Also on this page: [ Shell Oil in the Amazon ] . [ David's response to this sort of P.R. ]

{ taken from, & copyright by: DELTA No. 2, 7/7(/96) }

*** BOOK REVIEW ***

      To: FoE Groups and friends; From: Malini Mehra, FoE International

        "For your information.
        An excellent review of British journalist Andrew Rowell's book,
        Green Backlash, with important lessons for the direction of the
        environmental movement."

The backlash by industry and governments against the environmental movement was bound to happen. Until now, few realised the scale and extent to which the anti-environmental movement has grown, and just how effective it is.

Andrew Rowell's Green Backlash documents a rapidly growing international movement to counter environmentalists. For the first time, the violence, the deaths, the threats, and the organised global backlash against environmentalists has been drawn together in one volume. And it makes a chilling tale.

"The lessons learnt from the stories in this book are that with the collapse of communism, environmentalists are now increasingly being identified as a global scapegoat for threatening the vested interest of power: the triple engines of unrestricted corporate capitalism, right-wing political ideology and the nation state's protection of the status quo."

The backlash tracked from the US to the UK, Brazil, Ecuador, Malaysia, the South Pacific and India, involves multinational industry in collusion with the governments who benefit from the vast profits to be made at the expense of the environment. Add huge PR companies to the mix and a new web of "grassroots" coalitions and campaigners comprised of people whose jobs would be affected by environmental controls. The money, the power and the use of environmentalists' own tactics add up to an effective and lethal combination. The result? "What we find is that violence and intimidation are on the increase around the world against environmentalists," writes Rowell.

The themes and the tactics around the globe are similar, but one thing is clear: the less money the country has, and the poorer the people, the more deaths and violence there is. In the North, in the US and the UK, more sophisticated means are used to fight the environmentalists, with the PR machines and front groups. In the developing world, the authorities are less inclined to appear concerned and balanced, and the environmentalists more likely to be arrested, shot or 'disappeared'.

Rowell takes us through harrowing tales of company collusion with military regimes, such as Shell in Nigeria and Texaco in Ecuador. Always, the same trend emerges: where environmentalists are becoming effective in bringing world attention to an issue, such as Chico Mendes' fight for the Amazon, the fight for forests in Sarawak, Ken Saro-Wiwa in Nigeria, the road protestors in the UK, they are metwith increased violence. Government authorities either turn a blind eye to it, or actively participate by labelling the protestors 'violent' in order to sanction the use of violence against them.

Toward the end of the 1980's, with the threat of communism receding, the right wing movement in the United States began to realise they had a 'new' enemy to focus on: environmentalists. Effective environmental legislation in the US began to stop industry continuing its slash-and-burn attitude which it had been getting away with for decades. It was starting to cost them money.

Enter the Wise Use movement, headed by Ron Arnold, whose advice to the multinationals was not to fight environmentalists at a corporate level where the public would inevitably support the David rather than the Goliath. Rather, pitch up ordinary folk who were simply defending their own jobs, forming grassroots groups to counter the greenies at the their own level. The movement started with various legal bodies being set up to represent a multitude of industries to effectively lobby government against putting through environmental legislation.

"We know how to lobby better than they do and we've got coalitions that can overwhelm them. That's never happened to them before. It frightened them big time," commented Arnold after the Wise Use movement's first legislative victory which had been opposed by environmentalists.

In the late 1980's, Arnold went to Canada and was hired by McMillan Bloedel, the company clearcutting Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island. McMillan Bloedel was being targetted by environmentalists trying to stop the logging. Arnold told McMillan Bloedel to "give them [the coalitions of pro-logging citizens groups] the money. You stop defending yourselves, let them do it, and you get the hell out of the way. Because citizens groups have credibility and industries don't". Soon after, the first of many grassroots groups was formed, well-funded by the forestry industry.

In the UK, Rowell writes, there are two groups of campaigners who have suffered most from the state's attempts to silence them: anti-nuclear activists in the 1980's and the anti-roads protestors in the 1990's.

