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‘Friends of the Earth International (FoEI): Negotiating a North-South

Identity’

Brian Doherty1 and Timothy Doyle2

Paper Presented for the Workshop on Comparing Environmental Movements in the North and South at the Joint Sessions of the

European Consortium of Political Research, University of Granada, 14-19 April 2005.

Draft: Please do not quote without the authors’ permission.

As the politics of the environment have become increasingly inter-twined with issues of social justice, globalization and development, environmental groups and organisations have broadened their agendas, and have sought to strengthen ties with allies in other countries, often crossing the North-South divide. The well-resourced national movements in the North, and the fact that many environmental issues are trans-national make this instance of domestic-global political linkage in movement politics especially intriguing. In general, trans-national networking is regarded as empowering groups in the South through the transfer of skills and resources from wealthier Northern groups, but this cross-boundary movement can also be invasive of local communities and agendas. Local agendas may be displaced by Northern cross-boundary ‘green traders’, who can be regarded as a kind of elite in themselves, at least in their relationships with Southern environmentalism (Baviskar 1995). In this manner, environmental movements which support the struggles of the poor against the excesses of global development may recast the identity and the boundaries of these communities. At the broader level, sometimes the Northern-dominated agenda of environmental organisations results in engagement in technical debates at the expense of political argument and campaigning, and this sometimes leads to a weakening of ties with grassroots, Southern groups. The aim of this paper is to assess the relationships between majority (South) and minority (North) world environmental groups by focussing on just one of these organisations: Friends of the Earth International (FoEI). FoEI is a federation of autonomous groups from 70 countries (see www.FoEI.org). These diverse branches are linked by shared commitments to tackling environmental problems as related to questions of inequality, social justice, and democracy. We describe the nature of the federation in more detail below. FoEI is distinct in important respects from the two other largest international environmental NGOs: Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Greenpeace, for example, is a centralised organisation, with franchises in different states but under the control of the International Office which in turn is directed by a board constituted according to the national weight of financial support (Kellow 2000), which means that the UK, Dutch, German, US and Australian branches control the majority of posts. In FoEI each of the 71 full members of the organization has an equal vote irrespective of the size of its membership or financial contribution to the Federation. As the network has expanded it has been increasingly driven by the major concerns of its

1 School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy, Keele University, Staffs, ST5 5BG, UK. Email: b.j.a.doherty@keele.ac.uk 2 Department of Politics and History, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. Email: timothy.doyle@adelaide.edu.au.

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Southern members, despite the wealthiest and largest groups being from Northern countries. WWF, the other major transnational environmental NGO, has increasingly oriented its work towards poverty alleviation as the best means to protect the natural world, but it remains cautious in comparison with FoEI about being perceived as radical, as its traditions and sponsorship are closely tied with an establishment and non-political identity. The significance of the case of FoEI is best understood when placed within a wider context of rapid changes in environmental movements (Rootes 1999). The past two decades have seen the growth of new grassroots campaigns not initiated by large NGOs (and also partly in reaction against them) which have adopted a more radical political agenda. For example, in the North, groups from poor communities have used arguments based on environmental justice to expose inequalities in the exposure to environmental hazards. In the South, as in the North, there had long been local resistance against the impact of industrial processes on local communities (Martinez-Alier 2002), but in the past decade new trans-national networks have emerged such as ‘Women in Mining’ and ‘Mines and Communities’ linking communities in Asia, Africa and Latin America campaigning against transnational mining companies and Oilwatch International,3 which carries out similar work against oil companies in the South. A consequence of these developments is the increased engagement with global issues, particularly the effects of neo-liberal trade regimes on the environment. FoEI is not a microcosm of North/South relations within the wider environmental movement, but its structure, the number of countries represented, its focus on environmental justice, and the salience of North/South relations within FoEI at present, make it the best choice among transnational environmental NGOs for an investigation into this issue. This paper is based on pilot work for a research project focusing on FoEI which is due to start later this year. For this paper we are drawing on data gathered at the FoEI biennial meeting in Croatia in September 2004 and documents provided by FoE Australia on their work in FoEI. The objectives of the project are: 1. To gather new empirical evidence of network ties, resource and information flow within a trans-national environmental network; 2. To explore the varieties of ways in which environmentalism, social justice and social transformation are articulated within FoEI; 3. To assess the degree of common ground between Northern and Southern nodes of the network; 4. To explain the boundaries of the collective action and identity of FoEI. The paper touches on each of these themes, but it precedes the main empirical research, which will include a survey to provide evidence for a network analysis of 1. and interviews and further observation at FoEI events for 2-4. The project attempts to chart new territory insofar as it is a response to an imbalance in scholarly debate, reflected in the literature. There has been very little work dealing with ideological relationships between Northern and Southern environmental groups. The dominant view has been to regard the environmentalism of the North and that of the South as too different to be the basis of common identity. The argument of Guha and Martinez-Alier (1997) that Northern environmentalism is essentially concerned with how nature should be used (either the protection of wilderness or the ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’, Martinez-Alier 2002), while Southern environmentalism is a defence by grassroots groups of the material conditions of life itself, has predominated. For this reason scholarship on Northern and Southern environmentalism has been mostly disconnected. Our view, is that this contrast is mostly well founded and has indeed been supported by the authors’ own work (see especially Doyle 2005), but alongside this general picture there are cases where interaction produces a different picture, and also a tradition of leftist rational 3 Oilwatch International: http://www.oilwatch.org.ec/english/ Mines and Communities: http://www.minesandcommunities.org/ Women in Mining: http://www.iwam.net/ingles.htm

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ecologism in the North that does not fit well with the nature and wilderness definition of Northern environmentalism, (Doherty 2002, Dryzek 1997), as well as a need to acknowledge how local struggles to defend livelihoods in the South are also often struggles over global questions (Dwivendi 2001) .

In political science, the large body of work on environmentalism has been either an assessment of the novelty of Western green ideology (e.g. Dobson 2000, Eckersley 1992) or an explanation of how environmental groups mobilize, concentrated on explaining protest dynamics, modes of organisation, and patterns of institutionalisation (Diani 1995; Rootes 1999; Doyle 2000, Doherty 2002; Brulle 2000; Rootes 2003) within the West. There has been much work on the role of environmental NGOs in the international arena (Princen and Finger 1994, Smith 1997, Doyle and McEachern 1998, 2001, Aarts 1999, Newell 2001, Edwards and Gaventa 2000.) but this has mainly focused on elite level negotiation and policy outcomes. Other work in International Relations is based on explaining the success or failure of trans-national advocacy coalitions in particular campaigns (Keck and Sikkink 1998). This analysis of NGOs leaves out a significant field of interaction, notably the development of new links between environmental groups campaigning on a broad political agenda across the North-South divide and the question of whether such sustained ties might generate shared frames and ideology.

