

Relationship with UNICEF

From 2003 to 2005, ECLT funded a programme to prevent child labour in tobacco growing in the Philippines, in which UNICEF acted as an advisor.¹⁷¹

In a study published in the journal Paediatrics on the tobacco industry and children’s rights, the authors described ECLT as one of several front groups used by the industry to successfully engage with UNICEF:

“After UNICEF’s corporate engagement guidelines were loosened in 2003, tobacco companies successfully engaged with UNICEF directly and via front groups, including the Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Growing Foundation. This was part of an overall tobacco industry strategy to improve its corporate image, infiltrate the United Nations, and weaken global tobacco-control efforts.”¹⁷²

The ECLT Foundation rejected these allegations as “baseless” and “false”.¹⁷³

UNICEF also published a rebuttal, in which it stated that it had not worked on ECLT projects in an advisory capacity, that its only interactions with the Foundation had been limited to “sharing information and increasing awareness about child rights issues related to the industry’s supply chain,” and that it had not received tobacco industry funding.¹⁷⁴

Questionable impact on child labour practices

After almost two decades of work by the ECLT Foundation, child labour remains entrenched in many tobacco-growing regions.

ECLT has pointed to its success in removing over 195,000 children from tobacco farms since 2011 and sending over 32,000 to school and vocational training.¹⁷⁵However, critics of the Foundation and its tobacco industry members argue that it has done little to redress or target the structural issues afflicting these regions, instead publicising the positive, and often individually-focused, stories.¹⁷¹

In 2018, a series of Guardian investigations revealed “rampant” child labour in Indonesia, Malawi, Mexico and the United States.^{176177178179180181} The ILO similarly noted in 2017 that “surveys indicate that child labour is rampant in impoverished tobacco-growing communities”.¹⁶² Following the Guardian investigations, a legal claim was launched in the UK in December 2020 against BAT and Imperial Brands, alleging they profited from child labour in Malawi.¹⁸²

• For more information on Child Labour in Tobacco growing, see our page CSR: Child Labour

Professor Marty Otañez, an anthropologist from the University of Colorado, and lead author of the previously mentioned 2006 study on BAT and ECLT in Malawi, is a long-standing observer of tobacco farming in that country. Otañez told The Guardian that welfare projects were “pushing out goodwill on behalf of tobacco companies to address some of the problems but avoid the harder issues of leaf prices and living and earnings”.¹⁷⁶ Tenant farmers on tobacco estates in Malawi, for example, earn just US$224 a year.¹⁷⁸

In September 2017, the Malawi tobacco farmers’ union TOAWUM wrote “on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Malawi farmers” to the ILO’s Governing Body, asking it to ban public-private partnerships with the tobacco industry at its upcoming 331st meeting. In its letter, TOAWUM stated that initiatives such as the ECLT Foundation,

“insufficiently address root causes of tobacco-related child labour, which is endemic poverty among tobacco farmers. That poverty is exacerbated by contracting schemes developed by the very companies funding some projects for ECLT.”¹⁸³

TOAWUM’s criticism echoed that of the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA), which wrote to ILO Director Clarence Thomas in 2013 following its own research into child labour and ECLT’s projects in the ASEAN region. It highlighted the hypocrisy of an industry whose business model perpetuates child labour in its supply chain:

“Unlike other industries that have a zero tolerance for child labour, the tobacco industry has set no such polices or target date for complete eradication of child labour. The tobacco industry, while publicly condemning child labour, continues to purchase and use leaves that are produced by child labour and profits from them.