"Moreover, the state has attempted to demonise both sets of protesters, either as 'communists' in the case of anti-nuclear protestors or 'terrorists' and 'fascists' in the case of anti-road organisations. Incorrectly labelling people as communists, terrorists and fascists justifies a different response to that of a mere protestor. They can be deemed a threat to national security, whereas protestors are not. It can also vindicate violence, harassment and surveillance of them by the state as has happened with the anti-nuclear movement."

Rowell documents the past five years of grassroots road protesting in the UK, and the picture, never before seen as a whole, shows an official use of and increase in such violence and harrassment. The rising use of private security firms to defend roadbuilding contractors is at the heart of it, and there's little happening to stop it.

When we move to the developing world the story is far, far worse. The pressure on governments here is to pay back their debt: the ideal feeding ground for a multinational company whose greed for resources fits snugly with the governments' commitments to the World Bank. Environmental laws are either dropped or ignored, soldiers laid on to quell local protests from the peoples whose only crime is to live on the land where the resources are found. Forests, minerals and oil are the major resources which bring violence in these areas; and the more money to be made from the resource, the harsher the crackdown against the protestors.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in Nigeria, where nearly 2000 Ogoni people (2% of their total population) have died at the hands of the Nigerian military for their protests against 35 years of Shell's oil drilling operations in the Niger Delta. 'A Shell-shocked Land' tells the awful tale of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni people's non-violent protests against Shell, Ken's subsequent persecution and then execution after a trumped up military tribunal found him 'guilty' of murder.

While all the communities around the Delta were protesting at Shell's activities, the most organised of these communities were the Ogoni. Saro Wiwa's ability both to effectively mobilise the grassroots through the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) and to bring international attention to their plight brought reprisals from the Nigerian military and resulted in Shell all but pulling out of Ogoniland in early 1993. Shell's refusal to officially re-enter Ogoniland infuriated the Abacha regime military, which stepped up the crackdown.

"Ogoni has been driven to the abyss of annihilation, crushed by a military regime who have had one simple aim: to silence Ogoni and to stop other communities from voicing their legitimate concerns," writes Rowell.

Shell continued to attempt to distance itself from the conflict, believing that the campaign was "overtly political". Shell's contention - writes Rowell - that Saro-Wiwa was "using" the company to raise his international profile, simply doesn't hold up.

"For over 25 years the communities throughout the Delta have complained of pollution, exploitation and appropriation of their resources, and have severely suffered because of Shell's operations. For Shell to state that the Ogoni are "using" them is simply misleading and such corporate arrogance just adds to the bitterness felt by the people of the Niger Delta."

Green Backlash paints a grim picture of the anti-environmental movement. The words 'know thine enemy' spring to mind whilst reading this book.

Rowell leaves us with words of wisdom of which the larger environmental groups especially need to take note: if we don't get back to the grassroots campaigning ideals and start organising, campaigning and talking face to face, door to door, street to street, community to community, the anti-environmental movement will win.

"Grassroots organising is definitely an area where the anti-environmental movement has beaten the environmentalists over the last few years. There is no doubt either that they have been able to exploit the weaknesses of the mainstream groups."

"The backlash is now an intrinsic part of working on, writing on, speaking on, campaigning on or even teaching on ecological issues. The paradigm shift that is occurring across the globe looks set to continue."

He also warns that the environmental movement must build a new vision for the future, instead of simply opposing current practices. It has failed to take into account its apparent neglect of people and social concerns, leaving the right wing to step in and accuse it of putting wilderness preservation before the human consequences of such policy decisions.

"The backlash has given the environmental movement the opportunity to change for the better, it should not blow that chance."

Green Backlash is mandatory reading for any environmentalist who wants to win their campaign against a polluting corporation, anywhere in the world. There are lessons to be learnt and Rowell's book provides a baseline educative tool for campaigners worldwide.

Reviewed by Cindy Baxter