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Dear Marcus,
Perhaps the single most influential group when it
comes to determining the future of our planet is the corporate sector.
The land area under corporate management is vast. The extent to
which people depend on businesses for their incomes and livelihoods
is overwhelming. Single companies are wealthier than entire groups
of governments. The activities and attitudes of business are of
fundamental importance in determining the viability and sustainability
of the environment in which we all live and on which we all depend.
There is a wide array of ways in which civil society
and NGOs can engage with and influence the private sector, and each
of these approaches has its own role and value. Exposés can reveal
malpractice, and lobbying can change behaviour. From a business
perspective, the relationships companies form in response to such
actions are important in terms of managing risk and improving reputation;
they can also help achieve the public good sought by the NGOs.
Accepting corporate funding and sponsorship is also
a perfectly legitimate activity, and ensures the viability of hundreds
of thousands of valuable projects around the world. However, care
must be taken to ensure that mutual branding is not used as implied
endorsement beyond specific projects.
But none of these approaches should be confused
with partnership. Partnership involves two or more groups who may
have very different views and resources agreeing on common aims,
which, if achieved, will deliver benefits to all.
Effective partnerships set clear objectives and
ground rules. Honest partnerships recognise the right to disagree.
Efficient partnerships use the strengths of each partner to build
the capacity of everyone involved. Strategic partnerships focus
on the long term.
It seems to me that if we genuinely want to find
lasting solutions to some of the most urgent issues facing our global
environment, then translating conservation priorities into value-adding
and sustainable business practices is crucial. Smart partnerships
with corporations are an essential tool in achieving the conservationist
mission. Indeed, we could be regarded as negligent if we failed
to engage with business.
Dear Mark,
Everyone has the right and the responsibility
to be concerned about the environment. If, as we seem to agree,
corporations now constitute the main threat to global ecosystems,
we certainly cannot afford to ignore them. A first step to dealing
with corporations must be to understand their role in environmental
destruction; then, as conservationists, we should go about exposing
those problems to the general public.
Combined pressure from impacted peoples and
communities, citizens, NGOs and even governments can make for change.
We need to demand better regulation of runaway industries and encourage
companies themselves to reform their ways.
Yes, this may mean talking to companies directly,
across the picket line and in the boardroom. But engaging in dialogues
and partnerships with the companies that are currently trashing
the planet has to be done carefully if it is not to be counterproductive.
In the first place, such dialogues and partnerships
must be carried out in ways that don’t exclude those whose rights
and livelihoods are directly impacted by negative corporate activity.
Second, we mustn’t let companies use partnerships to ‘greenwash’
their overall operations: the planet won’t survive if we trade off
funding for a few nice projects and national parks for condoning
sacrifice zones and unsustainable development elsewhere. And third,
partnership should be conditional on companies agreeing to certain
standards and norms: respecting international human rights and environmental
laws would be a good place to start; an embargo on destructive projects
in protected areas would be another.
You say there should be ‘no mutual branding’,
but the Fauna and Flora International (FFI) centenary celebration
in First magazine (the self-styled ‘forum for decision-makers’)
did just that. There you lavishly offered a glossy, green profile
to corporate juggernauts like BP, Vodafone, British American Tobacco
(BAT), ExxonMobil and Rio Tinto. Giving such companies positive
spin and not exposing their tragic records of environmental ruin
is giving ‘conservation’ the bad name that, sadly, it increasingly
deserves.
Dear Marcus,
Much of the focus of conservation organisations
during the 20th century was on ‘protection’, but the real challenge
for the future lies in developing a sustainable relationship between
people and the environment. The range of stakeholders involved in
this task encompasses the entire global, social spectrum – including
indigenous peoples. Conservation must become fully integrated into
social, political and economic processes, not isolated in a ‘box’.
Failure to achieve these goals will result in the continued erosion
of the natural resources on which we all depend.
You refer to protected areas, though (somewhat contradictorily)
you downgrade their importance while also prioritising their integrity.
Let me re-emphasise the value of different approaches here. While
pressure groups may focus on keeping companies out of protected
areas, partnership NGOs work with companies to address their operational
impact across their geographic footprint – not just within the small
percentage of the earth’s surface designated as protected. We need
both strategies.
Working with leadership companies that can influence
their sectors is strategically wise: these companies are key players
in developing the very standards you say you want to see in place.
