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The Big Story rio+20 Eight Great Greenwashers The Rio+20 agenda isn’t hijacking itself. Here, in no particular order, are some of the organizations that are determined to seize the controls by twisting the language of sustainability to suit their own plans. Compiled and written by Danny Chivers with illustrations by Stephen Munday. Royal Dutch Shell – working while you sleep How it wants to be seen: ‘We are working to produce cleaner energy, to create social benefits, and to integrate social and environmental concerns into the way we do business.’ How it behaves: Like an exterminator who pledges to solve your infestation problem by cutting down the number of rats that he’s releasing secretly into your house each night. Core business: Getting oil and gas out of the ground. Shell pumps over three million barrels of oil equivalent per day. Earlier this year, it was the first foreign company to sign a gas-fracking contract in China. It’s also aiming to be the first company to drill offshore in vulnerable Arctic habitats and is trying to open two massive new tar sands mine extensions in Canada in the face of fierce legal challenges from First Nations communities. Tar sands are a kind of oily mud which requires highly disruptive, polluting and energyintensive extraction methods. Burning the Canadian tar sands would use up 12 per cent of humanity’s remaining carbon dioxide ‘allowance’, taking us a big step closer to runaway climate chaos.5 Fig leaves and window dressing: Shell fielded a speaker at the pre-Rio Planet Under Pressure environmental science conference in London this March. Energy advisor Martin Haigh explained how Shell was preparing for a (distant) sustainable future by investing in biofuels and carbon capture. His words were somewhat pre-empted when two members of the audience invaded the stage at the start of his talk, holding up a banner reading ‘No More Greenwash’. Hopes for Rio+20: Shell is part of Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD), which is pushing for voluntary measures rather than environmental regulation and which holds that new technology should be one of the most important factors in creating a ‘green economy’. Key source: Indigenous Environmental Network and UK Tar Sands Network, Get the Shell out of the Tar Sands ienearth.org no-tar-sands.org 2 0 ● N ew I n t e r nat i o nal i s t ● J U N E 2 012
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Monsanto – genetically modified greenwash How it wants to be seen: ‘Producing more. Conserving more. Improving lives. That’s sustainable agriculture. And that’s what Monsanto is all about.’ How it behaves: Like a comic book baddie adding mystery contaminants to your water supply – and then asking you to pay them for the trouble. Core business: Monsanto is the world’s biggest producer of genetically modified (GM) seeds. GM crops come with a long list of promises which they rarely deliver – a major independent study looked at 13 years of GM crop use in the US, and found that GM soybeans and maize had produced yields no greater – and in many cases, lower – than conventional crops. At the same time, they had led to the far higher use of pesticides and herbicides, and the development of resistant ‘super’ strains of pests and weeds. But GM crops allow a small number of powerful companies unprecedented control over the world’s food supply – just six companies (including Monsanto) control the patents for all genetically modified food crops. 6 Fig leaves and window dressing: Monsanto claims to be doing its bit for climate change adaptation by developing ‘climate ready’ crops, which will be resistant to drought, flooding, extreme temperatures and so on. In reality, these are usually strains which have already been improved by farmers over generations of careful breeding, and then appropriated, changed very slightly and patented by Monsanto for sale back to those same farmers. Hopes for Rio+20: Monsanto – both through direct lobbying and via industry groups such as CropLife International – will be pushing for an acceptance of the ‘need’ for high-tech crops (or ‘precision agriculture’) in any Rio agreement, and trying to stamp on references to the benefits of small-scale farming and technology transfer. Key source: La Via Campesina and others Combating Monsanto viacampesina.org N ew I n t e r nat i o nal i s t ● J U N E 2 012 ● 21

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The Big Story rio+20

Eight Great Greenwashers

The Rio+20 agenda isn’t hijacking itself. Here, in no particular order, are some of the organizations that are determined to seize the controls by twisting the language of sustainability to suit their own plans. Compiled and written by Danny Chivers with illustrations by Stephen Munday.

Royal Dutch Shell – working while you sleep

How it wants to be seen: ‘We are working to produce cleaner energy, to create social benefits, and to integrate social and environmental concerns into the way we do business.’

How it behaves: Like an exterminator who pledges to solve your infestation problem by cutting down the number of rats that he’s releasing secretly into your house each night.

Core business: Getting oil and gas out of the ground. Shell pumps over three million barrels of oil equivalent per day. Earlier this year, it was the first foreign company to sign a gas-fracking contract in China. It’s also aiming to be the first company to drill offshore in vulnerable Arctic habitats and is trying to open two massive new tar sands mine extensions in Canada in the face of fierce legal challenges from First Nations communities. Tar sands are a kind of oily mud which requires highly disruptive, polluting and energyintensive extraction methods. Burning the Canadian tar sands would use up 12 per cent of humanity’s remaining carbon dioxide ‘allowance’, taking us a big step closer to runaway climate chaos.5

Fig leaves and window dressing: Shell fielded a speaker at the pre-Rio Planet Under Pressure environmental science conference in London this March. Energy advisor Martin Haigh explained how Shell was preparing for a (distant) sustainable future by investing in biofuels and carbon capture. His words were somewhat pre-empted when two members of the audience invaded the stage at the start of his talk, holding up a banner reading ‘No More Greenwash’.

Hopes for Rio+20: Shell is part of Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD), which is pushing for voluntary measures rather than environmental regulation and which holds that new technology should be one of the most important factors in creating a ‘green economy’.

Key source: Indigenous Environmental Network and UK Tar Sands Network, Get the Shell out of the Tar Sands ienearth.org no-tar-sands.org

2 0 ● N ew I n t e r nat i o nal i s t ● J U N E 2 012

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