Collaborate or confront? Environmental politics in 2013

The idea of environmental groups working with business to improve sustainability is nothing new. Now, however, some groups are asking if the hope for a more collaborative era is really just a false dawn? As a seasoned NGO now in its 40th year, TEC and its Green Capital program are looking to discover what the future might hold.

The more radical in the movement are saying: “I told you so … you can’t trust business to be a responsible member of the community”. These doubts are being voiced well beyond our shores too, with The Guardian’s respected Sustainable Business blog reporting this week on rising levels of mistrust between business leaders and the heads of big international environment and development NGOs.

In Australia, collaboration sceptics are getting a serious hearing as the attack on the carbon tax and the federal environmental approvals system gathers political force in the run-up to the federal election. In New South Wales the threat to close down the Environmental Defenders Office championed by the Minister for Energy and The Australian, at the behest of the Minerals Council, has demonstrated to many, particularly in the absence of any business defenders of the EDO, the real colour of business. They want a return to radical action, and even more of it, including use of the tools of social media to trash corporate brands.

Not all environment groups however, are ready to give up on collaboration – just yet. They argue that the pendulum will swing back to a more reasonable position even though the resource and property industries are pushing hard to de-­fang environmental controls – believing that green groups have amassed too much influence on decisions about their projects.

But the public is more sophisticated these days, say NGOs. Take the clear and present danger to the Great Barrier Reef from uncoordinated and excessive industrial and mining developments, and the extremist position of the Queensland government. Business can no longer swat environmentalists away as it did in the 1960s. While key NGOs recognise the force of the attack on environmental law and balanced decision making, they argue that this can be a positive dynamic for movement building, as long as you act responsibly in your campaigns and continue to inform the public about the situation and what’s at peril. The community will take the side of the environment, and business will appear reactionary and extremist. There is now far greater public sympathy for environmental goals than existed five decades ago.