NGOs and activists play a major role in keeping industry in line, but sometimes aim at the wrong targets
NGOs and activists play a major role in keeping industry in line, but sometimes aim at the wrong targets
Gaining ever-greater influence amid heightened global consciousness, non-governmental organisations have become a powerful and important force on the business landscape for heavy industry.
The ideals that NGOs espouse directly contribute to corporate social responsibility efforts. Often, though, NGOs come under attack for the means by which they develop their political leverage.
One oft-cited example, the “battle of Brent Spar”, caught Greenpeace overestimating the contents of a decommissioned oil storage buoy in the North Sea Brent oilfield. Greenpeace waged a successful international media campaign, forcing Shell to pursue on-shore disposal, but later suffered damage to its reputation.
“Greenpeace was morally right and won the campaign but lost the war in some ways,” says Gavin Hayman, director of campaigns for UK-based Global Witness.
But the coercive technique of naming and shaming is perfectly legitimate, Hayman argues, provided the investigations are independently verified and offer companies a first opportunity to respond before publication. “All we have is our reputation. If we get something wrong, these corporations with huge amounts of money will sue us to pieces,” he says.
But critics argue that even the best advocacy-oriented NGOs such as Global Witness, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, often suffer from tunnel vision. They can disproportionately single out a handful of deep-pocketed western companies, for example, while focusing less on competitors and government-owned companies in emerging countries where standards are lower.
The NGOs are doing a great deal of invaluable work, but they continue to oversimplify, says Daniel Litvin of the sustainability consulting company Critical Resource. “It’s a less exciting campaign to say ‘this problem results from a mix of issues and balances of responsibility’.”
It’s a charge both Global Witness and Amnesty International vehemently deny. “That’s a classic company argument,” Hayman says. “Don’t pick on us; it’s the government.”
Hayman points to a September 2009 report issued by Global Witness showing a major discrepancy between oil revenues declared by the Sudanese government in Khartoum and those provided by the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. He also cites a July 2009 report linking American banking institutions to corrupt officials in the oil-rich nation of Equatorial Guinea as further evidence of the NGO’s even-handedness.
Nevertheless, it remains the case that maximum leverage does lie in going after the big western players – some of which happen to be the best behaved in industry.
Amnesty International’s Shanta Martin, a senior policy adviser to the extractive industries, cites her work with Oxfam Australia, bringing junior mining companies to task in the Philippines. Yes, focusing on large companies is legitimate, Martin says, because they have the largest number of operations and cultivate influential relationships with governments.
Deny and avoid
“Far too often, corporate entities maintain a deny and avoid approach to civil society attention, or at the other extreme, a slick PR approach that does not reflect the reality of the impacts of corporate operations on local communities or the environment,” Martin says.
She points to a raft of press releases issued in a single week to make her point. All involve human rights violations, an expansive term implying corporate legal liabilities in issues linked to violations of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.
“We have to have a regulatory framework complemented by voluntary processes,” Martin says. “Voluntary processes in themselves are not enough.”
In the interim, the best prescription for companies is to engage communities and governments, and to do so by working ever more closely with NGOs.
International advocacy NGOs such as Amnesty and Global Witness do not enter into partnerships with industry but do generally try to advise companies on proper due diligence when going into conflict zones.
Conducting due diligence is especially important when working with local NGOs that purport to represent the communities but often are no more than an individual with a fax machine and internet access. “Why shouldn’t so-called NGOs be nothing less than shysters?” asks John O’Reilly, a former CSR manager at BP. “Companies that seek dialogue and have patience will be able to discern who the credible people are.”
Another option is to work with conservation organisations such as WWF to establish no-go exploration zones, or environmental compensation schemes such as the World Conservation Union’s (IUCN) Business and Biodiversity Offset Programme.
“Some say you can’t compensate for extinction and that that puts some resources off-limits,” says Joshua Bishop, chief economist at IUCN. But, he adds: “We’re getting better at quantification, which makes it possible to ask the question.”