The industry has treated climate Change as a PR problem - it has funded so-called independent scientists and
formed green-sounding front groups, such as the Global Climate Coalition. The GCC, which was set up in the late
eighties, was formed to scupper the UN Climate Negotiations. In the run up to the Kyoto meeting last December, the
GCC spent $60 million dollars trying to persuade the public that they were not to blame and justify a business as
usual future - even though that future jeopardises the long-term viability of life on earth, The use of climate front
groups, such as the Global Climate Coalition is just one of the many PR techniques companies are using to counter
the environmental movement.

The techniques are very Simple: On the one hand to co-opt the environmental debate and on the other to demonise
and marginalise the environmental movement. Co-option can take many forms; companies have spent billions
adopting the language of the environmental movement, or greenwashing their products: Motor vehicles, the fastest
growing source of pollution on the planet, have become “environmentally-friendly". Aerosols are “ozone friendly",
washing powders are phosphate free, even when most had no phosphate in them anyway, aluminium cans and paper
bags are not recycled but also recyclable. Sustainable development has become one of the most co-opted and cor-
fupted corporate terms used today. As well as Changing their language, companies have changed their tactics - We
must understand that for business, establishing links with environmental, human rights, development and
Indigenous groups and having dialogue with the Opposition is a simple PR technique. | cannot stress this enough.
Dialogue is the most important PR tactic that companies are using to overcome objections to their Operations.

It is a typical divide and rule tactic. One PR guru has outlined a three step divide and Conquer strategy on how cor-
Porations can defeat public interest activists who apparently fall into four distinct Categories: "radicals", “oppor-
tunists", “idealists” and "realists". The goal is to isolate the radicals, "cultivate" the idealists and "educate" them
into becoming realists, then Co-opt the realists into agreeing with industry’.

To this end, Shell has pioneered a sophisticated "stakeholder" process, which it hopes will become a blueprint for
industry to use elsewhere. Having learned from its operations in Nigeria and the Brent Spar fiasco, the company is
trying a different tract in Peru, where it has been exploring for oil in some of the most Culturally and ecologically
sensitive rainforest left on the globe, but labels it “model sustainable development”. In an unprecedented move, the
company held a series of workshops in Lima, Washington and London in December 1997 and June 1998 to which
some 90 interested groups or "stakeholders" in its Peruvian Camisea project were invited, Not up for discussion was
whether the project should go ahead, but how it should go ahead. Meanwhile, the whole process has divided differ-
ent groups on whether to take part in the Shell- initiative.

We can also learn from advice companies like Shell are receiving from security firms, such as Control Risks, based
in London. In a lecture last autumn, John Bray, Head of Research at Control Risks, advised the oil industry how to
Counter pressure groups, recommending that:

{tis no longer acceptable practice purely to operate to national environmental and social laws.

Companies must operate and be seen to be Operating to the best practices worldwide, to a uniform set of inter-
national standards.

Many local groups are linked to international pressure groups in the US and Europe. Companies must try to un-
dermine those links by:

Increasing dialogue with stakeholders

The bottom line, say Control Risks, is that if you dialogue with people, then you win. If you meet a group that will not
Compromise, then you have a problem. One recent classic example of this is the Uwa from Colombia who refused to
backtrack against oil development and even threatened suicide if Occidental and Shell drilled on their land. It was
the companies who backed down.

What is interesting about what Control Risks are saying is that by advocating companies operating to global best
practice, they are putting forward the same argument that some mainstream environmental and development NGOs

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