File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_2000/anarchy-list.0008, message 294


Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 11:52:01 -0400
From: Chuck0 <chuck-AT-tao.ca>
Subject: [i-news] corporations think about taking non-govermental orgs seriously



 http://www.earthtimes.org/aug/economicdevelopmenttakingngosaug24_00.htm
   
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
By C. GERALD FRASER
 Earth Times News Service 

TIMES SQUARE--a legendary quarter-mile, about five feverish blocks long.
An asphalt canyon with two parallel thoroughfares whose vehicular
traffic--cars, cabs, buses, bicycles, and trucks--bolts southward on a
summer day as pedestrians--the ambitious, the curious, and the
homeless--tread sidewalks too narrow for their number.

Those on foot consume corporation-sponsored sounds, colors, and blinking
images that ricochet off the senses: Drink this. Buy this. Wear this.
MTV,
NASDAQ, Conde Nast, Virgin Megastore, ABC-TV, ESPN, World Wrestling
Federation, Disney, Sony -all right here. And on the sidewalk that abuts
the construction site of "Reuters International New York Headquarters,"
the neighborhood's eternal spectacle included, one afternoon, a vagrant,
hair unkempt and naked to his waist, who sat on a box and held a sign on
his lap: "One dollar to tell me off."

Yet, in the heart of Times Square, at 1501 Broadway on the 27th floor,
somber proceedings took place recently at the world's fifth largest
public
relations agency, Edelman Public Relations Worldwide. Oblivious to
street-level tumult, a half dozen "respected leaders" discussed
nongovernmental organizations at a conference entitled, "Taking NGOs
Seriously."

Why in mid-2000 the concern with groups traditionally dismissed as
"do-gooders"? One answer may be that the aborted World Trade
Organization's meeting in Seattle last November inspired many
institutions
to consider steps necessary to squelch NGOs. Giant corporations had a
wake-up call driven home to them when the do gooders and labor unions
shut
down the conference of the world's most powerful nations. The
corporations
seem now to have concluded that by whatever means necessary, honey or
vinegar, nongovernmental organizations have got to be dealt with.
Another
high-powered public relations agency, Burson Marsteller, according to
documents on the Internet, is gearing up to help corporations cope with
NGOs. It has published a "Guide to the Seattle Meltdown: A Compendium of
Activists at the WTO [World Trade Organization] Ministerial." In a
letter
to corporate clients, the agency said the activists's "victory" at the
WTO
meeting will lead to "heightened visibility" and "enhanced fund-raising
capability." The "guide" also said: "Seattle was not an anomaly and the
consistent anti-corporate message of virtually all groups who
participate
there in November is not a temporary phenomenon. Many have traditionally
highlighted alleged corporate misconduct in mass mail fund raising
campaigns. More recently, some environmental groups have resorted to
targeting corporations for contributions in return for suspending public
ire." The list comprised the names of 49 NGOs (but did not specify the
groups "targeting corporations").

And a significant corporation-friendly entity, Britain's authoritative
Financial Times, printed a headline over its July 11 "Management
Viewpoint" column that said: "Be prepared for the NGO threat," and the
subhead added, "Companies should be more assertive when dealing with
lobby
groups."

Or, as Michael K. Deaver of the Edelman agency said: "Companies that
want
to protect their global reputation (and stock price) need to learn NGO
concerns and begin a conversation with them. It needs to be done
one-on-one; this process is too important to be left to a company's
trade
association." Deaver, an Edelman vice chairman was formerly President
Reagan's White House deputy chief of staff. In addition to their rout of
the WTO, another reason for taking them seriously is that there are
26,000
international NGOs, four times as many as there were 30 years ago. In
the
US, according to the Economist magazine, there are two million NGO
members. And they are making a difference.

The Worldwatch Institute's Curtis Runyan, an observer of NGOs, said,
"Many
groups have proved more adept than governments and business at
responding
to social and environmental problems. In Bangladesh, for example, a
child
is more likely to learn to read with the assistance of one of the 5,000
NGOs working on literacy programs than through a state school or
organization."

Runyan cites as an example of NGO effectiveness, the 200-NGO-member
Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition. In 1988, using data collected at
Greenpeace's Antarctic monitoring station, the coalition scuttled
ratification of a treaty that would have permitted mining in that
region.
The NGOs wanted --and got -- a world park.

For its recent meeting in New York, the Edelman agency assembled five
men
and one woman it termed "respected leaders." They constitute Edelman's
"International Advisory Board" which meets at least once a year. The six
are: Thomas McLarty, a former chief of staff for President Clinton; Ann
McLaughlin, a secretary of labor under President Reagan; Robert D.
Hormats, a Goldman Sachs vice chairman; Horst Teltschik, a national
security advisor to former German chancellor Helmut Kohl; Douglas Hurd,
a
United Kingdom foreign secretary under Margaret Thatcher and John Major;
and the chairman and chief executive officer of the Bank of East Asia,
David K.P. Li.

The board invited Barbara Shailor, director of international affairs for
the AFL-CIO, and Tony Long, director of the World Wildlife Fund's
European
Policy Office, to represent NGOs.

Coinciding with the meeting, Edelman announced results of a June 2000
telephone survey of 500 US and 100 European and Asian "opinion elites,"
ages 35 to 64. In a news release on the survey, Edelman said: "The
consensus was that NGOs have filled the information vacuum that exists
due
to low trust and confidence in government and business, therefore giving
NGOs greater credibility."