And remember that companies that are committed to social and environmental
reporting, which endeavour to build partnerships with NGOs and civil
society, and which develop and implement improved practices, are
actually just the tip of the corporate iceberg. They are the recognisable
names above the waterline. If, due to public pressure, the BPs and
Rio Tintos pull out rather than work through issues and set new
standards, they may be swiftly replaced by companies that are far
less accountable and have no public reputation to lose.
Just a few years ago, conservation issues never
reached the boardroom agenda, unless a short-term, emergency response
was needed. Environmental policies were about retrospective crisis
management, only undertaken when matters came to a head and damage
had been done. We recognised the need for an alternative.
Today, as you note with reference to First, FFI
and other partnership-focused organisations have secured the commitment
of influential companies to recognising conservation as a core business
issue to be mainstreamed into strategy and operations. Through partnership,
we can move from remedy to prevention.
Dear Mark,
You are dodging the question. Are conservationists’
partnerships with large corporations ‘greenwash’? In my view, your
glossy, centenary fundraiser in First is exactly that. It says nothing
about the environmental crimes of corporations, but makes destructive
businesses out to be green leaders and links them to FFI. You are
no more explicit elsewhere. We looked in vain at your website and
magazine, Oryx, for details about these companies’ operations.
What have you done to expose Rio Tinto for
its part in the destruction of the lands and culture of the Amungme
people in West Papua? Have you told it not to profile you as a ‘partner’
on its website until it stops pouring tailings from West Papua’s
Grasberg mine into the rivers and forests that sustain the Kamoro
people downstream?
Where have you highlighted the role of ExxonMobil
in the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline, which has smashed through the
forests of the Bagyeli Pygmies in southwest Cameroon? Have you noted
that the company dismisses the problem of global warming and openly
campaigns against emissions reduction targets?
How come I can’t find anything on your website
about the pressure from BP to open up the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration and the threats that would pose
to the calving grounds of local porcupine caribou? What have you
done to stop BP parading its association with FFI on its own website,
while the same company has been pushing through the Baku-Ceyhan
oil pipeline across the Caucasus?
Where are your studies of the deforestation
caused by the fuel-wood consumption of the tobacco curers that supply
BAT, a company implicated in the 750,000 tobacco-related deaths
that the world suffers every year?
Are you working with Nigeria’s Ogoni people
to stop your ‘partner’ Shell making yet more mess in the Niger Delta?
Profiling these companies’ environmental
credentials without exposing the problems they cause is what I call
greenwash.
Dear Marcus,
You are missing the point. It’s time for a reality
check.
The Baku-Ceyhan pipeline route was partly chosen
to stop the environmental risk of a major increase in tankers through
the Bosphorus. Multiple governments are planning their national
economies around this venture, and public demand is driving it.
Don't kid yourself: neither the Forest Peoples Programme nor any
other pressure group can stop it. Neither can we.
What we can do, however, is work with BP (which,
thanks to NGO partnerships, has a corporate biodiversity strategy
that will be implemented across the project) to minimise the pipeline’s
negative impact. Force BP out, and you won’t stop the pipeline,
you’ll just get someone else, less accountable taking its place.
You don’t believe me? To bring you up to date on
Grasberg, Rio Tinto has just sold its equity share in the mine –
partly due to constant pressure from environmental groups. But the
mine hasn’t been and won’t be closed. Do you consider this a success?
Even if you’ve now lost the one point of leverage that was making
a difference? Who does this help more – the Kamoro people or the
public profile of lobbyists?
Where are our studies of deforestation caused by
fuel-wood consumption for tobacco curing? Well, they’re being conducted
in association with Uganda’s Makerere University. As part of our
partnership with BAT, blocks of forest degraded while under government
‘stewardship’ are being given stronger protection. And, by diversifying
plantations, we are growing native tree species with better social
and ecological value. Greenwash? Not by my definition.
It is because business has a major environmental
impact that we have a dialogue with it. Recognising and trying to
address that is the point of partnership.
Dear Mark,
Condoning BP’s strategy in exchange for token mitigations
seems like a bad deal to me. Nor have I seen good evidence of Rio
Tinto improving things in West Papua. Besides, even though Rio Tinto
sold its 12 per cent share in mining firm Freeport McMoRan, it still
retains its 40 per cent interest in the Grasberg mine expansion.