“The tobacco industry’s miniscule contributions through so-called corporate social responsibility activities including the ECLT are a whitewash of the problem. The more serious issue is that these CSR activities provide a convenient platform for tobacco companies to gain access to policy makers who are responsible to approve and implement tobacco control measures. The endorsement from IPEC (Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour) and ILO of ECLT only serves to strengthen and protect the tobacco industry.”¹⁷¹

Legal Threats Against International Tobacco Control Groups

In July 2018, amid a concerted campaign by the WHO and 100 global NGOs to get the ILO to terminate all its tobacco-related partnerships, the ECLT Foundation instructed a Swiss law firm to issue a “formal notice before legal proceedings” against the US-based NGO Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (CTFK).¹⁸⁴

The legal notice from Capt & Wyss, solicitors for ECLT, emphasised the organisation’s “independence” as a registered non-profit Swiss organisation, and demanded that CTFK “immediately” delete from a press release posted on its website the “defamatory”, “untrue and misleading” references to ECLT as a:

• “tobacco-industry-dominated group”;
• “front group for tobacco industry interests under the guise of a corporate social responsibility initiative” and;
• that it “represents an alliance of tobacco companies and growers – led exclusively by the tobacco industry”.

In addition, the legal notice stated that ECLT “seeks a public and online apology, respectively rectification, relating to this unlawful publication.”¹⁸⁴

In his response, CTFK’s President Matthew L. Myers noted that his organisation’s descriptions of ECLT were “well-documented based on the best publicly available information”, “factually accurate” and furthermore were already in the public domain. CTFK received no subsequent response to its reply from either the lawyers or ECLT.¹⁸⁵

ECLT also published an online rebuttal to an October 2017 press release by the global NGO Framework Convention Alliance on Tobacco Control (FCA) in which it rejected FCA’s “false” assertions that “Reports have repeatedly claimed that ECLT’s work aims to keep farmers dependent on aid from the tobacco industry to avoid them abandoning the sector.(sic)” and that “ECLT allows the tobacco industry to promote a positive public image while continuing the practices that cause labour exploitation in the first place”.¹⁸⁶ The rebuttal was reprinted in Tobacco Reporter.¹⁸⁷

Following emails from ECLT’s executive director that same month, the FCA later received a ‘cease and desist’ notice from Capt & Wyss in January 2018 specifically noting the first point above and the FCA’s public “Letter to the UN Secretary General on Cooperation between the Tobacco Industry and the ILO”, signed by over 180 organisations in October 2017.¹⁸⁸ Although the FCA did take down both documents as a precautionary response, no further action was taken¹⁸⁹and these remain in the public domain.¹⁹⁰

ECLT Team

From its inception, the ECLT Foundation has typically employed highly experienced human rights and development professionals, many of them with solid track records of working within the UN system either as staff or consultants. This strategy appears to have been critical to tobacco companies’ insistence on the organisation’s “independence” and for its dealings with the ILO and other UN agencies such as UNICEF.

Internal BAT documents now online at the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents archive show that BAT, when setting up ECLT in 2000, was “looking for an executive with experience in the UN and NGO sectors and ability to raise funds on a global scale. The individual will also need to have high diplomatic campaigning and lobbying skills and a good span of experience in these areas. Knowledge of French and other UN languages is also desired…”¹⁶⁰

In one case, ECLT’s new executive director in 2008 came directly from working with the ILO in Tanzania.

Leadership

A list of current staff can be found on the ECLT website.

• Karima Jambulatova, Executive Director (from May 2019). Has worked with ECLT since 2013.¹⁴⁰
• David Hammond, Executive Director (2017-2019). Barrister and founder of a marine human rights organization.¹⁹¹
• Sonia C. Velázquez, Executive Director (2012-2017). Previously worked with Plan International, America Humane and Save the Children, among others. Was instrumental in gaining ECLT its ECOSOC consultative status and UN Global Compact membership from 2015.¹⁹²
• Marilyn Blaeser, Executive Director (2008-2011), joined ECLT after working for ILO as Chief Technical Advisor (Child Labour) in Tanzania. CV includes six years with UNICEF and UNHCR.¹⁹³
• Mark Hofstetter, (2000-2005). Was Head of Delegation at the International Committee of the Red Cross for 13 years before becoming ECLT’s first director.¹⁹⁴