In geography, environmental and development studies most of the research on Southern environmentalism is conducted within the paradigm of ‘political ecology’ (Peet and Watts, 2004, Bryant and Bailey 1997, Redclift 1997 and Martinez-Alier 2002). This deals principally with case studies of resistance by peasant communities and the urban poor to energy and resource-intensive industries and development projects such as dams, forestry, mining, cash-crop agriculture and industrial fishing. Environmental conflicts are most often defined as local instances of global forces, based upon local action and taking a position against western science and in favour of alternative modes of development. A strength of this tradition is its focus upon political economy as a structural factor linking environmental conflicts in the South. Yet, it leaves unexamined some important features of southern environmentalism such as the role of the middle class in environmental activism (Mawdsley 2004), and the increasing influence of organised environmental groups on national governments in some countries in the South (Dwivedi 2001). Not all locally based local groups are necessarily localist in their ideology, networks or views of policy, but some of the most influential literature presents the local as the defining feature of groups involved in local struggles (eg Castells 1997: 124). Southern branches of FoEI, often the products of emblematic campaigns, represent examples of groups that try to give meaning to the defence of the local through an engagement with national and international spheres. The Nigerian branch of FoEI, which developed from the opposition to Shell in the Niger Delta, but is also engaged in a wide variety of local, national and international campaigns and networks, is a good example of this. Moreover, this concern with examining the local-global nexus is also of increasing importance in interpreting many Northern campaigns, such as the conflicts over logging at Clayaquot Sound in British Columbia (Magnusson and Shaw 2003).

Efforts to address the globalization of environmental movements are mainly restricted to journal articles that tend to raise the questions that we have outlined above as an agenda for further research: For instance, Rootes (1999) has argued that, given the disparities in resources and levels of activism between Northern groups and others, it is too early to be able to say that there is a global environmental movement. Haynes (1999) shows how weak judicial systems and civil society constrain the development of ‘Third World’ environmental movements. Smith (2002) in a case study of Earth Action (1994, 2002) has done most to focus attention on power relations between Northern and Southern groups, but the relatively weak ties and lack of regular interaction between the myriad groups and individuals that constitute the affiliates of Earth Action mean that a study of this group is of limited comparative value. Doyle (2005) also examines the differences between Northern and Southern environmental movements through comparative case studies of environmental campaigns. This highlights differences between Northern and Southern groups, but does not tackle the negotiation of a common identity, of the kind developed in FoEI. This project is therefore a contribution to an emerging field of international research that links existing studies of trans-national

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organisations, the study of globalisation and internationalisation and the well established field of social movements (Smith et al 1997, della Porta et al 1999, Guidry et al 2000, Smith and Johnston 2002, della Porta and Tarrow 2004). It is reasonable then to say that at present little is known about some very central questions concerning North-South environmentalisms and in particular, on the question on which we focus here, how networks that include groups from both the South and the North work out a common agenda and common identity.

Friends of the Earth International Recent conflicts within FoEI provide an opportunity to assess a network that has been forced to confront these questions directly through an unsettling challenge to its core principles. Tensions emerged forcefully during and after the second Earth Summit in South Africa in 2002, and quickly developed following the resignation of Acción Ecológica (FoE Ecuador) due to a sense that Northern and Southern groups had contradictory ideological positions. Some Southern groups expressed concern that there was too much Northern-inspired emphasis on corporate accountability with the result that Southern agendas were rendered invisible. This paper focuses on the process of renegotiating the nature of FoEI’s identity that followed. We first describe the nature of the Federation then assess the details of the arguments around the issues raised by Acción Ecológica. This is followed by some initial reflections on the collective culture that shapes how identity questions are articulated within the network. Epistemologically, our approach to the question of how to assess the nature of FoEI’s identity is situated within Charles Tilly’s (2002) argument for methods based upon ‘relational realism’. Tilly stresses the role of stories as a means of creating personal identities which in relation to politics are at the same time explanations of political tensions and realities, though not necessarily the best explanations. The role of social science is to tell particular kinds of stories that lie between the isolated purposive actor of methodological individualism, and the abstract and functionalist logic of structural explanations. Both of the latter can be found in the arguments within FoEI. The assumption that structural differences between North and South explain the conflicts over strategy and identity is problematic, as we will show, given the diversity of positions taken by Southern and Northern groups in different structural situations. The assumption that exclusion from power occurs through deliberate and conscious choices reflects an analysis based on the purposive actor, but we have so far seen little to support this kind of explanation in relation to FoEI. Relational realism seeks to add to the standard story of the purposive actor, by bringing in a wider field of social relations, including unintended effects on action and the effects of the weight of tradition, without excluding the incessant improvisation that occurs in social relations. Evidence of relational ties and resource flows gathered through a network survey, observation of meetings and our comparative knowledge of environmental movements will allow us to triangulate the stories gathered through interviews. It is this particular combination of methodological approaches which we hope will allow us to access and understand the mechanics and organics of political relationships across a huge, decentralised, global and culturally diverse environmental organisation. Formal Structure, Informal Influence and Differences of Focus Friends of the Earth International was founded in 1971 by four new FOE groups from France, Sweden, England and the USA. The intention was to mount joint campaigns on trans-national issues such as nuclear energy and whaling. In 1981, a small International Secretariat was established, initially staffed by volunteers, which rotated from country to country. By 1983, the organization had grown to 25 members, and an Executive Committee was elected to oversee the issues worked on between meetings. In 1986, the Annual General Meeting (AGM) was hosted for the first time by an organization from the South, Sahabat Alam Malaysia (FoE Malaysia). At that time, the federation had 31 members. As the network grew, its agenda shifted gradually to greater attention to the relationship between environment and development issues and in particular to the need to change lifestyle and consumption patterns in the North. The 1994 AGM decided that international cooperation should be further intensified through the development of an 'agenda' that presents common points of view within a coherent framework. There are now 71 Friends of the Earth

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member groups4 with a combined number of members and supporters of around one million, and the FoEI umbrella united more than 5,000 local activist groups, with approximately 1,200 staff members (see Appendix One and Two). As a Federation, FoEI is based on the participation of largely autonomous national member groups. The national groups have to show that they are working to pursue FoEI’s general mission and values and are expected to contribute to its international work but there is no requirement to adopt a particular form of organisation (though there has to be some internal democracy) or to have a minimum level of support. This means that FoEI member groups have a prior history of independent campaigning when they join the network and have variable forms of organisation and membership structure. New members have to go through an assessment of their record by the FOEI Secretariat, by other national groups in their region, and by members of the executive committee. If successful they are then able to apply for a period of associate membership which has to be approved by the biennial meeting of the whole network. Following a two year period, they are then eligible to apply for full membership rights. Membership applications can be controversial and acceptance is by no means automatic. Groups have been expelled for corruption, other infringements of rules, or for failure to maintain effective campaigning. Decisions of this consequence rest with the two yearly meeting of the whole network. The Biennial General Meeting (BGM) also approves the campaigns, organizational rules and elects the 8-9 member Executive Committee (comprised of representatives from 8-9 national groups). Each member group has one vote at the BGM, irrespective of the size of its membership or financial contribution to FoEI, which gives considerable formal power to some relatively small groups. Single-issue groups are not eligible to join the network, but they can become affiliates, which allows them to attend FoEI events, but does not give them voting rights. As the membership has grown, regional structures have been established. FoE Europe was formed in 1985 and maintains an office and staff in Brussels. This is the largest regional group with 31 members in Western and Eastern Europe. ATALC formed in 2001 covers Latin America and the Caribbean (16 members) and has its secretariat in Paraguay. The other main regional groups are Asia-Pacific (10 members) and Africa (10 Members).5 Neither Asia-Pacific nor Africa has an office, but they do hold regional meetings on occasion. There is no requirement to maintain regional structures within FoEI; they are voluntary sub-groups established for mutual support, based on the assumption that members share common features and face common problems or can at least provide each other with useful support and advice. In practice, the status of regions is only loosely defined. They have no formal power, only responsibilities to report to the rest of the network. More importantly, they reflect the resources of national groups. Thus Europe has the largest groups, and the strongest regional structures, driven also by the need to co-ordinate action in relation to the European Union. ATALC is also a strong network, and within FoEI it often speaks as a united group in opposition to what it sees as dangers of reformism, mostly from European and North American groups. The Asia-Pacific region has less clear ideological status, and considerable diversity, covering affluent states such as Japan, Australia and New Zealand, middle income countries such as South Korea and Malaysia, and developing countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Africa has the weakest regional structures and there are frequent references to the need to support capacity building in Africa. Lack of finances and staff make it hard to develop effective regional co-ordination in Africa, but within FoEI African groups show strong solidarity with each other and Nigeria and South Africa were particularly important voices in the North/South arguments after 2002. There is a tension between the principle of one country one vote and the increased importance of regional groups, which became apparent during the arguments that followed the Johannesburg Earth Summit. Each of the four regions was asked to choose two representatives to join a ‘Network Process Team’ to reflect on ‘political diversity’ and make recommendations to the rest of the network. To some groups (such as Italy and

