Change pose need for NGOs to do some radical rethinking

John Gummer, Guardian News Service, London

The sight at Cancun, Mexico, of campaigners from the World Development Movement and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) dancing with joy at the collapse of the world trade talks cast doubt on their judgment. It also raised again the question of their relevance and their role.

Since the Earth summit in Johannesburg a year ago, many environmental NGOs have been reflecting on their lack of success and the sense that their influence has significantly declined. Although governments and international organizations are now much more prepared to give them a chance to speak, they don't seem to accord them the same influence. It is as if their success at being included has happened just when their influence is on the wane.

What is more, that very success has proved difficult to handle -- for both sides. The UK's deputy prime minister, John Prescott, has always had difficulty with the independent posture of Friends of the Earth and has never been able wholly to reconcile that with their inclusion. Similar tensions have arisen over campaigners' opposition to governmental policy on multilateral investment rules.

The real problem, however, has been with the NGOs; the unaccustomed insider role they recognize as influential, but feel is counter-cultural.

The concern is exacerbated by a shift in media attention. The public has been wearied by scare stories. They accept the facts of ozone depletion, climate change, water shortage, and environmental degradation. They just don't want to be reminded of them -- so they're not news.

The old ways of campaigning aren't working, either. Greenpeace's stunts have to be ever more audacious if they are to catch the headlines. The media is much more cynical about these things than they were.

Yet publicity is necessary campaigning oxygen, and so the hunt is on for new ways of grabbing attention. If the general scare won't work, then the emphasis must be on the particular. The general wickedness of pollution will not get coverage, but a respected household name polluting a particular beauty spot will.

Slave labor is a no-no, but direct linkage between a major sports goods manufacturer and slave labor can be made to work. Oil companies endangering the third world won't make a story, but BP's pipeline in Turkey can still make good copy.

NGOs are therefore having to adjust to a world where many of their ideas have become mainstream and old campaigning techniques are no longer newsworthy. That is why we are seeing a radical rethink among the campaigning groups.

WWF is looking again at its whole way of working and the relationship between its national organizations and the center. Greenpeace has shaken up its international structure and chosen to concentrate upon a narrow range of issues. Friends of the Earth has developed a new and effective means of influence in its news service that is gaining a reputation for objectivity and accuracy that it would never have managed before.

There has not been quite the same soul-searching among development NGOs, although Oxfam, Christian Aid, Cafod and Save the Children are all aware of the need to face a media world where emaciated children and tortured adults no longer shock.

It is a world that is changing in other ways, too. The neo- conservative revolution in the U.S. has shattered the assumptions of the whole world. In the U.S., unilateralism has fundamentally changed the dynamics of NGOs, making them more inward-looking and altogether more focused on the internal political scene. They have largely retreated from a global role, and this has left a significant gap in worldwide campaigning.

This only adds to the uncertainty and feeling of powerlessness that afflicts the European NGOs. Refusing to go down the dead-end of anarchism and anti-globalization, they are finding it hard to carve out a new position that enables them to continue to influence government while still pressing a radical agenda.

This is indeed a crisis moment for NGOs. Yet there never was a time when a radical voice was so needed. NGOs must recover their spirits and sense of direction. The whole world has need of them now.

John Gummer MP was the UK's Conservative secretary of state for the environment from 1993-1997.