12. A CROSSROADS FOR THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT Lobbyists hired by large corporations in the US work at two levels. As the head of the Heritage Foundation has pointed out, their efforts to influence the "tree tops" of society are accompanied by a systematic cultivation of the "grass roots". The first is called lobbying, and the second is referred to under the broader term of public relations (PR). In the US, about 170.000 people work in lobbying and PR. That is more than all the news reporters in the country.1 The way professional PR consultants work is similar, in many ways, to the way government secret services operate. The company Mongoven, Biscoe and Duchin monitors issues relating to the greenhouse effect and ozone hole for a number of the largest corporations in the US. Fourteen full-time staff with experience in environmental and consumer groups, churches and other organisations study and systematically document every participant in the debate. Informants participate in conferences and meetings and contact activists and opposition politicians to gather data for secret reports prepared for their clients. Mongoven, Biscoe and Duchin categorise environmental activists into four groups: realists, idealists, opportunists, and radicals. The radicals are difficult to handle. They work for social justice and for public control of industry, and their response to corporate overtures is impossible to predict. Opportunists work in the environmental movement mostly to be seen and to promote their career. They are often satisfied with some kind of partial concession. The idealists cannot be bought, but they can be backed into harmless positions with the help of realists, namely, those working towards pragmatic agreements with industry. The strategy to undermine the environmental movement is, therefore, to negotiate with the realists, neutralise the idealists, and isolate the radicals. Then, the opportunists just follow along.2 Generally, forward-looking corporate representatives have applied this strategy ever since they had their eyes opened to environmental issues in the 1960s. Money and time were invested in established environmental organisations, and leading actors, like Maurice Strong and his colleague Warren Lindner, have worked hard to win the confidence of the more idealistic movements and lead them down the realistic road. The alternative forum at the UN World Social Summit in Copenhagen was organised like the earlier conferences to promote this strategy. The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs ensured that Lindner’s Centre for Our Common Future had influence over the activities of non-governmental organisations at the NGO Forum. Some organisations were not even invited, even though they claimed that their names were on the address lists that Lindner used. Furthermore, in some cases, travel expenses for organisations in the Third World were distributed very selectively by local UN agencies. For the most part, the NGO activities around the conferences have the effect of diluting popular radicalism. Genuine popular movements meet confused sects, professional lobbyists and representatives of large corporations in a chaotic atmosphere that only leaves room for ritual protest actions. The realists are lured further and further into the corridors of power, and flowery words and the promises of generous financial donations encourage the idealists and opportunists to follow. The NGO Forum in Copenhagen was financed by the Danish Government and large corporations like BP and M&T, the Danish construction company that is building parts of the bridge over Öresund. Environmental activists from around the world mingled with World Bank representatives and young, budding businessmen from the organisation AIESEC (Association Internationale des Étudiants en Sciences Économiques et Commerciales), who travelled there with funding from Nestlé. Established NGOs were careful to ensure that their attempts to influence government delegates by lobbying would not be thwarted by the actions and statements planned by participants at the NGO Forum.3 In the pacification of the popular movements, opinions are not the main thing. The purpose of the financial contributions and personal contacts is not so much to stop criticism, but rather to isolate the critics from the public. For the transnational giants, an environmental organisation is manageable as long as it concentrates on lobbying and the media theatre. These activities can never overturn the production system on which the transnationals survive. Attempts to change the attitudes of corporate representatives and government officials can work quite well, and on some issues, this approach has even had some significance. However, in the overall picture such efforts have no effect, since the individuals are replaceable. They have no personal power to change the direction of development. A director of Astra who suddenly decides to provide doctors in India with free access to the corporation’s patented formulas will not remain director very long. The situation is similar with dramatic media events. Radio and TV stations and newspapers all over the world are in the hands of those whose interest it is to maintain the status quo. While it is possible to use media events to stop the dumping of an oil platform in the