Board Members

ECLT’s board is mostly made up of industry executives from cigarette manufacturers and tobacco leaf growers. The following individuals formed the ECLT Board in 2022:¹⁶⁷

• Mike Ligon, ECLT President, from the Universal Leaf Tobacco Company, a regular speaker at the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum (GTNF) (succeeded Antonio Abrunhosa from the International Tobacco Growers Association)
• Elaine McKay, ECLT Vice-President, from JTI and Japan Tobacco Inc.
• Michiel Reerink, treasurer, from tobacco-leaf manufacturer Alliance One International, previously affiliated with JTI and a regular attendee at the GTNF.
• Mauro Gonzalez, from PMI.
• Surinder Sond, from Imperial Brands.
• Mercedes Vazquez from the International Tobacco Growers Association.
• Mathew Wilde, from Contraf-Nicotex-Tobacco GMBH.
• Jennie Galbraith, from British American Tobacco, an attendee at the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum in 2013 when she was group head of sustainability at BAT.
• Emmett Harrison, from Swedish Match.
• Itsanne Fokkema, from Hail & Cotton Inc., a tobacco leaf dealer, with purchasing and processing capacity to provide Flue Cured, Burley, Dark Fired, Oriental and other tobacco manufacturers.
• Glyn Morgan, from Premium Tobacco.
• Mette Valentin, from the Scandinavian Tobacco Group.
• Simon Steyne, independent expert.

Projects and partners

ECLT provides details of its activity on its website and in its annual reports. In 2021 it was active in nine countries; in some it worked directly with communities and NGOs, while in others it worked with government, industry, and other stakeholders.¹⁴³

Argentina

With the Provincial Commission for the Prevention and Eradication of Child Labour, a public entity, on an awareness-raising campaign in the northern, tobacco-growing province of Misiones. ECLT also provided input for a training curriculum on child labour in Buenos Aires.¹⁴³¹⁹⁵

Guatemala

With Defensa Niños y Niñas Costa Rica, in the municipality of San José La Máquina, providing “market-driven youth employment training”.^143196197

Indonesia

Part of the ‘Partnership in Action Against Child Labour in Agriculture’ (PAACLA), a multi-stakeholder initiative coordinated by the Ministry of National Development Planning. With Jaringan LSM Penghapusan Pekerja Anak (JARAK), Lembaga Pengkajian Kemasyarakatan dan Pembangunan (LPKP) and Yayasan Tunas Alam Indonesia (SANTAI).¹⁴³¹⁹⁸

Malawi

With CARE Malawi, the MicroLoan Foundation, and Rays of Hope.¹⁴³¹⁹⁶

Mozambique

With IDE Mozambique and Fundação Apoio Amigo. From 2018 to 2021 ECLT had a Memorandum of Understanding with the government of Mozambique.^143196199

Tanzania

With Tabora Development Foundation Trust (TDFT) and the Tanzania Association of Women Leaders in Agriculture and Environment (TAWLAE).¹⁴³²⁰⁰

Uganda

With Uganda Women’s Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO) and ECLA Uganda.¹⁴³¹⁹⁶

United States

With state and federal authorities, academia, and other stakeholders on research into child labour in agriculture.¹⁴³

Zimbabwe

Participated in a survey on child labour in tobacco growing carried out by the Zimbabwe National Statistical Agency and disseminated by the Ministry of Labour, Public Service and Social Welfare. Supported the creation of a working group on child labour by the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board.¹⁴³

The ECLT also worked in Kyrgyzstan until 2017.²⁰¹

Tobacco Tactics Resources

• CSR: Child Labour
• Greenwashing
• International Labour Organization
• International Tobacco Growers Association
• Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
• CSR Strategy
• United Nations Global Compact
• Legal Strategy

Relevant Links

• ECLT Foundation website
• Child labour in the tobacco industry TCRG blog
• STOP brief on ECLT (2019)

References

The post Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco-Growing Foundation (ECLT) appeared first on TobaccoTactics.