4 There are 71 groups in 70 countries (two from Belgium) see Appendix 2. 5 There are a number of groups without access to a regional structure such as FoE USA and Canada and FoE Middle East and FoE Palestine. When decisions have been organised through regional structures these groups have usually been included in FoE Europe

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Nigeria) this was dubious since it was not clear how two national groups could represent others in their region and it ran the risk of institutionalising North/South groupings (Italy). Nor did the FoEI Executive establish how representatives were to be chosen, causing some confusion over which groups were to represent Africa. As Appendix 1 shows, the aggregate figures on membership and staff hide huge variety at the national level. Some groups, such as FoE Philippines have no members, while Germany alone accounts for more than a third of the FoEI membership. These differences reflect specific organizational histories. The Philippines group is a group of environmental rights lawyers, working in alliance with grassroots environmental groups, often engaged in local struggles. BUND in Germany is a Federation of older regional conservation groups and newer local environmental and anti-nuclear groups formed in the 1970s and retains a relatively loose organizational structure. It plays an active role in FoEI, but is not necessarily a powerful group able to exert influence in proportion to the size of its membership. It may be less influential because it seems less committed than the Dutch or British branches to global environmental justice issues (though this is very provisional conclusion at this stage). Also, not all groups are active within FoEI. Not all attend the BGM (expenses for one representative are paid by FoEI) and some fail to pay their membership fees. A rough calculation of the level of activity of national groups within FoEI can be made using the following criteria: attendance at more than one of the four General Meetings of the Federation 1999-20036; active participation in the internal debates of the movement, as assessed though observation of the Croatia BGM and analysis of FoEI documents 1999-2004; and representation on the 9 member Executive Committee which takes overall responsibility for strategy and policy between BGMs. In the most active category, 21 countries playing a significant role in internal debates are:

• Asia/Pacific: Malaysia, Australia, Philippines and Indonesia. • Africa: Nigeria, Ghana, Togo and South Africa • Europe: EWN (England,Wales, and Northern Ireland) Switzerland, Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Scotland,

Ireland (though applied to be downgraded to associate member from 2004). • Latin America and the Caribbean: Uruguay, Paraguay; Ecuador (up to 2002) Colombia and El Salvador. • North America: USA. (up to 2002)

The level of engagement of these groups also fluctuates over time. Thus, the USA sent only one representative to Croatia, and was not prominent in the North/South debates after the Johannesburg Earth Summit. In the relatively active category of countries listed below, Japan, Sri Lanka, Spain and Croatia have both been represented on the Executive Committee, but have not been as prominent in internal debates as the countries above, including some such as South Africa that have not been represented on the Executive Committee. Thirty-five relatively active countries/groups, usually or always attend the general meetings, are involved in campaign co-ordination, but are not prominently involved in internal debate: .

• Asia/Pacific: Japan, Korea, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka • Africa: Mali (up to 2002), Cameroon, Mauritius • Europe: Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia, Macedonia (up

to 2002), Malta, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Ukraine • Latin America and the Caribbean: Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Curaçao, Grenada, Haiti, Honduras,

Nicaragua, Peru.

6 FoEI moved to Biennial General Meetings after 2000 because having large annual meetings was too demanding in staff time and money. There is usually a strategy or campaign theme meeting for the whole network in the interim year, which is seen as an opportunity for others than usually attend the BGM to get involved in the network. In 2003 there was an Emergency General Meeting to discuss the crisis generated by the departure of Acción Ecológica.

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• North America: Canada • Middle East: FoE ME (associate member from 2002)

Fourteen mostly inactive countries that rarely (1 in 4) or never attend the BGM, three of which were expelled between 1999 and 2004 are:

• Asia/Pacific: Bangladesh (expelled 2002-3), Nepal • Africa: Tunisia, Sierra Leone (the war has made any activity difficult), Benin (expelled 2004). • Europe: Belgium (both Flanders and Wallonia), Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece (expelled ?2002), Hungary,

Lithuania, Luxemburg. • Latin America and the Caribbean: Bolivia, Guatamala (not sure when joined) New Members 2004: Bangladesh (replacing the previous group) Palestine, Swaziland.

This is not a wholly watertight classification, since we are still at an early stage of the research, but the first (most active) category does usefully identify principal players in the network’s debates. Some wealthier groups are able to bring several representatives to meetings (EWNI, Netherlands and Germany do so consistently) and although these groups have only one vote each, they benefit from having a larger presence in being able to cover more workshops, and in the informal discussions over meals and in the bar, for instance. The representatives of some smaller groups are more active in debates than some others. In part, this seems to be a consequence of personality and experience. Cam Walker from Australia, Karin Nannsen from Uruguay, Ivonne Yanez from Ecuador, Nnimmo Bassey from Nigeria, Meena Raman from Malaysia, Tony Juniper from EWNI, Kevin Dunion (ex- FOE Scotland) , Laura Radiconcini from Italy Tatiana Roa and Hildebrando Velez from Colombia, Bobby Peek from South Africa, Ricardo Navarro from El Salvador and Eliaz Elias Diaz Peña and Oscar Rivas from Paraguay have all played a major part in the debates about how Friends of the Earth should go develop during the past five years. Almost all of these have been on the FOEI Executive Committee at some point since 1999 and Dunion (1996-99, Navarro 1999-2004 and Raman 2004- ) have chaired FoEI, while Juniper has been Vice-Chair for several years. Thus, as with many international networks, there are key personalities playing various kinds of leadership roles and it is notable that these come from all four regions, though not in equal numbers. FoEI now claims to have Southern co-ordinators for almost all its key campaigns and Southern groups are in the majority overall and in the groups most active in the Federation. However, there is considerable diversity of strategy and ideology across both North and South, so there is no clear shift to control by a unified Southern bloc. The complexities of this will be explored further in the analysis below of recent arguments over North/South power within the Network. Also influential are the 15 staff of the International Secretariat based in Amsterdam. In formal terms, the IS is the civil service for the network and does not have a policy-making responsibility, but in practice, the individuals in key posts have considerable influence. IS staff draft reports, assess applications for membership,7 organise the BGMs, carry out media work and write many of the key documents defining FoEI positions. In a network that stresses its non-hierarchical, informal and consensual culture, it is hardly surprising that key staff such as Marijke Torfs, (Executive Director) Simone Lovera and Mae Ocampo (International Co-ordinators) are active participants in BGM debates and several more staff also usually attend the BGMs and play an active role. Most of the senior staff of the IS are women, and while most are from Europe and North America, preference is given now to candidates from the South. At present there are no African staff in the IS, a point noted as a weakness in building solidarity by the Nigerian group. We are at too early a stage in the research to assess the informal power and influence of the Amsterdam Office, but as in most such networks, the bureaucracy is inevitably more than a mere administration. There are also networks of personal obligation between IS staff and key members of national groups and culturally specific modes of organisation which affect how FoEI works, a point we develop further in the conclusion. 7 These can be substantial. There were over 60 new applicants from Bangladesh following the expulsion of the previous group in 2002 and on average 30 groups per month request membership information.

