in, for instance, this magazine. They are actively pushing in the opposite direction.
boycotting those destructive logging firms). In other words, Greenpeace has agreed to try and enforce censorship within the NGO ‘community’ alongside Weyerhaeuser and other companies responsible for the destruction of millions of hectares of native forests. This is both astonishing and depressing.
I am thinking of ‘mainstream’ major players, widely considered central to ‘the environmental movement’ (tellingly, these players would in most cases be unlikely to want to see themselves as part of ‘the ecological movement’ or ‘the green movement’ at all), who are beholden now to technocratic, mechanised and instrumental thinking and who have lost touch with any sense that there might be a spiritual dimension to ecology, any sense that there might be an emotional, caring side to being green, any sense that there might be wisdom in Indigenous cultures that must be an essential part of our collective return to sanity, and any sense that there might be a fundamental incompatibility between industrial development and true sustainability.
They have lost, in short, any sense. And I think it’s time to name names.
Understanding how even an organisation like Greenpeace, so iconic for the green movement, could have ended up entering into such agreements is absolutely vital for understanding much that’s wrong with mainstream ‘environmental campaigning’, and why at present we can’t reassure ourselves that there really is a green movement!
It’s probably no great puzzle that an organisation that has become financially dependent on big polluting corporations (e.g.
It is time to radicalise the green movement
WWF) ends up supporting those corporations. But why does an organisation like Greenpeace, which does not depend on such corporate
I am thinking for instance of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF, previously the World Wildlife Fund), The Nature Conservancy and even some portions and actions of Greenpeace.
These are not democratic organisations; their members have very little control over them. We find it difficult nevertheless to think of them as not being on the side of the angels. But it appears to me as if they are acting in a corporate-friendly manner. The Nature Conservancy, for example, has seemingly been ‘captured’ by corporates on its ‘leadership council’ to such an extent that it has gone so far as to tacitly support drilling in the US’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And WWF, according to Global Witness, has ‘greenwashed’ the destruction of some of the world’s last intact forest ecosystems. Both organisations, along with certain others such as Conservation International, took up extremely dubious stances in the recent climate negotiations, effectively, it would appear, conniving with corporations engaged in land grabs.
As for Greenpeace, the picture is more complex: not by any means as resoundingly negative, but anyone unwilling to believe any ill of Greenpeace should look carefully at, for example, the current controversy surrounding the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA).
The CBFA (confidential, though thankfully leaked and published by Vancouver Media Co-op) actually contains provisions under which the participating NGOs (including Greenpeace) undertake to notify the participating corporations (including some notorious logging companies) if another NGO or campaign group makes a public statement contrary to the aims of the CBFA (e.g. encourages people to continue
(or government) funding – and which of course has a lot of staff with great integrity – end up watering down positions and entering into ‘stakeholder agreements’ condemned by many as corporate greenwashing? When such eco-pioneers as Greenpeace have somewhat lost their way, it is clear that it is time to regroup. Time to radicalise – which, etymologically, simply means to go back to our roots. We need, uncompromisingly, to seek to draw those ‘environmentalists’ who have lost their way back to the fold; we need to inspire them, and the citizens of the world (including ultimately even – yes – those who run its corporations) with a bold shared vision.
All those who want to reclaim and relaunch the green movement – who want to bring us together again, such that there actually is a green movement rather than just a huge gulf between the ‘corporate’ NGOs, the Green Party, the green direct action movement, etc., all pulling in different directions – need to ask what vision could bring us together again. We need to reconnect with each other. And one vital tool we could use to do so is Resurgence itself. Especially now that Resurgence includes the Ecologist, and that it is forging an innovative new and closer relationship with Friends of the Earth (see Craig Bennett’s article, page 54).
This important moment in the evolution of Resurgence – as a voice of ecologism – might just be a moment in which we could be brought together again.
Another key tool at this moment, I believe, is Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects, and her concept of the Great Turning that is needed
Issue 275
Resurgence & Ecologist
47