sea, no such spectacular actions can stop a war about oil in the Persian Gulf. Negotiations and media contacts are necessary, but the movement that loses itself in meeting rooms and the media soon stops moving. The power to turn things around always comes from below. Professional lobbyists and their employers know this. That is why they try so hard to influence the "grass roots". In the US, environmental protection has increasingly become a concern for lawyers, politicians and urban intellectuals. This fact has made it possible for large corporations demagogically to convince workers and small businessmen to oppose the protection of the environment. A number of local citizen groups has emerged, promoting themselves as "The Wise Use Movement". They organize lumberjacks to oppose nature protection authorities and harass environmental activists. Behind them are the new-right campaign organisations and PR companies such as Burson-Marsteller and Hill and Knowlton. Professional lobbyists estimate that "grass roots lobbying" and the mobilisation of false mass movements annually turn over about US$800 million in the US. Part of the money is raised by appeals through direct mailings, and some comes from oil, mining, and forestry companies. Just to be sure, companies, such as Atlantic Richfield Company and Dupont, invest in both established environmental organisations and Wise Use groups.4 A strategy similar to the Wise Use Movement was applied by the Social-Democratic Government in the Swedish national referendum on the future of nuclear energy in 1980. Faced with a likelihood that a majority would vote to phase out Sweden’s then six reactors, the Government introduced a third alternative, a sort of "phase out, yes, but not until prudent". The intent behind this alternative was to exploit a latent rift and isolate the environmental activists from the union movement. The strategy was successful. Sweden now has 12 reactors. In the struggle against European Union membership, the opposition was more solid, but the basis for the "yes" victory in the referendum 1994 was, in principal, the same. The corporations provided the money and put the organisation "Wage Earners for Europe" and other forces with a popular image up front. An important element in the strategy was to give the impression that some confused, young, vandals were typical representatives of the "no" side. The militancy of direct action on the front page of Expressen (one of the biggest tabloid newspapers in Sweden) worked well to alienate those who were still undecided about their position on EU membership. A movement that leaves the people behind will not necessarily be less successful, but its success will change colour. The organisation can suddenly become very rich and prominent. In general, transnational giants have nothing against non-profit organisations that work on environmental and North-South issues. On the contrary, they have big plans for their NGOs. In the beginning of the 1960s, there were a couple of hundred NGOs active internationally. Now, there are almost 29,000.5 This proliferation has taken place at the same time as State structures in the South have weakened and collapsed under the weight of crises, starvation and war. These occurrences are not only parallel. They are closely connected. The supression of the States on the periphery of the world economy are at the core of the strategy being played out by North America, Europe and Japan. To secure the South for transnational corporations, every local obstacle must be removed. This is achieved through a variety of means: interest extortion, free trade agreements, and political and military interventions. So-called globalisation and internationalisation are, in reality, a re-colonisation of the continents in the South. In this process, the modern charity and aid organisations play a similar role to that of Western missionaries in the past. NGOs are responsible for disbursing close to six billion US dollars in development aid per year. This is almost as much as is channeled through the multilateral agencies, and more and more governments in the North delegate responsibility for disbursement of increasing amounts of aid to NGOs. At the World Social Summit in Copenhagen, Vice President Al Gore explained that in future, at least 40% of the US development assistance channelled through USAID, would be handled by non-profit organisations. The EU has delegated experts from 160 NGOs to manage all on-site aid work. In principle, local governments are not given any influence over this money.6 This development is mirrored in a renaissance of the colonial-era notion of the "white man’s burden". The states on the periphery are regarded as malicious, impotent or otherwise defunct. Consequently, it is the task of the civilised world to give the peoples in the South human rights, peace, social services, and environmental protection. James Morgan, who monitors economic issues for the BBC, wrote in an article in the Financial Times: "The state has broken down in much of Africa: Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Somalia and others have ceased to function. The UN Development Programme says this is a growing trend, to be seen also in Afghanistan, the Balkans and, one might add, perhaps Transcaucasia eventually. Yet, should many of these places be states in the first