The Sky is Not the Limit: - Carbon Trade Watch

2.5 NGO Co-optationFurthermore, corporate culture ishypnotising environmental nongovernmentalorganisations (NGOs)with “multi-stakeholder” dialogues. Bigbusiness has shaped itself into humanform and become a ‘stakeholder’ insociety. Part of the illusion of the‘corporate citizen’ is to enlist the helpof friendly NGOs in corporateactivities, thus projecting theperception of credibility. Corporationshave advocated that environmentalNGOs should be the verifiers of theirreductions. AndrewErtel, president ofEvolution Markets,suggests that such anNGO could be NatureConservancy or theEnvironmental DefenseFund. 1 This is alucrative opportunity forNGOs. In 1997 NatureConservancy receivedUS $1,285,245 incorporate contributions making themthe 8th largest recipient of corporatefunding that year. 2 The conflict ofinterest over verifying the emissions ofthe companies who are both payingyou to do so, and providing generalfunding for your organisation isobvious.However it is not just conservativeenvironmental NGOs that have beenneutralised by corporate strategies. Atthe original Earth Summit, the NGOGlobal Forum produced an alternativetreaty, which was designed to guidethe official Rio Declarations. In it theystated strongly that the climatenegotiators should, “avoid anyemission trading schemes which onlysuperficially address climate changeproblems, perpetuate or worseninequities hidden behind the problem,or have negative a ecological impact.” 3However after Kyoto, the large NGOs,who had been part of the creation ofthis alternative treaty in Rio, began tocompromise their firm stand againstemissions trading. By COP-6 in 2000,“There are many reasonswhy environmental NGOs arecompromising theirpositions, but the mostdangerous is an acceptanceof the dominance ofcorporate culture and thesubsequent failure to provideany challenge to thisapproach.”even more politically critical groupslike Friends of the Earth had changedtheir position on trading to a requestthat a 20% limit be imposed upon itsuse. Eight months later, pressstatements from Friends of the EarthInternational heralded the Bonnagreement as a “new hope for thefuture”, with the mood in theconference centre described as“euphoric” 4 . This when no concretelimits were placed upon the use ofemissions trading and the deal theydescribed as “junk” in COP-6 was abetter deal than the one agreed to inBonn. 5Two years later inJohannesburg at theWorld Summit forSustainableDevelopment,Greenpeace and theWorld BusinessCouncil forSustainableDevelopment(WBCSD) made a joint declaration onclimate change urging governments tomove forward. This was despite thefact that the WBCSD still does notnecessarily endorse implementation ofthe 1997 Kyoto Protocol, in sharpcontrast to the stated aims ofGreenpeace. At the Earth Summit in1992, Greenpeace and the WBSCDwere ‘fighting like cats and dogs.” 6However ten years later they stood onthe same platform even without asubstantial common vision of wheregovernments should move forward to.There are many reasons whyenvironmental NGOs arecompromising their positions, but themost dangerous is an acceptance ofthe dominance of corporate cultureand the subsequent failure to provideany challenge to this approach. Thishas led to a situation wherecorporations no longer need to lobbyintensively as they have in the past.Big business’ interests have now beenplaced at the heart of politicalnegotiations.17