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The new era of NGO campaigning

By Keith Suter - posted Tuesday, 25 May 2010


In summary, environmental NGOs began their campaigns in the late 1960s and early 1970s at a time when western media consumers were also hearing other “bad” news. It all seemed of one piece - the possible “end of the world” scenario, by either nuclear weapons or environmental destruction.

Now there is far less appetite for “bad” news. This is one of the reasons for the popularity of the scepticism about climate change - the warnings seem now so distant and so abstract compared with the earlier risks of war. The planet evaded a nuclear World War III and so many people feel assured that the environmental warnings are equally misplaced.

I think that that optimism may be misplaced and that the planet is facing grave resource shortages etc. But it means that environmental messages need to be refashioned to be effective.

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From “head” to “heart”

To conclude, environmental NGOs (and all other NGOs) are now operating in a new media and political context. Here is a final comment on lobbying.

Traditionally, NGOs have gone for the “head”: trying to meet ministers to convey their point of view etc. This was a “Buchanesque” world. John Buchan (1875-1940) was a popular Scottish novelist (e.g. The 39 Steps) and then Governor-General of Canada. His many novels depicted a world where the “good guys” (and usually they were wealthy, well educated white men) were well connected, members of the right London clubs, knew the right people and could muster resources that the average person could not - in order to defeat the “bad guys” (such as German spies).

NGOs lived with a “Buchanesque” paradigm. If they could only meet the right ministers and present them with logical arguments then they hoped to change policy. If the polite approach didn’t work, they could try to get the attention of the politicians with demonstrations.

I suggest NGOs need to move their message from the “head” to the “heart”. In other words, to who actually makes policy. It is not the ministers at the top because they often don’t really understand what is going on. Life is now so complicated. The skills of politicians are in winning elections and not getting a detailed grasp of the details of policies.

A good example of this process is the way in which “new right economic rationalist economics”/“free market economics” replaced the traditional Keynesian approach to national government economic policy. The revolution began with conservative leaders in the US (Ronald Reagan) and the UK (Margaret Thatcher) and Labor leaders in Australia (Bob Hawke and Paul Keating) and New Zealand (David Lange and Roger Douglas). The party labels made little difference - they were all reading from similar scripts.

Who wrote those scripts? The “technostructure” - in John Kenneth Galbraith’s phrase (The New Industrial State, 19867) - did the work. The politicians simply did the talking.

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Martin Feil, a former senior Australian bureaucrat, has recounted his experiences (Martin Feil, The Failure of Free-Market Economics, Melbourne: Scribe, 2010):

I have never been to a meeting with ministers where advisers and public servants were not present; often the minister’s only contribution has been to say “Hello” and “Goodbye”. I appreciate that captains of industry have private audiences with political decision-makers, but I wonder about the efficacy of such meetings. The billionaire or CEO often isn’t across the detail of what he wants to know or ask for, and the minister doesn’t necessarily know what he is talking about and may have difficulty relaying the substance and purpose of the meeting to his advisers.

The implication here I suggest is that NGOs need to spend more time with the “script writers” working within the “heart” of the bureaucracy, such as serving on government.

There will still be a need for some NGOs to have an “impolite” approach (such as with demonstrations) because they draw the debate’s options far more out to one end (and reduce the risk of epistemic thinking). Other NGOs can present the “heart” with more “moderate” options and so gradually shift government policy.

Will it work if the world is facing a looming environmental catastrophe? Do we have enough time? British writer HG Wells is reputed to have said that life is a race between education and disaster. A century later that is still the case. We just need to find new ways of doing the “educating”.

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About the Author

Dr Keith Suter is a futurist, thought leader and media personality in the areas of social policy and foreign affairs. He is a prolific and well-respected writer and social commentator appearing on radio and television most weeks.

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