Environmental NGOS

NGOs presence at and participation in environmental governance can contribute to improved transparency and accountability and can be a check and balance on unbridled state sovereignty. NGOs have played an important role in contributing to the massive increase in international environmental legislation as well as revealing the inadequacies of the traditional legal process. NGOs have been effective in highlighting environmental problems and in mobilising public opinion and support for sustainable development. They create channels of communication, inform public opinion, help to create new international norms and contribute to the scientific debate. NGOs have become increasingly important in the monitoring and compliance of international environmental agreements, often drawing public and government attention to instances of non-compliance and placing pressure on governments and corporate interest. Studies suggest that NGOs have been able to influence the content of environmental agreements and practice on particular issues. Stairs and Taylor (1992) for example, examine the role of NGOs in protection of the oceans, concluding that NGOs have been effective and influential in that regime. Elliott (1994) argues that NGOs were important in the rejection by governments of the Anarctic minerals agreement and the subsequent negotiation of an environmental protocol to the Antarctic Treaty. Benedict (1991) draw attention to the influence of NGOs on the Montreal Protocol negotiations, suggesting that NGO participation is an important factor in getting better environmental agreements. Tolbert explores the ways in which NGOs have sought to influence the climate change negotiations, arguing that their impact is not to be underestimated and is likely to be quite substantial (1991, p. 108).

Views are mixed on the impact and influence of NGOs; however, the knowledge and information sharing of NGOs clearly contributes to awareness raising. Despite some tensions among NGOs the global forum process strengthens networks and information exchange among a range of groups with environmental concerns, especially those from the south. This further development of global civil society, as something different from the influence of specific NGOs on the state centric policy making is one potential important outcome. On the other hand, Preston argues that access does not necessarily translate into influence elaborating on the effect of NGOs (1994) and that they are effectively outflanked by the corporate sector. Princen suggests that the potential influence of NGOs is strengthened because of their ability to position themselves within both top down and bottom up approaches to international environmental policy making (1994, p. 38) thus, in effect, linking the global and the local. NGOs can play an important role in offering alternative approaches and in broadening the horizons of the debate; they can bring a global perspective to negotiations and debate and are often the only groups talking about the long term view, or bringing up difficult concepts such as the rights of future generations (1984, p. 173). Banuri argues that NGOs have begun to articulate a genuinely alternative vision of development (1993, p. 58). Active NGO participation …..is playing an increasingly important role in a constructive vigilance concerning human values and unmet needs. In this view, t hen, NGOs should be conceived as not only being non governmental bodies but as providing a voice for grassroots movements (Gudynas, 1989, p. 199).

The emphasis on democratisation is a central theme in global civil society. Barnes argues that the international NGO phenomena provides the cutting edge of the common interest (1984, p. 175). NGO participation in international affairs buttresses democracy but questions are raised, however, about how best to understand the representative nature of NGOs. Some question the claims to representation and therefore participation on the grounds that NGOs are not for elected or necessarily accountable to the peoples whom they claim to represent. This is an observation which rather skirts the fact that a substantial proportion of the world’s governments are not freely elected either and election techniques are not as accountable as it was meant by theory. As a note in the Harvard Law Review observes, participatory rights at intergovernmental organisations are meaningful primarily for well organised, well finance and well informed NGOs (Anon., 1991a, p.1589). Yet it may be that it is the voice of new and minority and non traditional NGOs that the international system most needs to hear to solve global problems which are increasingly international, interdependent and non responsive to traditional power politics. The importance of global civil society lies not just in its potential to improve the participatory or democratic nature of environmental governance, in which case the goal is better policy making, but also in opening a political space for t he expression of marginalised voices and those for whom environmental degradation is symptomatic of a broader structural oppression and silencing.