A reality check certainly is needed.
The world I live in is suffering the highest
rates of habitat loss and ecosystem degradation for 65 million years,
a corresponding mass erosion of biodiversity, and the destruction
of more sustainable forms of human societies. This is caused by
exponential increases in consumption and the concentration of power
in the hands of trans-national corporations.
The same corporations spend billions of dollars
a year on advertising to persuade people their happiness depends
on buying more of their products. And, just in case any of these
consumers get worried that their materialist lifestyles are contributing
to global destruction, they also spend a few millions window-dressing
their activities to show that they are greener than the other guys.
Don’t kid yourself: business is more worried about promoting a better
‘investment climate’ than addressing actual climate change, more
concerned to shape its ‘operating environment’ than with caring
for the natural environment.
Your approach seems to be ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’. You
assume we have already lost. You also argue that it’s better the
devil you know. The trouble with such Faustian pacts is that they
tend to cost more than was originally bargained for. The political
and environmental costs of legitimising corporate unsustainability
are trashed ecosystems, exploited peoples, disempowered voices of
protest and entrenched corporate hegemony.
Voices of protest need your support, not
dismissal for being unrealistic. A realistic response to corporate
domination would be to make business accountable for its impact.
The longer conservation organisations choose to be part of the business-dominated
establishment, rather than identified with the forces for social
and political protest and reform, the less hope we have for an environmentally
secure future.
Dear Marcus,
I fundamentally disagree with your last sentence.
We need to engage more, not less, with both corporates and consumers
for there to be any real change. Conservation needs to be integrated
into corporate policy and business practice for us to achieve an
environmentally secure future.
I don’t decry your approach. As I keep saying, lobbying
has a role; of course it does. But do you genuinely believe that
the spectrum of effort across the environmental movement should
be reduced to the single route of protest?
It is simply not the case that your way is exclusively,
morally right and that everyone else’s is evil and wrong. Don’t
dismiss what you don’t like or understand just because that reflects
better on your more popularly accepted method. It is a great pity
that your perspective creates schisms rather than solidarity in
the NGO sector.
Of course greenwash occurs, but ultimately it is
in nobody’s interests: it will damage NGOs’ reputations, alienate
their supporters, make other companies less likely to work with
them and, most importantly, undermine their work.
FFI has chosen a hard route. Building genuine corporate
partnerships is complex and time-consuming. It involves a process
of understanding perspectives and drivers, agreeing aims and ground
rules, developing methods and management, measuring delivery and
impact. We offer an extended hand to those willing to look hard
at their own practices and commit to change. If we can get these
partnerships right, then they may be among the most important means
available for delivering sustainable change.
I believe that you and I have shared motivations:
a profound and grave concern for the future of our planet, and a
recognition of the power and influence of the private sector. We
all have roles to play, so let’s get on with it.
Dear Mark
Your misrepresent my position to cover up
the weaknesses of your own. The point is not whether we should dialogue
with corporations, but how we can do so without giving them green
cover behind which they can hide their ecological crimes and so
avoid real change. You admit that greenwash occurs, thus conceding
the issue we were asked to debate.
What I have argued for is a more principled
approach, which requires: the direct involvement of impacted communities
and peoples; transparent audits of the real impact of corporate
activity; solidarity with, not scorn for, those who protest; and
up-front commitments from corporations to adopt real, binding standards
– especially to respect human rights and protected areas.
Other conservation organisations have already
learned these lessons. For example, when the secretariat of the
World Conservation Union (IUCN) announced its ‘partnership’ with
the mining industry at the World Summit on Sustainable Development
[in 2002] many IUCN members were outraged. The mining companies
were being offered green credentials without having to make any
commitments to change.
The IUCN secretariat had to back-peddle.
First, it renamed the partnership process a ‘dialogue’. Then it
ruled that further dialogue would be conditional on the mining industry
committing itself to dealing with the damage caused by past and
current mines, and to working with indigenous peoples. This is good
news, but more needs to be done to stop ‘greenwash’.
It remains to be seen whether the large conservation
organisations – many of them, like FFI, members of IUCN – will adopt
a similarly principled approach to dialogues and partnerships with
corporations. In my view, they cannot afford to do otherwise.
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