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The budget of FOEI in the 2003-4 financial year was 1.7 m Euros, of which 15% came from fees (member groups pay 1% of their income to the Federation). Twenty groups had still failed to pay the fee due in April by September 2004. The largest source of income is from Foundations (such as Oxfam UK, NOVIB/Oxfam Neths, HIVOs, the Rausing Trust, the Ford Foundation and Government Development Agencies, such as the Dutch Ministry of the Environment and DfID: FOEI 2003). Three quarters of this goes to support the activity of member groups, the remainder goes to the Federation itself, of which a third is to support the Executive Committee and the remainder to support the International Secretariat. As in many NGOs the staff of the IS feel short of funds and time and cannot always carry out all the tasks they are asked to. Similarly, the Executive Committee often meets around other FoEI events, and can work 14-16 hour days on these occasions. National groups have to apply for support for specific activities, and most support goes to Latin America, followed by Asia then Africa and then Europe. REDES in Uruguay gets significant support because it is the base for activity that is significant for the whole network, such as a radio station ‘RadioMundoreal’ 8 and a children’s environmental network. FoEI’s Common Identity Since member groups are first and foremost national groups with their own prior history and identity, and focussed mainly on national level campsigns against their own governments, it might legitimately be asked what is the FoEI network for, other than a means of distributing resources? FoEI claims substantive successes in a number of recent campaigns (see appendix 4). The network also takes pride in the role played by national groups in particular victories. Trans-national networks assist smaller and weaker groups in some cases (Cameroon has recently worked with France on forest campaigns for instance) and many FoEI groups are also involved in other trans-national networks outside FoEI. In this sense there is clearly an instrumental dimension to the Federation, but a principal role of FoEI is to develop a common cross-national solidarity and common agenda as an end in itself. The idea that there is a common ideological bond between member groups in the Federation, notwithstanding the diversity of their histories and current political contexts, is its central defining myth. FoEI sees itself as occupying a particular role in the international politics of the environment, in developing an analysis, critique and common action on structural sources of ecological degradation and an explicit attack on neo-liberalism. It is hardly alone in that, but it is in a more radical position than WWF or Greenpeace in its support for environmental justice as dependent upon resistance to neo-liberal globalization (see also the summary of FoEI’c current campaign priorities in Appendix 3) a frame that has developed more clearly in the past decade as a consequence of new debates about globalization and supported especially consistently by Southern branches of the network. A recent statement of FOEI’s position on global justice makes this clear:

FoEI challenges the current export-oriented neoliberal economic development model as it is fundamentally flawed. It is based on a set of assumptions which do not reflect the reality of most people, do not incorporate requirements for environmental sustainability or social justice. Instead corporate globalisation has further impoverished people and increased the rate of environmental degradation. Forests are being clear-cut, minerals strip-mined and fossil fuels exploited at completely unsustainable rates to provide natural resources for the ‘global economy’. Democracy is being eroded as power is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Biological and cultural diversity are dwindling at an alarming rate. Hard won social and environmental standards are threatened. The work of our individual member groups as well as the joint international campaigns target poverty and environmental degradation simultaneously. More specifically FoEI works to achieve poverty

8 www.radiomundoreal.fm

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alleviation from an environmental perspective. It is our vision that we can directly contribute to poverty alleviation by protecting and increasing the poor’s access to natural resources and assisting communities with the sustainable management of these resources. To mention some examples: FoEI assists farmers who loose their income due to pollution from mining or oil companies or local communities that are forced to move because of the construction of huge dams. As part of our biodiversity and forest programs, FoEI supports alternative development projects. For example, we provide political and financial support to community-based sustainable forestry projects, saving the seeds projects and many other community based sustainable development initiatives.’ (FoEI Secretariat summary document for NOVIB, 2003) As an analysis of global environmental politics this is a variant of what Martinez-Alier (2002) has defined as the environmentalism of the poor, though given the apparent professional and educational qualifications of FoEI staff in the South and the North, this perhaps could be more accurately defined as an environmentalism on behalf of the poor. FoEI documents and campaigns focus increasingly on justice, rights and resistance to oppression and exploitation. This has also meant increased discussion of alliances with other social movement groups. Indeed, it was noted at the Croatia BGM that Ricardo Navarro, the Chair, was defining FoEI as a social movement group in his valedictory address and this would have been unthinkable in previous years. Alliances with other groups have been seen as vital to FOEI’s strategy and might also be seen as necessary to the legitimacy of its claim to be an environmental justice group. FoE groups seek to support and work with autonomous grassroots campaigns. Consistent with this, in internal discussions, there is no sense of a competitive relationship with other movement organisations.9 Instead, the emphasis is on developing effective alliances in which FoEI can play a constructive role. As the following statement by IS staff put it:

Given our broad mission statement, FoEI almost always seeks to build alliances with other groups in civil society such as the development movement, indigenous peoples, farmers’ movements, labour and academics. Two examples of such alliances are the joint work with Via Campesina for the trade campaign and our joint publications/campaigns with the World Rainforest movement as part of our biodiversity/forest campaign.

Often the political priorities of non-environmental organizations corresponds more closely to our agenda than the campaign priorities or strategies chosen by our environmental colleagues at WWF, Greenpeace or groups within the Climate Action Network. While we cooperate as much as possible with the latter, it is our task to push for issues of social justice within their more purely environmental agenda. (FoEI Secretariat summary document for NOVIB, 2003)

Given the weight given to environmental justice and rights from a global perspective in FoEI’s official positions, how did the network become embroiled in arguments over justice and rights and North-South questions? To explain this requires an account of the departure of Acción Ecológica from FoEI in 2002. North-South arguments at the WSSD and Acción Ecológica One clear point of difference in the situation faced by FoEI member groups in the North and the South is that violence and repression is a widespread, though very variable, threat to activists in many Southern groups. For example when writing this paper, there was news that the Colombian FoE group’s office in Bogota had been raided by an armed gang who took all the office’s computers. This followed an earlier 9 Various groups noted at the 2004 BGM in Croatia that they were not engaged themselves in campaigning on some of FoEI’s core thematic areas nationally as there were other groups in their countries with expertise in those fields. Eg Philippines on GMOs and Canada on mining. Moreover, national groups campaign on a wide variety of themes (see Appendix 4). Also the 2003 annual report acknowledges financial support from IUCN, WWF and Greenpeace among others.