Background

ITIC has offices in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Russia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom (UK), the United States (US), and works in many more countries around the world.
Two years after its inception, ITIC reported that its principle asset was in providing its sponsors “a seat at the policy-making table.”²⁰³

Relationship with the Tobacco Industry

Until 2017, ITIC received funding from all of the transnational tobacco companies (TTCs): Philip Morris (PMI), Japan Tobacco International (JTI), British American Tobacco (BAT), and Imperial Tobacco.²⁰⁴
In May 2017, the UK’s Financial Times reported that ITIC asked tobacco representatives to resign from its board and would no longer accept sponsorship from tobacco companies.²⁰⁵
This move followed criticism in 2015 from Dr Doug Bettcher, Head of Non-Communicable Disease at the World Health Organization, who “urged all countries to follow a non-engagement policy with ITIC” because of ITIC’s relationship with the tobacco industry:

“ITIC has published extensively in favour of the tobacco industry’s false positions on excise taxation, investment and illicit trade in tobacco products…ITIC have used their international conferences.. to lobby government officials against tobacco taxation.” ²⁰⁶

Two years later in May 2017, ITIC President Daniel Witt stated:

“The anti-tobacco campaigns became too great a distraction from ITIC’s mission, and this was a necessary step to safeguard ITIC’s reputation and ensure its long-term effectiveness.²⁰⁵

This page details some of ITIC’s tobacco related activities since the turn of the 21st century.
See International Tax and Investment Center – A History of Tobacco Industry Facilitation for information on ITIC’s activities during the 1990s.

Tobacco Industry Facilitation

Hosting High Level Meetings

ITIC has hosted high level meetings with officials, members of national and regional governance organisations, and international institutions, thereby providing tobacco industry allies access to individuals and organisations it could otherwise be difficult to access directly – for example, access has been given to representatives of the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF),²⁰⁷ Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), senior officials of the European Commission,²⁰⁸and representatives from global governments^208209210

Advising and Lobbying Governments on Tobacco Taxation Policy

Evidence shows that ITIC has met with and advised high-level government representatives worldwide,²¹¹²¹² including:

• Advising the Ukrainian Tax Committee in 2008 to model tobacco tax rates after Russia, a country with a high smuggling rate.²¹¹
• Advising the Ukrainian government on operation and customs control of duty free retail outlets and published reports on tobacco taxation, including one report in Eastern Europe urging that accession countries be given a longer time to implement tax increases to make sure that tobacco remains “affordable”.²¹³
• Sponsoring conferences on tobacco tax policy including a 2008 seminar on Eastern European tobacco taxation in Hungary, where 40 government officials from new EU member states attended.²¹⁴

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) is a global public health treaty intended to reduce the burden of disease from tobacco.
Article 5.3 of the FCTC strongly advises that public policy should be free from the vested interests of the tobacco industry and its associates.²¹⁵ By facilitating meetings and conferences which allows the tobacco industry undue access to policymakers and government officials and provides opportunity to influence policy, ITIC has contravened Article 5.3.

Lobbying Against Tobacco Taxation in Private Meeting Ahead of COP 6

On 12 October 2014, the morning before the Sixth Conference of the Parties (COP) of the FCTC, ITIC hosted an exclusive event in Moscow for representatives from Ministries of Finance.²¹⁶ This was a violation of Article 5.3.
In an attempt to stall anticipated tobacco taxes, set to be agreed upon at the COP, the ITIC briefing was open to “invitation-only” officials and aimed to “ensure there is a balanced approach to important excise taxation issues”.²¹⁷
In a private invitation sent to select delegates from around the world, ITIC urged Ministers of Finance to insist that “the government delegations the COP include representatives from their Ministries of Finance and/or Tax Administrations who can lead the debate from the fiscal perspective” (see Image 1).
The meeting, held at a luxury resort in Moscow in collaboration with the Eurasian Economic Commission, included a “Review of Best and Worst Practices of Tobacco Excises” as well as a “Panel Discussion on the Next Steps”.²¹⁷