The continued emphasis on growth as a fundamental principle in the world political economy and as a precondition for sustainable development and a successful measure of it, precludes any debate about the need for an intelligent restraint of growth. William Rees argues that the pursuit of sustainable development should force a reconsideration of the entire material growth ethic, the central pillar of industrial society (1990, p.21), what Sanders calls the ’gospel of export-led growth’ (1990, p. 396). Sustainable development legitimises the growth ethic. However critics argue that growth is not the solution to poverty or environmental degradation. Sachs suggests that the argument that growth will alleviate poverty is the single most important pretension of the development ideology (1991, p. 254). The maximising of economic growth does not ensure that the benefits will be equitably distributed (1991, p. 192). There is now a substantial body of evidence to support the proposition that unrestrained economic growth is incompatible with environmental stability and balance. World economic growth, is becoming more uneven rather than less and is showing signs of slowing - a shrinking world market with declining terms of trade will serve to accelerate environmental degradation as nations seek to maximise agricultural, mining and other commodity exports in a losing effort to stay even. The objection is that poverty rather than its underlying causes is cast as the problem, which makes it easier to hold poor people responsible for environmental degradation and to require action on their part. Further, it defines unsustainable development as primarily a developing country problem. Yet, rich countries use more resources and emit more waste than poor ones. It is critics suggest, therefore too simplistic a view of the relationship between poverty and environmental degradation and one which tends to gloss over any recognition that poverty is structurally determined (Redclift, 1984, p. 59). Reliance on GNP as a measure of sustainable growth is also viewed with considerable discomfort. To measure an economy on indicators such as GNP is like trying to fly a jumbo jet with only one gauge on the instrument panel (Henderson, 1992). GNP does not measure external costs such as environmental degradation or resource depletion. The results of timber felling, for example, are usually treated as a net contribution to capital growth, even when it might lead to long term deforestation and loss of resources. Indeed it is more likely to advance the argument that a move to environmentally sustainable practices could actually be accompanied by a decrease in GNP. There has been a failure to emphasis on growth and quantity has overridden the emphasis on quality, or the view that growth supports development which then supports more growth is accepted without any serious questioning. What is required in this critical perspective, is a reclaiming of a quality rather than quantity driven concept. Some scholars prefer the term eco-development although the phrases has been used in a variety of ways from a planning concept which emphasises local and regional input to an ethically committed, integrated approach which explicitly incorporates social an d cultural processes, and which is shaped by t hose processes and basic human needs, rather than assuming that those needs will automatically be fulfilled by sustainable development.

References:
Stairs, K., and Taylor, P., (1992) Non governmental organisations and the legal protection of the oceans: a case study in Andrew Hurrell and Benedict Kingsbury, The Intl politics of the Environment (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

Elliott, L., (1994) International environmental Politics: protecting the Antarctic (London: Macmillan)

Benedick, R., (1991), Ozone Diplomacy: new directions in safeguarding the planet (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ Press)

Tolbert, D., (1991), Global climate change and the role of international non governmental organisations, in International Law and Global Climate Change (London: Graham and Trotman)

Preston, S., (1994) Electronic global networking and the NGO movement: the 1992 Rio Summit and beyond

Princen, T., (1994) NGOs: creating a niche in environmental diplomacy in Thomas Princen and Matthias finger, environmental NGOs in World Politics: linking the global and the local (London: Routledge)

Banuri, T., (1993) The landscape of diplomatic conflicts in Wolfgang Sachs, Global Ecology: a new arena of political conflict (London: Zed Books)

Gudynas, E., (1989) the challenge to recover El Dorado, Transnational Associations, No 4, pp. 197

Rees, W., (1990) the ecology of sustainable development, The Ecologist, vol. 20, no 1, Jan/Feb pp 18-23

Barnes, J. (1984) non governmental org: increasing the global perspective, Marine Policy, vol 8, no 2, April pp. 171

Sachs, W., (1991) environment and development: the story of a dangerous liasion, The Ecologist, vol. 21, no 6, Nov/Dec, pp 252

Sanders, J. W. (1990) Global ecology and world economy: collision course or sustainable future, Bulletin of Peace Proposals, vol 24, no 1 Dec pp. 395