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attack and death threats to its activists and their families from a right-wing paramilitary group in 2002. In Brazil an American Nun working in a network alongside FOE Brazil activists was murdered by assassins working for loggers in the Amazon region. In 2003 the FoEI EGM in Catagena was preceded by a conference on environmental rights attended by over three hundred campaigners. Alongside the speakers from MST, indigenous people’s groups, and human rights NGOs, FoEI activists from Nigeria and Honduras spoke about their own experience of political violence and abuse of human rights. This is the context which shaped the claim by Acción Ecológica that groups in the North had failed to understand how different the context was for groups in the South. AE’s reasons for resigning from the network were based on the view that Northern groups were betting on reforms within a system that requires resistance from outside. FoEI’s participation in the WSSD had given priority to Northern agendas and been dominated by the representatives of Northern groups. Statements written by Acción Ecológica on ecological debt had been rewritten and weakened without consultation by FoEI staff. Corporate accountability became the principal theme of FoEI’s campaign, when Southern groups saw corporations as beyond accountability and argued that seeking to encourage reforms and regulation simply reinforces the existing structures. Similarly much of FoEI’s work seemed to be driven by the search for positive media coverage and this led to only weakly expressed statements against the business agenda of encouraging ‘type 2’ partnerships, including those between corporations and civil society groups. Also important was the failure of FoEI to support the march of unemployed South Africans protesting against neo-liberalism from Sandton to Alexandria because of the fear that violence might develop. Southern branches of FoEI were weakened and their agendas ‘invisibilized’ by the Northern agenda. Other Southern groups were also critical of FoEI after Johannesburg. The South African group said that the experience at the WSSD had reinforced the sense that FoEI sometimes mirrored the global inequalities that it sought to oppose. ERA from Nigeria also said that they had felt excluded from a role in decisions during the summit and that most African groups were not integrated with others from FOEI, and were even staying in a different location. REDES from Uruguay also spoke in support of AE’s criticism of FoEI at the WSSD. The detail of what took place in Johannesburg was disputed in subsequent discussions. There were some misunderstandings of the role played by Northern groups. For instance, the decision not to participate in the march was decided by the executive committee based on advice from the South African branch. But representatives of Northern groups such as EWNI and BUND saw WSSD as including some successes for FoEI within the limited terms of the event. These included, limiting the ability of business to get its partnership agenda accepted without opposition, the scale of media coverage for FoEI’s more critical agenda and mobilising opposition from allied NGOs. There were also multiple national stories and positions that did not easily fall into a clear North-South divide. FoE Australia supported many of the criticisms of the failure of the network to effectively include Southern agendas and groups, while some southern groups, such as Malaysia, argued that some of the criticism of ‘Northern’ strategies was wrong. For instance, engagement with corporations to secure accountability was reasonable when it led to tighter controls on their activity or compensation for affected groups, but should not extend to negotiation. European groups felt that they were being misunderstood and misrepresented. They did not seek to cosy up to companies and opposed them vigorously. The arguments at Johannesburg were not wholly new. The Executive Committee acknowledged that many of the issues raised had been simmering for some time. For instance, the 1999 AGM in Quito had been preceded by a three day meeting to consider North-South differences and a plenary debate had raised many of the points that were made again in 2002 and 2003, including the following made by Emmy Hafild of FoE Indonesia.

Walhi's General Assembly has asked us to become more active in the FoEI network. My first experience with the network was in 1993, when I asked FoEI to adopt a campaign against Freeport. FoEI did not pick it up, and the Freeport campaign started outside the network. Last year, FoEI

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failed to endorse the aborigine resolution, a resolution of one of the most important environmental movements in the world. My more recent experience is my confusion with environmental space campaign; it doesn't fit my society in Indonesia. Also with the WTO campaign, I feel that there is a very big gap. The North feels that it is a given and in the South we feel the need to build resistance. The same is true for the IMF and World Bank campaign, which is determined by the needs from the North. There are very few international campaigns around a national issue; the only one I can think of is in Nigeria regarding Ken Saro-Wiwa. So other groups take up our issues. We have made little effort to participate in the network as we don't have a sense of belonging to it, but we want to reconcile. We have been given another three years to determine whether or not it is worthwhile to be part of the network. In the South, the environmental and democratic movements are one. We have to fight for our democracy. (FoEI Minutes of AGM 1999)

There were two main issues in the North-South story in FoEI:

(1) Were there fundamental ideological and strategic differences between groups within the network?

(2) Was FoEI failing as an inclusive and democratic network? Though usually run together, these issues were at least in theory, analytically distinct. There was also a recognition that ideology and strategy might not be equivalent. For instance, as Meena Raman of FoE Malaysia argued, having a radical analysis of the causes of inequality and environmental injustice does not mean that the best strategies are necessarily radical. There was also an effort to define core goals that defined the network, while recognising the differences in strategy that followed from different national contexts. On the latter, some Southern groups stressed the centuries of looting of their national resources by colonial powers, and now by corporations, whether national or trans-national, and aligned their struggles with those of indigenous peoples against a global model of development. Acción Ecológica seems to have been more radical in assessing the consequences of this for FoEI strategy than other Southern groups. For instance, AE questioned some of the successes claimed in FoEI’s official position. The Extractive Industries Review by the World Bank (pulling funding for oil and gas projects in developing countries) was problematic because it entailed no challenge to the legitimacy of external investment, and FoEI spoke only of achieving food security when it should emphasise food sovereignty. European groups had been proud of the development of the idea of ecological space (first put forward by FoE Netherlands at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992) but this was seen as too limited in its terms by AE and some others. Put most simply ecological space is the idea that each person has a per capita entitlement to the use of ecological resources within the limits necessary to achieve sustainability. This can be used to show the over-consumption of the North relative to the South and of some Southern elites relative to a global model. What it excludes is the legacy of the effect of exploitation on the South. Thus ecological space is only acceptable to many if it is accompanied by an acknowledgement of ecological debt. The latter is based upon the principle that the wealthy of the North owe the South for the benefits they have accrued though the use of ecological resources. This is a redistributive principle, and difficult to quantify, but the debt is not wholly financial. It also involves redress for cultural and social injustice and thus also draws on principles of recognition.10 Nor should sustainability be simply based upon the North giving to the South, through methods such as technology transfer since such models also increase dependence and fail to acknowledge that other indigenous modes of development and technology might be more appropriate. Northern groups were also failing to recognise the scale of the effects of neo-liberalism. Their ‘lobby

10 For more on ecological debt see: ENRED (the European Network for the recognition of the Ecological Debt); http://www.enredeurope.org/principal.htm and Ecological debt campaign (Ecuador) http://www.deudaecologica.org/