Edelman's release also said, "One of the most poignant facts that the
survey illustrated is that NGOs dominate over government, corporations
and
the media in terms of trust when dealing with the issues of environment,
human rights and health care."

"By exploiting politically correct' thinking, NGOs are perceived by
consumers to be fighting a crusade. Their effectiveness stems from
taking
their message directly to the consumer, by having a clear agenda and by
moving at Internet speed," says the Edelman release.

At the Edelman meeting, as reported on the Internet, Edelman's McLarty,
recommended that corporations sustain engagement with NGOs "before the
crisis is critical," and seek out NGOs -- particularly the
"under-represented" ones. Comments sometimes had a preachy tinge.
McLarty,
for example, suggested NGOs be open and transparent, "declare victory
gracefully," and respect democratic institutions. Teltschik said, "NGOs
are proof of defects in politics. If you overcome those defects, NGOs
will
lose influence and power, they will become reasonable and more ready to
compromise. We can't accept very often their self-righteousness."

And in a dig at NGOs operating in their biggest arena, the United
Nations,
Britain's Hurd remarked that a United Nations official said the UN "was
now having to distinguish more clearly between those NGOs who want to
make
a point and debate and those NGOs who want to make a difference in
policy."

In the partly verbatim Internet report of the conference none of the
"respected leaders" alluded to the fact that corporations are
profit-driven and NGOs are issue oriented. While board members discussed
how to confront NGOs, Tony Long of WWF explained that NGOs talk about
implementation. "Free market principles are showing themselves incapable
of properly valuing and accounting for the cost of natural resources,
for
environmental pollution, and for ecological services provided by nature
to
societies." And he added that trickle down theory "is not borne out by
the
facts." Long's WWF, known as the World Wildlife Fund in the US (with two
million members) and elsewhere as the World Wide Fund for Nature, is the
world's largest conservation organization with 3,000 employees and
representatives in 100 countries.

Shailor, of the 13 million member AFL-CIO, discussed NGOs as
"respectable"
and "extreme." By definition, NGOs are "anti-corporate," she said. "We
need to be able to find a way to work with you."

Steve Lombardo is president and chief executive officer of Strategy One,
Edelman's research arm, which was responsible for the NGO survey. He
believed "NGOs are powered by media coverage." He said, "NGOs have taken
their case straight to the consumer. Corporations need to change to win.
They need to adopt strategies and tactics that are similar to NGOs. They
need to have a frank and open dialogue with NGOs and consumers. NGOs are
seen as bringing credible information, not out to make money?on a
mission.
They play offense all the time." Runyan, of the Washington-based
Worldwatch Institute, in a telephone interview, agreed that "NGOs can
affect public opinion and how corporations are perceived. The public
hasn't quite figured out," he said, "how to control corporations and
governments aren't willing to do it."

He has also said, "I would hope that corporations would be more vigilant
in opening dialogue, if that's what they're calling for. If they're
talking about transparency and open debate, they should be doing that.
All
too often the issues that NGOs are fighting about are issues that have
been obscured by corporate policies: not informing consumers that their
clothing is coming from sweatshop textile labor, or that the diamonds
they
are buying are coming from rebel encampments in Sierra Leone [and]
tearing
the country apart. Transparency is one of the most powerful consumer
tools."

A senior associate at the Carneige Endowment, Ann Florini has observed
NGOs for several years. She said, "no major corporation can think they
will avoid contact with NGOs." Florini believes that corporations have
to
recognize "the triple bottom line: You don't just make money for your
shareholders, you also have environmental and social responsibilities
that
it is reasonable for society to hold you to. I think there is a strong
feeling in the NGO community as a whole that government regulations,
both
national and international, don't go nearly far enough in pressing
corporations to meet the standards that they ought to be meeting."
Florini
cited McDonald's, the ubiquitous fast food behemoth, as a corporation
that
has worked closely with an NGO, the Environmental Defense Fund. EDF
persuaded McDonald's to switch to less environmentally-unfriendly
packaging, she said, and EDF has gone out of its way to find
corporations
to work with.

"I think just about every corporation that sells any kind of product to
the public is liable to find itself the target of a campaign for meeting
social and environmental standards," she said.

Echoing a theme of the Edelman meeting, Florini said NGOs's sole source
of
power is the credibility of their information. Corporations need to work
with responsible NGOs to protect themselves from nut cases, Florini
says.
If corporations can figure out who is responsible they can deal
successfully with NGOs. She noted, however, that some corporations are
fighting NGOs, forcing them into court by lawsuits, "slap suits," which
are intended primarily to harass.

Perhaps to insulate themselves from such legal attacks, the NGO
community
is shaping up, Florini said, adopting self-monitoring procedures and
codes
of conduct. Codes are becoming prevalent especially among the
humanitarian
NGOs, such as CARE, working on major relief and aid projects.

Florini has written a book on NGOs, "The Third Force: The Rise of
Transnational Civil Society," to be published in October. What is
Edelman's next move? A spokesman, Martin Pearce, told the Earth Times
the
subject of NGOs is "very useful for our clients" and said, "We had quite
a
few requests to do subsequent sessions in European countries this fall
at
some point. We do believe it's a topical issue; you hear more and more
about it every day."

=====================
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