Regular Meeting with Africa Tax Dialogue

Africa Tax Dialogue meetings provide a forum for ITIC to effectively represent tobacco industry interests on matters of tax and illicit trade in Africa, and allows its representatives direct access to the policy makers and Ministers of Government who attend the meetings.²⁰⁸²⁰⁹At the African Tax Dialogue meeting in Tanzania in July 2014, ITIC’s president Daniel Witt and Senior Advisors Jeffrey Owens and Sijibren Cnossen were brought together alongside the Tanzanian Minister of Finance Saada Mkuya Salum, where they took part in a special workshop on ”Combating Illicit Trade of Excisable Goods”.²⁰⁹

Meetings About the EU Tobacco Products Directive

ITIC-facilitated meetings on behalf of the tobacco industry have been used to lobby against further regulation of tobacco and smoking, such as the EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD):

• In 2009, ITIC received additional funding from BAT, JTI and Philip Morris for a conference on tobacco smuggling (“Anti-Illicit trade of tobacco products”) between 4-6 November in Brussels. ITIC representatives spoke, along with speakers from the EU Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), and other law enforcement agencies. It was chaired by Elizabeth Allen, who retired from British Customs in March 2009.²¹⁸
• In May 2011, the Kangaroo Group hosted a Forum on Intellectual Property, Counterfeiting and Piracy, which was addressed by ITIC president Daniel Witt. The Kangaroo Group, based in Brussels, is a business lobby association comprising of representatives of the European Parliament, Commission and Council, academia, media and the business sector.²¹⁹. Its members include: JTI, Philip Morris, BAT and Imperial Tobacco as well as the Confederation of European Community Cigarette Manufacturers (CECCM).²²⁰ During his address, Witt reiterated the industry position that the introduction of plain packaging for tobacco products “should be carefully looked at on the grounds that they could very well worsen the problem, making life easier for counterfeiters to flood EU markets with cheap fakes.”²²¹
• In December 2011, Witt penned an article with Edit Herczog from the European Parliament’s Industry, Research and Energy committee, which warned that “If new laws are not carefully considered in terms of how they may impact the black market, rather than tackling smoking, they may end up transferring the wellbeing of EU citizens to the hands of criminals.”²²²
• In July 2012, ITIC also participated in the World Customs Organisation (WCO) Global Excise Summit in Brussels.²²³

PMI Commissioned Research Reports on the Illicit Tobacco Trade

Funded by PMI, ITIC has partnered with Oxford Economics, which describes itself as one of the world’s leading independent global advisory firms, to product reports on the illicit tobacco trade in Asia.

Asia 11 – Illicit Tobacco Indicator 2012

In September 2013, Oxford Economics published the findings of its Asia-11 study that it conducted with ITIC on behalf of Philip Morris Asia (an affiliate of PMI), in order to quantify the illicit trade in 11 Asia Pacific markets.²²⁴
Asia-11 refers to a group of markets which includes Australia, Brunei, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The report claimed that:²²⁵

* 66.5 billion (9%) cigarettes consumed in the countries surveyed were illicit – either illegally imported (5.6%) or illegally manufactured locally (3.4%);

*Brunei, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore, countries with high tobacco taxes, had the highest volumes of illicit cigarettes – over 25% in 2012;

* Governments were losing billions of dollars lost tax revenue due to illicit trade.

The Asia-11 report was critiqued by the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA). SEATCA argued that the Asia-11 report was biased in favour of the tobacco industry because:

* the big four transnational tobacco companies are members of ITIC (one of the authors);

* the report was funded by Philip Morris International;

*the report’s conclusions were in line with the industry’s rhetoric that illicit trade is an ever increasing problem and that public health interventions like tax increases should be modest.

