Thirty Years of Creative Resistance - Friends of the Earth Australia

What makes these comments sadder in
hindsight is the fact that the link between
the Telstra sale and environmental funding
was always artificial and later revealed
as a ‘cynical political fraud’ by a senior
government adviser who said that the link
was created by Howard’s staffers to make
the sale more palatable.
The political trajectory of the Coalition’s
approach to the environment – that we ‘are
all environmentalists now’ and just need
to roll up our sleeves and get on with the
job of ecological restoration – included
re-casting the Peak Conservation
Organisation. This was reconstituted
as the NECF, the National Environment
Consultative Forum, with an expanded
membership of corporate funded and
‘non political’ organisations such as Keep
Australia Beautiful and Clean Up Australia.
With the election of the Howard
government, environment victories and
gains through ‘traditional’ methods of
lobbying the Federal Government became
increasingly elusive. Many groups
evaluated their campaign focus with
some, for example the Wilderness Society,
moving more towards investment-based
activism and targeting the companies
financing destruction of old growth forests.
Others, including the ACF, expanded their
contacts with the corporate sector, while
some such as World Wildlife Foundation
(WWF) and the Humane Society were
able to develop useful links with the new
government.
This period saw many of the larger
environmental NGOs increasingly
isolate themselves from broader social
movements. As they sought ‘unlikely
alliances’ with non-traditional partners
and closer co-operation with various
corporations, subtle political shifts became
apparent. This was not uniform and
certainly there were many exceptions to
this trend. But it is clear that there was a
pattern of increased collaboration between
Environmental NGOs and corporations
towards the end of the decade, a
development that raised many questions
about what environmental sustainability
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meant and how we might be able to
achieve it.
True to its political traditions, FoE was
deeply suspicious of the motivations of
some of the companies involved and the
actual ecological value of many of the
relationships forged during this period.
Both bilateral arrangements between
specific environment NGOs and particular
companies, and the broader use of NGOs
in verifying the environmental claims
of companies, were considered to be
problematic.
Journalist and commentator Bob Burton
noted in an edition of Chain Reaction that
focused on corporate engagement (#87)
“ … often the tension between NGO’s
rhetoric of accountability and transparency,
and the reality of passively engaging in
corporate processes led to divisive internal
conflicts resulting in the costly loss of staff
and volunteers. Where once, independent
campaigning would create conflicts with
corporations, engagement transfers the
conflict into and between NGOs.”
More pointedly, Jim Green commented in
the same edition that NGOs engaged in
close collaboration with large corporations
were actually “providing political cover for
corporate polluters”. On a simplistic level,
some in the movement could and did
dismiss FoE’s concerns as being about
‘old fashioned’ views of the corporate
sector. However, FoE’s assessment of
the dynamics that surfaced around the
issues of corporate engagement focused
on who the fundamental change agents in
society are. It recognised that whilst many
of those engaging had effectively decided
that power rested with corporations, many
others, who were more cautious about
engagement, saw power as ultimately
resting in the hands of communities. FoE
argued that primary alliances between
the environment movement and ‘change
agents’ needed to be firmly focussed on
community-based organisations.
While engagement can be seen as a
pragmatic choice in a time of limited
opportunity and hence just be considered
FoE 30 Years 52