By Jamie Irving
It’s not your father’s environmental movement. Conservationists throughout Canada have changed the way they approach environmental activism. But it’s a touchy subject.
Environmentalists don’t want to be seen as backing off, not for a minute. And make no mistake — their cause is still to save the earth.
So what’s changed? In a word, tactics.
Greenpeace, for instance, first came into existence in 1971, when a small rickety fishing boat set sail in Vancouver, to protest U.S. nuclear testing on some tiny islands off the coast of Alaska.
Today Greenpeace has offices in 30 countries throughout the world. The non-violent protests it became known for, are a small part of how they now try to bring about change. Greenpeace conducts research and gathers scientific information. Their more traditional emotional appeals are now backed by more empirical arguments based on scientific data.
Many of the campaigns Greenpeace conducts are not visible to the public, such as extensive government lobbying and education programs. But they use very public tactics in order to affect change as well, such as slick advertising campaigns.
And it’s not only Greenpeace. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), the Sierra Club and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) are all using the very same strategies that were originally employed against them by wealthy corporations trying to deflect criticism.
“I think the Canadian movement is more sophisticated in terms of the tools used to bring about change,” said Rick Smith, the Canadian director for IFAW. “Advocacy politics is more complicated than it used to be. We now use legal means, the best available science, sophisticated ad campaigns and educational techniques.
“If you want to get your message across, you have to be a lot more imaginative. Thirty years ago lots of people still didn’t have TV. Now there is TV, radio, the Internet — there are a lot more sophisticated media out there the public is being bombarded with,” says Smith.
These are no longer poor grassroots organizations. These environmentalists are in business. Big business.
The budget for IFAW was $50 million last year, which was all raised through private contributions.
“It’s important to talk about economics,” says Smith.
He says $50 million is not a lot of money when compared to the budgets of the corporations they are lobbying.
He says, in many ways, the environmental movement is similar to the trade union movement.
“If you added up all of the dues of all the trade unions in Canada, they wouldn’t equal the annual budget of General Motors — just one company. You have to keep things in perspective.”
He also pointed out that nobody is getting rich in the environmental movement.
“I totally reject this notion that people working in the conservation movement are in it for the money,” he says.
“Environmentalists are true idealists. They want to move the political landscape in a certain direction. Most make paltry salaries.”
Nevertheless, cynics such as some multinational corporations have argued that because these conservation groups have raised large sums of money, they now have to show some kind of progress and prove they are really making a difference.
These same people have criticized environmental groups for moving their policies toward the political centre, away from radical positions.
Most environmentalist will agree there has been a conscious shift by the entire movement towards the centre.
“The environmental movement has matured,” says Mary MacNutt, a spokesperson for Greenpeace.
“Environmentalism crosses all ideological boundaries, even though the perception is that we are on the left,” says MacNutt. “The fact is conservationism is deeply conservative. We want to protect and preserve nature. The radical part is that in order to accomplish these goals you have to transform the way our present society operates.”
So what has precipitated this move to the centre? Would you believe, it was the federal government.
In the early 1990s, when the Liberal government first came into power, the deficit ruled the agenda. As a result, the federal government slashed the budget for Environment Canada by 30 per cent.
“The government changed their role of being a watchdog for the environment,” says Peter Hall, the executive director of Canadian Environmental Network, an umbrella organization that represents 600 small-to-mid-size environmental groups throughout Canada.
“They started to rely more on the private sector and environmental groups to take more active roles by working together.”
Hall says the more idealistic environmental groups did not like the idea of partnering with corporations. He says others saw it as an opportunity to fill a vacuum being created as the government moved out.
“It became a new way of operating,” he says. “Using a more practical approach in order to get results.”
It is this shift that many environmentalists are still touchy about. Many, as true idealists, don’t like the idea of abandoning their roots.
So is this shift toward more political partnerships with businesses good for the environmental movement?
“That depends on your perspective,” says Hall. “Personally, I would say yes.”
One of the best examples of these new partnerships is the new federal endangered species legislation. For the first time, groups like the Canadian Miner’s Association and the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association agree with groups like the Sierra Club and the Canadian Nature Federation about what that legislation should look like.
Rick Smith summed it up in two words: “Pretty amazing.”