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culture’ rested on a desire to return to the social democratic forms of regulation but that also failed to take into account the injustice of North-South difference that this ‘Fordist’ model had entailed. The strategy proposed by the North was also likely to undermine the strategies chosen by the South. Thus, when Northern groups talked to corporations that Southern groups were fighting, the corporation was able to present the southern groups as the unreasonable extremists. Even when Northern groups supported the arguments of those in the South, some were unwilling to give them priority at home because of the fear of losing their supporters who were their financial base. Moreover, there was a feeling that Southern groups were used for local colour, and to aid advertising in the North but their ideas were ignored. In relation to democracy, several key instances were cited of southern groups or campaigns failing to get support from the network. AE had felt unsupported by FoEI in its efforts to lead campaigning on ecological debt in Johannesburg. How accurate was this critique? Without more evidence it is impossible for us to say whether Southern groups had more proposals rejected or altered than Northern groups. Northern groups also acknowledged that Southern groups had sometimes had to compromise their radical positions within the network but they also claimed that they also had to compromise. However, as FoE Australia pointed out (1) the risks of violence faced by activists from the South were greater than the risk of losing members and donors and (2) ‘the combination of Southern compromise, and minimal participation in decision-making means that the Southern groups are effectively asked to compromise without their consent.’ (3) ‘The market based ideology drives over consumption and is devastating communities and ecosystems in the North. It is this same ideology that is killing communities and ecosystems of the South. However, the relative scale of impact differs greatly and while individuals are dying in the North, whole communities are being displaced and dying in the South. In this respect we (of the North) need to take more consideration, advice and direction from Southern groups as they have a unique perspective and experience of the neo-liberal model that is imposed upon them.’ (WSSD follow up letter, FoE Australia) Many groups (including FoE Australia) sought also to disrupt the over-simplified use of ‘North’ and ‘South’ by acknowledging the ‘South’ within the North and vice versa, following the reasoning, if not the language of the ‘global North’ and ‘global South’ in academic discourse. European groups had also begun to campaign on ecological debt (FoE Europe and FoE Scotland Ecological Debt Education Project) so it was not wholly accurate to define ecological debt as an exclusively Southern campaign theme. There were differences over how to approach campaigning on corporations. Some Northern groups did accept that they could not feasibly campaign for the abolition of the WTO and although they could imagine a world without corporations they did not yet want to argue for one (FoE Canada). In fact, FoEI had developed a code of practice for integrating campaigns against particular corporations cross-nationally, and avoiding undermining national group strategies, which followed an initiative of FoE Uruguay in 1997. We have seen no clear instances cited of Northern groups breaking these rules. Some representatives of Northern groups also backed Southern arguments accepting that corporations could not be held to account, but also arguing that where there were grounds to have some confidence in the law, using the system to constrain companies was justifiable in the current situation. The claim that decision making was dominated by the Northern groups is central to the conflict, but hard to assess on the evidence that we have so far. The FoEI Chair was from El Salvador, and the Executive Committee that took many of the controversial decisions had 5 of nine representatives from Southern countries.11 However, it is clear that lack of resources affects the level of participation by Southern groups in FoEI activities. Many Northern groups were able to send several staff to the WSSD and so in the plenary sessions for FoEI they were over-represented and when consensus rather than

11 In 2002-4 The countries represented on the Ex-Com were Australia, Colombia, El Salvador, Indonesia, Paraguay, Sri Lanka, Sweden Switzerland and the UK.

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voting was the mode of decision-making, they could have ‘won’ without any clear conflict appearing. The onus was on the small number of Southern representatives to be present at all such occasions and to reject consensus. A second more generic problem relates to language. The official languages of the network are Spanish, French and English. In practice, however, English is the lingua franca and FoEI (at best) tries to support the other two languages. The IS translates documents on its website into the other two languages, but its staff are over-worked and under-resourced and not all documents are translated. AE also argued that the move to greater use of the internet in internal debates was in fact discriminatory against the South, where connections were less reliable and compounded by the language problem. The internet clearly aids the speed and range of distribution of documents, and has many advantages for international networks but it is not necessarily an egalitarian a method of communication. Language also affects the nature of debate within the network: fluent English speakers have a clear advantage. Translation at BGMs is reliant on the efforts of volunteer staff with microphones and amplifiers there were no headsets or translation booths. At the AGM in Croatia when a bye-law was proposed to move to full translation of all discussions and to employ translators, this was rejected as too costly, and not only by Northern groups. The unequal effects of lack of resources and language issues do not only affect groups from the South, but also limit the participation of groups from Eastern Europe, who do not even have the partial benefit of some translation into a language of everyday use.12 How far is the critique of FoEI’s failure as an inclusive network justified? Any comment on this is provisional given that we still have most of the research to do. There are inequalities of language and resources that limit effective participation within the network, but the other problem appears to be more subtle. As representatives from the North (Italy) and the South (Uruguay) pointed out, there was a tendency to avoid confronting ideological differences and instead to celebrate the political diversity of the network. This meant that sometimes FoEI presented a false image of unity based on platitudes. And while FoEI was willing to celebrate its radicalism, it also sought to avoid risks and thus constructed a common identity based on a low common denominator. REDES/FoE Uruguay felt that the principle of consensus, which is the norm in the federation’s meetings, suppressed conflicts where open argument was needed. More will be said about this in the final section of the paper. For now, it is worth examining how the way FoEI dealt with this crisis also reproduced this general tendency to circumvent conflict. Efforts to Resolve Conflict In response to these obvious tensions, the FoEI Executive created a Network Process Team (a collection of eight representatives from local groups (two from each region – Asia Pacific, Africa, Latin American and the Caribbean, and Europe and North America who volunteered to examine the question of how FoEI could manage its ‘political diversity’. As noted, the formation of the NPT group was itself questioned. Once it became clear that its purpose was broadly deliberative - to seek to define the issues rather than to take decisions - it was less controversial. Six groups: Australia, Colombia, Costa Rica, France, Nigeria and Uruguay, then called for an Emergency General Meeting, to be held as part of the inter-BGM meeting already arranged for September 2003 in Cartagena, Colombia. An outside facilitator who specialised in work with NGOs was appointed and regional meetings were convened to deliberate on the NPT’s core questions and consider how best to resolve them in Cartagena. Once this process began, there was a momentum towards reconciliation and resolution. Faced with the possibility that the network might collapse, it seemed that all preferred to step back from the brink. The NPT became more about rebuilding trust within FoEI than resolving major differences over ideology and strategy. The Cartagena EGM was designed using an open agenda which sought to encourage sharing perspectives rather than making

12 Although this does not entail sympathy for those who argue for more resources to be devoted to translation. The representative of one Eastern European group suggested that if all groups sent only fluent English speakers to the BGM the network could save money.

