Senior members of the United Kingdom's environmental community courted some of the world's most ecologically controversial companies at a seminar in late June 2001 held at the London Chamber of Commerce.
Companies such as Balfour Beatty, Cargill, Du Pont, Monsanto, Nirex and Syngenta attended the conference about "Getting Engaged" to the environmental movement. They heard talks from Peter Melchett, the former head of Greenpeace UK and now policy advisor to the pro-organic Soil Association, as well as top representatives from green groups including Friends of the Earth (FoE) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
The event was facilitated by the Environment Council, which has been at the forefront of promoting partnerships between the business community and UK environmental organizations. "We are looking to bring people together in constructive dialogue to implement long-term environment solutions," said the Environment Council's James Hanaway.
Melchett told the gathering that environmentalists have moved on since their early campaigning days in the 1970s and 1980s, when their primary mission was to "raise the issue" of environmental problems. Now, he argued, they had to look more at solutions and focus more on business than politics because of "a shift in power from politics to business."
"Working with business is as important to us as munching bamboo is for a panda," said a representative from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which now receives about £1 million a year in the UK from corporate sources.
The "Getting Engaged" conference was not the first conference of its kind in the UK and certainly will not be the last. The Environment Council has pioneered several previous "stakeholder dialogues" in the UK between nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the likes of Shell, Monsanto and British Nuclear Fuels. It plans a September 2001 meeting titled "Environmental Reputation in Business Strategy," to feature Shell, BP, BNFL, Burson-Marsteller, and Nestlé discussing issues of "reputation management" with the likes of Greenpeace and SustainAbility. The same month, a UK-based church group plans to hold a two-day "stakeholder dialogue" with British American Tobacco, in hopes of creating a "responsible tobacco industry."
At the same time that environmental groups are dialoguing with corporations, some of their top staff people are literally going to work for them. One of the advisors for the Environment Council's magazine, for example, is Jonathan Wootliff, who is also Managing Director of Edelman Public Relations Global Stakeholder Practice. Before Edelman, he worked for Greenpeace; before that, the Hill & Knowlton PR firm. In his current job at Edelman, he "provides support to corporations in building productive relationships with non-governmental organizations, pressure groups and activists so as to minimize vulnerability." Edelman's clients include Home Depot, Ocean Spray, Taco Bell, Boeing, Nissan, Manpower, Dairy.com, Roche's, Nissan, Pharmacia, Microsoft, Apple, Kraft, Kimberly-Clark and AHP.
At the "Getting Engaged" conference, business sustainability consultant Andrea Spencer-Cooke suggested that this sort of "cross-fertilization" was a "good idea." She pointed to other examples such as Paul Gilding, the former executive director of Greenpeace International who has set up his own corporate consultancy in Australia called ECOS. Des Wilson is another example. After decades of working for NGOs including Friends of the Earth UK, the Campaign for Lead Free Petrol, the Campaign for the Homeless and the Campaign for Freedom of Information, Wilson moved to Burson-Marsteller and then to the British Airports Authority to fight for a fifth runway at London's Heathrow terminal.
Engagement Jitters
What has all of this cross-fertilization accomplished? That question is open to interpretation. A previous round of Shell stakeholder dialogue sessions, held in Lima, London and Washington, was attacked as an ineffective attempt to undermine opposition to the company's controversial plans to drill for gas in Peru's ecologically and culturally sensitive Amazon rainforest. The Environment Council's "national stakeholder dialogue" over genetic engineering in the UK descended into farce when the majority of the environmental NGOs walked out. The anti-smoking group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) declined to attend the stakeholder dialogue with British American Tobacco, calling it "primarily a PR exercise, designed to co-opt critics into dialogue." All the other major health NGOs invited in the UK have declined for the same reason. Tensions were also present at "Getting Engaged." Conference organizers admitted that several grassroots groups had declined invitations to speak at the event, including Reclaim the Streets and the UK-based Corporate Watch, which stated that the event "just seemed to be helping companies' PR departments."
