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Greenpeace

It’s difficult to imagine my world without Greenpeace in it. They have been such a force for good over so many years on so many critical issues.

But sometimes one does wonder what makes them tick – especially when they make strategic decisions about the best corporate targets through which to pursue their campaigns. Back in 1991, I was doing some work with Sainsbury’s on the accelerated phasing-out of CFCs. There was widespread agreement that Sainsbury’s was well ahead of the rest of the pack. One weekend, Greenpeace campaigners turned up and super-glued the doors of a lot of Sainsbury’s stores as part of its CFC campaign – using the simple argument that administering a good kicking to the acknowledged leader would send a very strong signal to all the laggards.

They got excellent press coverage. But what they never saw was the serious setback to Sainsbury’s work on CFC phase-out: far from encouraging the key individuals involved to do more, the reaction was “Sod it, why bother?”

Fast forward 17 years. Last week, Greenpeace campaigners dressed up as orang-utans to occupy three Unilever premises as part of their campaign against the continuing destruction of the rainforest as a consequence of palm oil production.

I have to declare an interest here as an adviser to Unilever (on palm oil, amongst other things!) So I’m biased, by definition. But I must say that Unilever is an odd company for Greenpeace to be picking on. It is, of course, a major user of palm oil. But it was instrumental in setting up the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (the principal international body trying to do something about this critical issue), and currently chairs it. It is working closely with NGOs like WWF and independent academics to make faster progress where possible. And most importantly of all, it has been spearheading corporate efforts to alert policy-makers to the insanity of mandating and then subsidising new schemes to increase the production of first generation biofuels. Including biofuels from palm oil.

In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if Unilever didn’t get on top of this particular biofuels challenge before Greenpeace. It wasn’t so long ago that Greenpeace was out there very actively campaigning for the wholesale substitution of biofuels for hydrocarbon fuels, in order to help reduce emissions of C02. It’s gung-ho enthusiasm in those days was entirely unscientific (as in Greenpeace had done no proper life-cycle analysis, and entailed Greenpeace chumming up with some strange players – including Bob Shapiro of Monsanto who once fronted the bill at a Greenpeace Business Conference in 1999 to talk about the benefits of biotechnology.

So if you put together an historical ‘public policy balance sheet’ on biofuels, over the last decade or so, it could even turn out to be the case that Greenpeace was indirectly responsible for the deaths of more orang-utans in the Indonesian rainforest than Unilever. Given that public policy tends to be influenced more by Greenpeace than by big companies.

That may of course be a little unfair. But if Greenpeace is out there today claiming credit for Unilever’s new commitments on palm oil (announced today, but which have been under consideration for months inside the company and under discussion with its external advisers), then I just have to point out that they deserve no such credit on this particular occasion.

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Posted by JP on May 1, 2008 4:59 PM |

Comments (5)

But Friends of the Earth were also in favour of biofuels weren't they? No doubt they didn't do a "life cycle analysis either".

Why don't you just use prices as a guide to the resources used in something.

Posted by Bishop Hill | May 3, 2008 10:05 PM

Your views are seriously skewed Jonathon. All that corporate consultancy has left you seriously compromised and clouded.

How much are Unilever paying you in consultancy fees?

No doubt Greenpeace will defend themselves, but I was at the Greenpeace Business Conference when Bob Shapiro of Monsanto fronted the bill. He did it by video conference, although not to reduce his carbon footprint from flying, but more for personal safety reasons. And he was there to make a public apology over getting Monsanto's strategy on GMO's so wrong.

His appearance was the cherry on the cake of a fantastic GMO campaign by Greenpeace, that even saw Peter Melchett go to prison. No doubt you were flying off somewhere to collect more corporate consultancy fees at the time.

Greenpeace campaigned against Unilever on GMO's too. Are their products now all GMO free?

Unilever are also the company who ask you to wash at 30 degrees using their Persil brand, in order to help save the climate, yet they are enabling the trashing of the Indonesian rainforests and the slaughter of critically endangered orang-utans at the same time. Perhaps the ultimate greenwash.

Choose your allies more carefully Jonathon.

Posted by Caroline | May 21, 2008 9:25 AM

Dear Jonathan
Interesting how history gets rewritten before the ink is even dry! Unilever did not support a call for a moratorium on further deforestation in Indonesia until we launched our campaign. The campaign itself was hugely successful. Today the CEO of Unilever has written to major corporations around the world asking them to join the moratorium.

We are working closely with them to get as much support as possible for the moratorium ahead of a crucial meeting in Indonesia in November of the world's major palm oil players. The stakes couldn't be higher. Indonesia is the world's third largest greenhouse gas polluter because of deforestation. It also has the dubious honour of being in the Guinness Book of Records for the fastest rate of deforestation. What would really help protect the climate, biodiversity and local communities, adversely impacted by forest destruction, would be for you to add your weight to the campaign! If Unilever can, you can.

Posted by john sauven | May 21, 2008 10:24 AM

"Given that public policy tends to be influenced more by Greenpeace than by big companies."

!!!
Jonathon!
Have the contrarians captured your blog password or what?

:-(

S

Posted by Spamlet | May 27, 2008 7:15 PM

While I am passionate about consevation and the like and used to donate to Greenpeace and FOE I now really feel the planet deserves better than these organisations - although the aims are honourable they are businesses and political organisations with near pagan ideologies - even where problems are undebated there solutions are highly dubious - biofuels being the prime example and windpower becoming the new wait-for-it mess.

Since they rely to a degree on donations they have to please there donators - If they hold an irrational view(to me) on nuclear power then Greenpeace is anti-nuke despite many ecologists insisting it is by far the cleanest option - right or wrong the antinuke position becomes an article of faith back by if needs be dubious use of science - I hope at somepoint this particular type of primitivist reductionist ideology is replaced by a more positive rationally driven kind of ecology and we might make a better world

Posted by R Phillips | July 2, 2008 3:23 PM

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