Sharon Beder

There are growing tensions within and between environmental groups all over the world over the extent to which they should align themselves with governments and private firms. The Hong Kong based Friends of the Earth group recently withdrew from the Friends of the Earth International after disputes over corporate sponsorship. In Europe the Greens are torn with internal strife over strategies and philosophies. In Australia the decision by two of the major environmental groups, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and The Wilderness Society (TWS), to endorse the Labour Party in past elections was criticised within the environmental movement. Less contentious but still a matter of some controversy has been the involvement of environmental groups in the Government's "Ecologically Sustainable Development" working groups.

In each of these situations environmentalists have argued over campaign strategies which involve becoming aligned in some way with the existing power structure in order to influence decision-making from within. This paper will examine the inability of environmentalists to agree on these issues and especially their inability to "agree to differ". It will look at the strategies available to environmentalists, the shortcomings of each.

The Green Spectrum

The common way of characterizing differences within the environmental movement is as a continuous spectrum from light to dark green.

Light green environmentalists have a whole range of PR-strategies available to them from activism to negotiation. However, in practice for groups which want a good ongoing working relationship with policy makers to facilitate negotiation, activism becomes less of an option because it involves confrontation which does not sit well with the mutual trust required for that relationship to work. Similarly, the power of groups who negotiate with governments depend on their ability to influence voters and this requires respectability and moderateness which many types of activism destroy.

On the other hand dark green environmentalists are more willing to confront corporate and bureaucratic power and unwilling to refrain from activism in order to foster the relations necessary for negotiation. Moreover they are generally ideologically opposed to negotiation and the compromises that it involves and unlikely to be able to conduct successful negotiations because of the lack of shared goals and assumptions between them and the policy-makers.

There are growing tensions within and between environmental groups all over the world over the extent to which they should align themselves with governments and private firms. The Hong Kong based Friends of the Earth group recently withdrew from the Friends of the Earth International after disputes over corporate sponsorship. In Europe the Greens are torn with internal strife over strategies and philosophies. In Australia the decision by two of the major environmental groups, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and The Wilderness Society (TWS), to endorse the Labour Party in past elections was criticised within the environmental movement. Less contentious but still a matter of some controversy has been the involvement of environmental groups in the Government's "Ecologically Sustainable Development" working groups.

In each of these situations environmentalists have argued over campaign strategies which involve becoming aligned in some way with the existing power structure in order to influence decision-making from within. This paper will examine the inability of environmentalists to agree on these issues and especially their inability to "agree to differ". It will look at the strategies available to environmentalists, the shortcomings of each.

The Green Spectrum

The common way of characterizing differences within the environmental movement is as a continuous spectrum from light to dark green.

Light green environmentalists have a whole range of PR-strategies available to them from activism to negotiation. However, in practice for groups which want a good ongoing working relationship with policy makers to facilitate negotiation, activism becomes less of an option because it involves confrontation which does not sit well with the mutual trust required for that relationship to work. Similarly, the power of groups who negotiate with governments depend on their ability to influence voters and this requires respectability and moderateness which many types of activism destroy.

On the other hand dark green environmentalists are more willing to confront corporate and bureaucratic power and unwilling to refrain from activism in order to foster the relations necessary for negotiation. Moreover they are generally ideologically opposed to negotiation and the compromises that it involves and unlikely to be able to conduct successful negotiations because of the lack of shared goals and assumptions between them and the policy-makers.