Even among those who did attend, old hostilities were never far from the surface, as evident in an exchange between Melchett and a representative from Monsanto. The Monsanto representative was obviously taken aback by Greenpeace's unwavering opposition to biotechnology. "Is there complete opposition to biotech," he asked Melchett, "or where can we work together to look at the benefits of this technology?"
"I agree dialogue is important," Melchett replied, "but you have to do so before your views become intransigent. Monsanto only listened to its scientists, you never asked anyone else if they wanted biotech. There are still fundamental problems with the technology." On this issue at least, "engagement" seemed unlikely to lead to marriage.
Unease persists about how far NGOs should go in embracing their old adversaries. Speakers worried whether the relationship between the too sides was getting "too cozy." WWF Program Director Francis Sullivan, who chaired the Getting Engaged conference, admitted that there "could be a future where a number of NGOs get too close to business and could be seen to be out of touch with the public."
Simon McCrae from Friends of the Earth admitted that engaging with business was still a "contentious issue" at his organization. He said local FoE groups were extremely "sensitive" about a proposed partnership between FoE and a leading renewable energy company. "The conference seemed to consist of NGOs telling corporations how they work," said one person who declined to attend. "It was an exercise in NGOs telling business how to get around NGOs. It was just assisting their PR departments in helping them to know the enemy."
Let's Dance
Businesses seemed to feel unanimously that a closer working relationship between the two camps was the way forward. "A decade ago, the feeling within the insurance industry to environmental problems was 'go away and leave me alone,'" said Anthony Sampson, the Director of Environmental Management at insurance giant CGNU. Issues such as climate change, he said, have changed that dynamic, creating awareness that businesses need to take action in defense of the environment because "we don't have another planet to go and do insurance on." As a result, he said, "engaging with NGOs is now the essential part of the corporate radar." "Over the last ten years there has been a changing role between business and NGOs," said the WWF's Francis Sullivan. "It is like a dance taking place between the two groups where they are slowly getting closer and closer." No one quite knows, however, where the dance is leading. The backdrop to this tango is the worldwide debate over economic globalization and the increasing international power of corporations. Mainstream environmental groups find themselves caught between those who believe the future lies in working with industry and those who contend that institutions of corporate power, such as the World Trade Organisation, must be dismantled.
Most environmentalists believe the movement benefits from its ability to encompass a broad spectrum of views and strategies, ranging from moderates to hard-line direct action groups. This diversity, however, guarantees an ongoing debate between moderation and radicalism, as well as over the question of whether working with business is the best way to achieve environmental change. Is dialogue really the best way for business to change for the better, or could it actually be a tool for preventing change?
The hosts of "Getting Engaged" are adamant that dialogue is beneficial for all sides. "A fruitful and mutually rewarding dialogue with stakeholders is possible," argues the Environment Council's Chief Executive, Steve Robinson.
"That NGOs will have to interact with companies is not in doubt; how they will interact is the question," says Simon Heap of Intrac, the International NGO Training and Research Center.
Even Greenpeace now sees dialogue as an "essential" part of its work, although Stephen Tindale, Greenpeace's new Executive Director in the UK, admits that some people will always see engagement as a "sell-out."
Can't We All Just Get Along?
But just as an increasing number of NGOs are now dialoguing with corporations, many do not understand the mechanics of the process they have entered, let alone know where it will lead. Many grassroots activists wonder why leading environmental NGOs are sitting down with businesses at all. What, for example, is Greenpeace really accomplishing by discussing its campaign goals with Burson-Marsteller, one of the world's largest PR companies whose clients include some of the biggest, baddest, most polluting companies on the planet? Are groups like Greenpeace and the Environment Council accomplishing something substantial, or are they naively playing into the hands of corporations in an end game that could leave the environmental movement on the defensive while corporations come out on top?