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policy, although it did produce a protocol clarifying how decisions were made at various levels within FoEI, and particularly at international gatherings. There was less evident unhappiness at FoEI’s handling of its role at the WTO meeting in Cancun.13 As part of the reconciliation process, by the time of the next BGM in September 2004 Croatia, there was a willingness to admit to mistakes. Northern groups accepted that they had worked too much within the terms of events such as WSSD, and Ricardo Navarro, the retiring Chair from El Salvador, acknowledged the difficulties he created for FoE USA when on a visit to the USA in 2003 he said in an interview that the World Bank was responsible for more deaths than Saddam Hussein. This comment was not ‘an off the cuff’ remark, but was based on justifiable reasons and evidence, but it made life difficult for FoE USA which was trying to talk to the World Bank at the time. A meeting on political diversity led by FoE Australia produced an interesting discussion on political differences, but in a consensual form, which in effect was an exchange of contexts and identities. Peace, was thus re-established within the network but a consequence of the North-South debate is that any claim about the identity or strategy shared by the Federation is now recognised as potentially difficult. Identities and Stories How should we think about the nature of FoEI’s identity problems, as represented by this story. The literature on social identity is vast and often divided by discipline. In the study of social movements, Melucci (1996) has been especially influential in emphasising the extent to which social movement identity is always partial, loose and has to be worked at. Our aim in the research project is to assess the role that North-South issues play as sources of solidarity and division within FoEI’s identity. From our initial research it is clear that divisions over the issues raised in North-South divides do not map neatly into regional divisions between different member groups of FoEI. For instance, differences in political traditions between member groups may be crucial in cross-cutting North-South divides, with both conservative groups in the South (Chile seems to be one example) and radical groups in the North (Australia) and others such as those in Eastern Europe (neither clearly North nor South, and often apparently more conservative than either most in Western Europe or the South) complicating the patterns of allegiance. Furthermore, groups do not have fixed positions on these issues. European groups stress the importance of their ties with groups form the South, but they also have sought common ground in searching for shared frames and been pulled to make Southern perspectives more central in their campaigns. Until recently, Southern groups were critical of the significance attached to change climate issues by Northern branches of FoEI. Climate change had emerged as an issue through Western science and seemed to displace the current environmental injustices being experienced for a focus on a future problem. It was asked whether desertification was so low in priority in comparison because its main effects were on the South. FoEI has been able to agree to work effectively on climate change by focussing its campaigns on questions of climate justice. This has meant making central the injustices faced by those most affected by the fossil fuel industries such as the victims of gas flaring in Nigeria, and the effects of extreme weather events on those with the fewest resources to protect themselves. Thus campaigns against oil, gas and coal industries are tackled within a framework of climate justice. A striking feature of this debate was how small the number of participants were. The BGM is attended by c.80-90 people, of whom perhaps 55 have voting rights. As noted above, some people and groups are more centrally involved than others, and thus the voices heard are even fewer. This is not necessarily that unusual in political debate, where the audience is usually larger than the participants. In movements and parties arguments at national or international level might be taken up in local groups, or outside formal movement settings. But in FoEI it is hard to know if there is a major audience for this debate. There was some discussion of the departure of Acción Ecológica from FOEI in

13 40 campaigners from FoEI groups and the Secretariat were at Cancun for the WTO meeting.

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movement-related email groups such as the ecological debt list, but this is not a debate being fought out among the 1 million supporters or members of the FOEI Federation, or even as far as we can tell, among many of the 1,200 staff.14 The lack of an audience or widespread participation does not undermine the significance of the issues, or the potential consequences for the future positions of the Federation collectively, but it does raise interesting questions about who speaks for whom. At various points in the debate this issue was raised in FoEI. AE did not claim to speak for other groups, but it did use ‘we’ to describe a shared Southern standpoint. At other points in the debate some participants wondered aloud about their right to speak on behalf of the global poor. One question we will pursue further in interviews is how representatives of national groups view their own role as individuals within the network, and how much debate there is at national level about the issues that are central within the ‘political diversity’ debate in FoEI. The role of a relatively small number of participants in this debate also connects to a further question about the culture underlying how identity questions are dealt with within FoEI. McDonald (2002) , writing about anti-globalization activists in Melbourne and California, suggests that it is time to jettison the use of collective identity in relation to social movements. The term identity was more appropriate to movements such as the labour movement based on a model of collective discipline and solidarity. Anti-globalization activists in direct action affinity groups work together on the basis of a code in which personal responsibility is central. Affinity groups are based on a shared sense of trust between friends but in which each person’s agenda has to be accommodated. Thus the group has to agree a plan of action which takes into account what each individual is willing to do and assuming that individuals are only responsible for their themselves. This kind of individualism, giving priority to individual conscience and reasoning over collective solidarity and obligation is part of the culture of the green, women’s liberation, and the more radical parts of the peace movement, and many other Western social movements. Paul Lichterman (1996) has usefully defined it as ‘personalism’. Lichterman showed how attempts to build multi-cultural alliances between personalist green groups and environmental justice groups from African American communities foundered on occasion because modes of organisation and action reflected different assumptions about community: collective and communitarian in which solidarity was assumed in the case of African American groups, and individualist, in which personal responsibility was central and shared commitment could never be taken for granted in the case of greens. However, in contrast to McDonald, Lichterman does not reject the usefulness of identity. Instead, he shows that collective identity is possible even in personalist groups, but it reflects the particular assumptions about the nature of identity and community characteristics of personalism. Thus solidarity comes from being open about your own failings and weaknesses with your fellow activists and from working to achieve a consensus on which trust can rest.

This seems to us to be a potential route into understanding some of the modes of participation in FoEI, and, returning to Tilly, may be one of the examples of how the story of FoEI is affected by factors that are not necessarily part of the activists’ own stories of the events. There are certainly many features of personalism evident in FoEI’s culture: such as decisions being taken by consensus where possible. Another example comes from the Cartagena EGM, which was organised according to the principles of ‘Open Space’. Most of this was based on principles familiar to anyone who has attended an activist meeting in recent decades – an open agenda, much breaking into smaller groups and sending back spokespeople to the plenary to summarise discussion, and an orientation towards consensus. But ‘Open Space’ was presented in some internal documents as providing an important new means to enable inclusive discussion and participation (FOEI 2003: 6). More revealing was the language used in the document that explained how ‘Open Space’ worked. Participants were assumed to be individuals, not representatives of groups. The following is an extract from an explanation of the Open Space method:

14 253 staff had access to the FoEI intranet in 2003 (FOEI 2003: 14).

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The one law is The Law of Two Feet, or in some cases, The Law of Personal Mobility. It says simply that you, and only you, know where you can learn and contribute the most to the work that must take place today. It demands that you use your two feet to go where you need to go and do what you need to do. If at any time today, you find that you are not learning or contributing, you have the right and the responsibility to move... find another breakout session, visit the food table, take a walk in the sunshine, make a phone call -- but DO NOT waste time.

This simple rule makes everyone fully responsible for the quality of their own work and work experience. It creates bumblebees who buzz from session to session, cross-pollinating and connecting pieces of the work. It creates butterflies who may not join any formal sessions, choosing instead to float at the edges. They create the space for everyone to appreciate the energies and synergies unfolding in the work of the conference. Sometimes the most amazing solutions seem to come out of nowhere -- so that's where butterflies tend to look for them. (FoEI Guide to Working in Open Space 2003)