Furthermore, a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Tobacco Control attempted to validate Oxford Economic’s and ITIC’s estimate that 35.9% of tobacco consumed in Hong Kong in 2012 was illicit. Using data from government reports and publically available routine data, the authors of the Tobacco Control article estimated that illicit cigarette consumption was between 8.2% and 15.4% of the total cigarette consumption in Hong Kong in 2012.²²⁶
The OE/ITIC report was written by Elizabeth Allen. Since her retirement from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in March 2009, Allen carried out three successive policy development reviews for the UK Government’s Office as well as acted as a consultant and programme advisor for ITIC.²²⁷

Asia 14 – Illicit Tobacco Indicator 2013

In September 2014, on behalf of PMI, Oxford Economics and ITIC published Asia-14, Illicit Tobacco Indicator for 2013.²²⁸
Asia-14 refers to a group of markets, which includes all of the aforementioned countries in the Asia-11 report plus, three additional countries, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
Oxford Economics and ITIC claimed that in 2013:

• 10.9% of cigarettes consumed in Asia-14 were illicit;
• Illicit consumption rose in 7 out of the 11 markets examined in the previous Asia-11 report;
• Government tax losses totalled 3.9 billion US dollars.

Again, SEATCA offered a critique of the PMI funded report undertaken by Dr Hana Ross, an expert on the economics of tobacco control.²²⁹²³⁰ Ross claimed that the figures and statistics presented in the Asia-14 report were “incorrect”, “unverified/unverifiable”, “not comparable across countries” and “inconsistent with results from other studies” in the region.²³⁰
In particular Ross criticised the report’s lack of transparency in relation to its Empty Pack Survey (EPS) methodology used to estimate levels of illicit:

“The Empty Packs Survey (EPS), which is a crucial component of the “IT Flows model” upon which most of the report is based, does not fully disclose its sampling frame, the timing of data collection, the criteria for distinguishing legal and illegal packs, and other crucial survey parameters, even though the validity of data generated by the survey are very sensitive to such issues.”

“No information is provided about the packs that could not be classified as illegal or legal with certainty, and whether or not the collected packs are available for reinspection.”

EPS methodology involves the collection of discarded packets in order to identify non-domestic packs which have not paid the country specific duty. This methodology has been criticised for its inability to distinguish between different types of foreign tobacco – legal cross-border duty-free product and that which has been illegally smuggled into the country – thereby leading to overestimations of illicit.²³¹

Asia 16 – Illicit Tobacco Indicator 2014

In October 2015, again on behalf of PMI, Oxford Economics and ITIC published Asia-16, Illicit Tobacco Indicator for 2014, however, access to the full report requires a membership log in account. Nevertheless, a report for Hong Kong alone is available online. (Image 2)²³²
Asia-16 refers to a group of markets, which includes all of the aforementioned countries in the Asia-14 report plus, two extra countries Macao and South Korea.
In late 2015, press coverage of the Asia-16 report in the Philippines and Macau highlighted the potential bias of the reports and referred to previous critiques of the Asia-11 and Asia-14 reports offered by SEATCA.²³³²³⁴

Asia Illicit Tobacco Indicator 2015

In December 2016, Oxford Economics and ITIC released a 4th report on behalf of PMI, entitled Asia Illicit Tobacco Indicator 2015. The report includes data from the Asia-16 markets well as the additional market of New Zealand.²³⁵