Some groups have already concluded that it would have been wise to ask more questions before entering into dialogue with their adversaries. In 1998, Oxfam held an Interagency "Seminar on Corporate Campaigning" to evaluate its ongoing dialogue with BP/Amoco, which was being criticized for collusion with paramilitary groups and appalling human rights abuses in connection with its activities in Colombia. Eighteen months after beginning the dialogue, Oxfam leaders realized that they really did not know what they were doing and wondered if they were being taken for a ride by the oil company. The Oxfam Seminar was held to see if a consensus existed between NGOs as to whether they should sit down and dialogue with corporations. As one of the speakers at the seminar, I talked about the PR strategies that companies use against activists. "Dialogue," I explained, "is the most important PR tactic that companies are using to overcome objections to their operations."
This statement did not go down well with certain sections of the audience. Sir Geoffrey Chandler, an ex-senior Shell executive and head of the Amnesty Business Unit, accused me of "peddling conspiratorial nonsense." Slightly taken aback by this rebuttal, I asked the audience how many people there had heard of Burson-Marsteller. Fewer than half the hands went up.
Most of the people in the room, which included more than 100 of the UK's leading environmental, development and human rights activists, had never heard of BP/Amoco's PR firm, and of course they had no idea what it was up to. Even today, the majority of NGOs and activists do not understand how public relations firms are helping corporations manipulate them. This is a fundamental strategic mistake.
Managing the Activist Threat
For insights into the real reasons why corporations favor dialogue, activists might read Managing Activism, a book which was published recently in the UK by the Institute of Public Relations. Written by Denise Deegan, Managing Activism offers advice to help companies deal with activists and pressure groups who "represent a growing threat to organizations around the globe." Deegan describes her strategy as "two-way symmetrical communications"--PR jargon for "learning as much as possible about activists and seeking to initiate two-way dialogue with them with a view to working together on an on-going basis to reach a situation that benefits both parties. Central to the two-way communications process is relationship building and an acceptance that compromise on both sides may be necessary."
Ironically, Deegan's thoughts on "compromise" parallel those of Mark Dowie, a former editor of Mother Jones magazine. In his book, Losing Ground, Dowie criticized so-called "third-wave environmentalism," whose essence "is the shift of the battle for the environment from the courtroom to the boardroom. In fact," he wrote, "third-wave environmentalism represents nothing so much as the institutionalization of compromise."
But does "compromise" mean that corporations will change their behavior? Apparently not. "Two-way symmetrical communications offer a way forward where the company does not have to give in to activists or persuade them to give in," Deegan writes.
Wearing More Suits, Raising Less Hell
The hidden risk to NGOs in all of this cozy collaboration is that they are coming to resemble corporations themselves, adopting not only their language but their attitudes. "NGOs are ripe for an injection of business thinking," commented one delegate at Getting Engaged. Another said, "Well, we all wear suits now." From the point of view of many activists, however, this is exactly the problem. As Francis Sullivan admitted at the conference, environmental groups risk losing "their identity." If environmentalism loses its identity as a movement whose values are above commerce, it will have lost something that no amount of money or "win-win solutions" can ever buy back. This identity, after all, is the sole basis of public support, and as Melchett observed, "NGOs will only ever run a successful campaign when they are backed by public opinion and also more importantly public values."
The PR firms that broker marriages between corporations and environmentalists understand very well that the real purpose of the wedding is to get in good with the in-laws--namely, the concerned citizens and activists who look to environmental groups for leadership and inspiration. The Edelman website offers the following advice to corporations with image trouble: "You've got an environmental disaster on your hands. Have you consulted with Greenpeace in developing your crisis response plan? ... Co-opting your would-be attackers may seem counterintuitive, but it makes sense when you consider that NGOs are trusted by the public nearly two-to-one to 'do what's right' compared with government bodies, media organizations and corporations."
In other words, companies have everything to gain and nothing to lose if environmental groups serve as their go-betweens in communicating with an increasingly restive public. But what do environmental groups themselves gain from this? If the public comes to perceive them as "just more guys in suits," environmentalists will find themselves under attack to justify their continuing existence and their status as public interest groups.
If NGOs are not careful, they could find that the public trust they currently enjoy is lost and passes from them to the business community. If that happens, it will be too late for them to understand why they fell into a very well-prepared trap designed by PR executives they have never heard of.
Andy Rowell is the author of Green Backlash: Global Subversion of the Environmental Movement (Routledge, 1996).