place? ... In the same way that many small companies cannot stay independent and be secure, so one can argue that sovereign independence has no future for many countries. Indeed, if there were no government in, say, Rwanda... /t/here would have been nothing to have set one ethnic group against the other, no centre of total power for which anybody would have fought." The BBC correspondent points out that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund already manage a large part of the economic issues in many countries. Why not let them take over taxation as well? In addition, international institutions could become responsible for basic social services, and overseas representation could be handed over to professionals. What room does this leave for democracy? Well, writes James Morgan, in a world where the financial markets are in control "democracy is, in one sense, on its way out". Africans should try to revive individual empowerment and responsibility on a local level instead.7 Decentralised, small-scale projects are a way for the World Bank and other Western aid agencies to prevent popular movements from being active in the central political arena. In many Latin American countries, as political opposition has been weakened in recent years, groups with access to foreign aid have become stronger. According to the Egyptian economist, Samir Amin, the same development is taking place in Africa. Hard currency is in control and, in many cases, it is disbursed by foreign NGOs.8 This paralysis of independent political life is painted in rosy colours in the 1995 report from the Commission on Global Governance. Ingvar Carlsson and Shridath Ramphal describe the growth of a "global civil society": "Traditionally, global governance has been viewed primarily as inter-governmental relationships. Today it must be understood as involving not only governments and inter-governmental institutions but also non-governmental organisations, citizens’ movements, multinational corporations, the global capital market and the global mass media." The Commission proposes that this global civil society take a central place in a reformed UN. Representatives of the new institutions should be attached to the General Assembly and be given formal powers to monitor human rights and environmental resources across national borders: "We propose that a ‘Right of Petition’ be made available to international civil society to bring to the UN’s attention situations that imperil people’s security. A Council for Petitions should be established within the UN, composed of five to seven eminent, independent persons, to entertain petitions by non-state actors." The Council would not have any powers of implementation, but by virtue of its moral authority, should be able to influence the actions of the Secretary General, the Security Council and the General Assembly. The Commission urges NGOs, businessmen, researchers and youth to get involved in the reformation of the international system in this direction: "We are drifting, overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness, in need of a mobilising principle that can capture the gains of peace. That principle could well be global governance, a genuine internationalism, a new world order that secures the ascendancy of global neighbourhood values over divisive nationalism."9 This is the green capitalists talking. They want their NGOs – both the professional nature protection and human rights organisations and the idealistic environmental movements – to be involved in the creation of a world order in which transnational activities are not obstructed by obstinate nation states on the global periphery. Goodwill can be used like a knife. Those who lend themselves to the transnationals’ project can expect the same thanks as the charity ladies on their mission of mercy to the carpenter in August Strindberg’s, The Red Room: "I agree with you, ladies, it is unbearable", said the joiner. "And the day will come when things will be worse; on that day we shall come down from the White Mountains with a great noise, like a waterfall, and ask for the return of our beds. Ask? We shall take them! And you shall lie on wooden benches, as I’ve had to do, and eat potatoes until your stomachs are as tight as a drum and you feel as if you had undergone torture by water, as we..." What is the alternative to transnational charity? To do something about the world order in solidarity with people in other countries. 1 No Sweat News, Winter 93/94. 2 The Ecologist, July-August 1995; No Sweat News, Winter 1993-94. The information is originally from the newsletter, PR Watch, October-December 1993. 3 Open letter from Kenneth Haar, Den røde tråd, 17 March 1995; and SEEDlinks, April 1995. According to their Web site (http://www.aiesec.org/info/whatis.html), AIESEC is: "composed of university students from all disciplines whose activities are primarily run in co-operation with the business sector". 4 The Ecologist, July-August 1995. 5 Financial Times, 13 February 1995.. 6 Financial Times, 13 February 1995, 21 June 1995, and 5 October 1995; and Den røde tråd 17 March 1995. 7 Financial Times, 27 May 1995. 8 Den Røde tråd, 17 March 1995. 9 Ingvar Carlsson and Shridath Ramphal, Our Global Neighbourhood, The Basic Vision (Geneva 1995), p. 7, 24, 47. ORDER HERE BACK TO CONTENTS
		© Mikael Nyberg 2001-03-29