Establishing Academic Groups

Academy of Public Finance – Vienna University of Economics and Business

Having established “successful” tax training programmes in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, in 2012 ITIC expanded its training courses into 12 countries across the Eurasia region. ²³⁶ These were conducted in collaboration with the Institute for Austrian and International Tax Law at Vienna University of Economics and Business, the International Finance Corp and the accountancy firm, Ernst and Young. Together, the institutions launched the Academy of Public Finance as a public/private initiative, offering policymakers and administrators training in three core areas of taxation over two years.²³⁷²³⁸
In its September 2013 monthly Bulletin, ITIC confirmed that the Academy of Public Finance had received start-up funds from Japan Tobacco International (JTI), stating:

“We are most grateful to JT International who provided expert advice on practical tax matters and made a two-year sponsorship commitment to finance the start-up and secretariat infrastructure that will be based at Vienna University of Economics and Business.”²³⁶

Leading the development of the Academy of Public Finance was Dr. Jeffrey Owens, Professor and current Director of the Global Tax Policy Center (GTPC) at the Institute for Austrian and International Tax Law.²³⁹ Owens, who previously worked on tax matters at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and as a government advisor on tax and business issues has served as a “distinguished fellow” at ITIC since May 2012.²¹⁰

The Africa Tax Institute

According to its website, ITIC has been working with 20 African countries since 2000 and has claimed that “in a large part, the ITIC policy recommendations on excise reform have been enacted and are part of the current law in Kenya and Ghana.”²¹⁰A key partner in ITIC’s operations in Africa is the Africa Tax Institute.²³⁷
The Africa Tax Institute (ATI) is a research group based in the Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, South Africa, which claims to be “devoted to training, research, and technical assistance in the areas of tax policy and tax administration on the African continent.”²⁴⁰
In June 2015, the ATI announced collaboration with the GTPC at the Vienna University of Economics and Business,²⁴¹ thereby expanding the Academy’s influence and reach on the continent.
ITIC maintains a strong presence in the ATI through the Advisory Board, where senior ITIC Economics Advisor Sijibren Cnossen holds a position.²⁴²
Sijibren Cnossen, a Professor of Economics at Maastricht University, the Netherlands²⁴²²⁴³ and a Professor of Economics at the University of Pretoria has also served as an advisor to the OECD and advised governments on tax system and policy issues.²⁴⁴ ATI’s director, Riël Franzsen of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of Pretoria, has also assisted ITIC in a role as “Senior Advisor”.²⁴⁵

Africa Tax Dialogue in Mozambique

In June 2015, ITIC announced that all three – Owens, Cnossen and Franzsen – would sit on the organising committee, representing ITIC for the 7th Africa Tax Dialogue in Maputo, Mozambique 17-19 November 2015.²⁴⁶

Lobbying Against Plain Packaging

ITIC’s tobacco industry funded 2011 report, The Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products and How to Tackle It, has been used to lobby policy makers against plain packaging proposals in Brussels, Australia and the UK.

• At a meeting on intellectual property, counterfeiting and piracy in Brussels in 2011, Daniel Witt, President of ITIC, called on policy makers to assess any potential impact on aggravating illicit trade that measures such as the introduction of plain packaging for cigarettes may have.²⁴⁷ (for more detail, see below).
• It was cited in the submission to the Australian consultation on plain packaging by Amcor, the world’s largest packaging company.²⁴⁸.
• Philip Morris used the report in its submission to the UK 2012 consultation on plain packaging to arouse concern amongst policy makers by linking smuggling, organised crime and terrorism with detrimental impacts on local communities and children:

“The criminal gangs that smuggle and sell the vast majority of the nearly nine billion illicit cigarettes (and HRT Rolled Tobacco equivalents) consumed in the UK each year operate in the hearts of local communities. Illicit cigarettes are not the only things these criminal groups bring to local neighbourhoods: they also bring smuggled alcohol, guns, drugs, and violence.(131) The man on the corner selling cigarettes to kids from the boot of his car is not acting alone – his sales fund serious organised crime and terrorism.(132)” ²⁴⁹

While footnote (132) refers to the ITIC report, footnote (131) is a reference to a quote from Peter Sheridan in an article in the Daily Mail.²⁵⁰ Sheridan is a former policeman often cited for his experience and expert knowledge of the fight against smuggling. His links to BAT were not disclosed by PMI.

PMI Identified ITIC as a Key Media Messenger

In 2013 leaked internal tobacco industry documents, including powerpoints, revealed the extent of PMI’s anti-Plain Packaging campaign in the UK during the previous year. The leaked documents cover the crucial time leading up to, and during the UK’s first public consultation run by the British Government in 2012.
As part of its strategy, PMI identified key media messengers that it wanted to use to promote its arguments. It identified ITIC as an international media messenger.
For more information see PMI’s Anti-PP Media Campaign and PMI’s “Illicit Trade” Anti-Plain Packaging Campaign

Complaints to NGOs, Academics and Peer-Review Publishers

In 2016 ITIC sent a series of complaints to NGOs (SEATCA, Action for Smoking and Health London, and the Smokefree Parnerhsip in Brussels) ,²⁵¹²⁵² academics²⁵³ and the peer-review journal Tobacco Control, all of whom had criticised ITIC’s activities. ITIC’s complaints made three inter-related claims:

1. ITIC’s research should be considered credible despite its industry links;
2. ITIC is not a lobby group;
3. Public health organisations ought to engage with ITIC given its tax expertise.

SEATCA published an open letter response to ITIC which you can read .

Recruits High-Level ex-Tax Officials

In May 2015 the former Head of Corporate Tax at HMRC, Dave Hartnett, was criticised for taking a position as a Director at ITIC alongside representatives from the tobacco industry.
Hartnett had previously been involved in disputes over “generous” tax deals with global corporations and had been condemned for his advisory work with HSBC, an international corporate bank, since leaving HMRC.²⁰⁶
Health campaigners expressed concerns that Hartnett should have declared his role, as he chaired meetings for ITIC and presented at its conferences less than two years after leaving his senior civil servant position.²⁰⁶ In a statement, Hartnett claimed that he was, along with other “leading figures in taxation”, a nominal director of ITIC:

“I am not paid for that role with ITIC… I am not an executive director and do not in any way direct the strategy or business of ITIC. I know ITIC as a not-for-profit research and education organisation, which supports the development of tax systems in less developed countries.”²⁰⁶

Subsequently, the World Bank announced it was pulling out of a tax conference funded by several of its transnational tobacco company supporters given mounting concerns about ITIC and its role in undermining health policy.²⁰⁶

Backlash Against ITIC

In May 2015, the tobacco control community successfully pressurised the World Bank to withdraw its financial support for the 12th Annual Asia Pacific Tax Forum in New Delhi, which was being organized by ITIC and therefore indirectly sponsored by tobacco companies.²⁵⁴ In May 2017, the UK’s Financial Times reported that ITIC asked tobacco representatives to resign from its board and no longer accepts sponsorship from tobacco companies.²⁰⁵

TobaccoTactics Resources

• International Tax and Investment Center – A History of Tobacco Industry Facilitation
• Oxford Economics
• Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
• Peter Sheridan
• PMI’s Anti-PP Media Campaign
• PMI’s “Illicit Trade” Anti-Plain Packaging Campaign
• Digital Coding & Tracking Association(DCTA)

Relevant Link

Tax and Investment Center Website

TCRG Research

• ‘It will harm business and increase illicit trade’: an evaluation of the relevance, quality and transparency of evidence submitted by transnational tobacco companies to the UK consultation on standardised packaging 2012, K.A. Evans-Reeves, J.L. Hatchard, A.B. Gilmore, 2015, Tobacco Control, 24(e2), e168-e177, doi:10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2014-051930
• Industry-funded International Tax and Investment Center responds to criticism by attempting to muddy the waters, K.A. Evans-Reeves. A. B. Gilmore, BMJ Blogs: Tobacco Control News and Views Online, 24 June 2016

References

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