Authenticity in confronting fears, coming to the discussion with ‘passion’, were seen as essential. Open Space was in fact a management technique but its adoption for Cartagena seemed to come from the IS and is an example of how personalist culture is taken for granted as universal in FoEI. But while natural from a personalist perspective, it is at least strange that a meeting of a Federation of representatives of national groups should use a structure devised for individuals, who are assumed to have no differentiating commitments or responsibilities. The BGMs and other collective meetings of the network are more than policy-making occasions. Aside from the meetings of the Executive Committee they are the only face-to-face occasions for the Federation. They last for a week and are relatively small scale. Representatives who attend several such events can get to know the others quite well. Thus, how these meetings takes place is an important way of understanding FoEI’s culture. Although personalism is seen by Lichterman as particular to some Northern social movement groups, it is not clear that its assumptions are necessarily exclusively Northern. For instance, the discussion on ‘gender mainstreaming’ in FoEI at the 2004 BGM began with a participatory exercise in which participants had to divide themselves into groups according to ‘men, women or does not matter’ and then explain their choice as individuals, reflecting the assumption that personal experience mattered. This and the workplan on gender mainstreaming in FoEI was organised by the Phillipines branch of FoEI. Personalist assumptions and even ‘technologies’ might be a barrier to effective solidarity building, and might reflect particular movement cultures assumed to be universal, but not in fact shared by all participants. But nor should we assume that personalism is particular to Northern groups, or necessarily shared by all of them. One possibility is that they become a condition of working together for activists who may have quite different understandings of community and representativeness. This is likely to be a theme in our observation and interviews at future FoEI events. Conclusion The recent arguments within FoEI over political diversity are at one level, a minor adjustment for an international network, which continues to grow in significance. AE still retains links to branches of FoEI through other networks, so leaving the Federation does not mean severing all ties. The apparent peace after the storm of 2002-3, suggests that FoEI can move on to concentrate on developing a common strategy. This, in fact, is the identified priority of the IS and Ex-Com for the coming few years. Yet, the arguments seem to reveal much more of significance to understanding possible trajectories of environmentalism in future decades. This is first because, as we have suggested FoEI seems to offer one of the few spaces in which Northern and Southern environmentalism interact and have sought to re-examine their core principles. Moreover, as we have seen, while there may be an ideal type of Northern and Southern environmentalism, these positions do not map neatly onto national groups with multiple variants of

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conservatism in the South and radicalism in the North disrupting easy categories. One caveat here is that there is no reason to see FoE national groups as necessarily representative of environmentalism in their own countries and in many cases, they clearly are not. But nor are Southern FoE groups satraps of a Northern controlled NGO. FoEI seems rather to constitute a space in which green movement professionals, all with ties with non-FoE groups and campaigns in their national states, seek to develop common frames that interpret and inspire action against commonly agreed opponents. Both Northern and Southern branches see local, national and global issues as inter-related and dependent on an clear understanding of how power works in a globalizing world. FoEI has developed a common consensus on the importance of justice based on equity and recognition as the frame that poses the most effective means of challenging dominant modes of development. None of this is completely new, even for Northern environmentalism, but it draws on leftist traditions of varying forms that have been redefined and re-articulated as a result of trying to place local and national stories in a collective framework. It was instructive at the Croatia BGM to listen to Ricardo Navarro the Chair of FoEI list an analysis of capitalism, human rights issues and injustices, ending with ‘and that is why I call myself an environmentalist’. With the exception of the need to protect nature, the list could have been followed by ‘and that is why I call myself a socialist’. It is equally impossible now to imagine most Northern branches of FoEI returning to a position in which they treated environmental issues as potentially remediable without major social or political changes at international levels. There are many possible causes of such shifts, but it is also clear that the solidarity generated by participation in the FoEI network is a factor pulling Northern groups to focus increasingly on trans-national environmental justice. This is not in our view contradicted by the arguments that came out of AE’s departure from the network. FoEI has not resolved the problems that AE and others identitified. As we have suggested above, there are inequalities of power within the network that affects its inclusiveness and unintended consequences of organising practices, such as the search for consensus, which may also reinforce inequality. What the arguments within FoEI revealed were that there is in Torgerson’s terms (1999) a trans-national green public sphere in which a number of terms such as environmental justice, and corporate power, remain contested and unstable: sources of solidarity and potential division. Nor is this likely to change. There is a sense in the discussions that we have observed that this is recognised by most of the key participants in network debates as inevitable. It is in our view important that FoEI does not treat the next crisis over ideology or strategy as necessarily signalling the failure of its efforts to manage political diversity. If a solution is seen as essential it could lead to a new form of homogeneity. As Lichterman (1999: 104) argues, social movement forum spaces depend upon ‘critically collective discussion about members’ interests and collective identities’ and ‘the forum shrinks if members come to assume that their collective interests and identity are obvious and need not to be discussed, or if they talk only to strategize.’ This point also bears on the relation between FoEI and those groups in the North and South on whose behalf it claims to speak. FoEI as do many other radical environmental groups speak strongly in favour of a defence of the local alongside the global as an alternative source for resilient social alternatives. But, as Doyle argues:

Paradoxically, the championing of the ‘local’ by an increasingly global movement of resistance which includes environmental movements, may ultimately decimate this well-documented local diversity of experience in favor of more homogenous, simplistic dichotomies and dualisms utilizing western capitalism as the base point upon which everything else is measured.’

For FoEI then the other challenge, is to show how in its relations with groups outside the network, a sufficiently shared public sphere can be maintained to respond creatively to the further proliferation of environmentalisms which will follow the increased visibility of environmental conflicts globally, without falling into the temptation of seeking to ‘overly homogenize opposition, using the justification of global resistance and, in doing so, creating one environmental movement.’ (Doyle 2005: 171-2).

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References Aarts. B. (1998) The Political Influence of Global NGOs : Case Studies on the Climate and Biodiversity Conventions, The Hague: International Books Baviskar, Amita (1995) In the Belly of the River. Tribal Conflicts over Development in the Narmada Valley, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Brulle, R.J (2000) Democracy, and Nature: The US Environmental Movement from a Critical Theory Perspective, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press Bryant, RL and Bailey, S. eds. (1997) Third World Political Ecology, London: Routledge. Castells, M. (1997) The Power of Identity, Oxford: Blackwell. Chapman, G.P. (2000) ‘”Other Cultures”, Other Environments”, in J. Smith , ed. The Daily Globe: Environmental Change, the Public and the Media, London: Earthscan della Porta, D.. Kriesi, HP, and Rucht, D. eds., (1999) Social Movements in a Globalizing World, London: Macmillan. della Porta, D. and Tarrow, S. (eds.) (2004, forthcoming) Transnational Protest and Global Activism, Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Diani, M. (1995) Green Networks: A Structural Analysis of the Italian Environmental Movement, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Diani, M. and McAdam, D. eds. (2003) Social Movements and Networks, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Doherty, B. (2002) Ideas and Actions in the Green Movement, London: Routledge. Doyle, T. and McEachern, D. (1998) Environment and Politics, London: Routledge. Doyle, T. (2000) Green Power: The Environment Movement in Australia, Sydney: Univesity of New South Wales Press. Doyle, T. (2002). ‘Environmental Campaigns Against Mining in Australia and the Philippines’ Mobilization, 7,(1):29-42. Doyle, T. (2005) Environmental Movements in Majority and Minority Worlds, NJ, Rutgers University Press. Dryzek, J. (1997) The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dwivedi, R. (2001) ‘Environmental Movements in the Global South: Outline of a Critique of the ‘Livelihood’ Approach, in Hamel, P., Lustiger-Thaler, H. and Roseneil, S. (eds.) Globalization and Social Movements, London: Routledge. Edwards, M and Gaventa, J. eds (2000) Global Citizen Activism, London: Earthscan Friedkin, N. (1981) The development of structure in random networks: an analysis of the effects of increasing network density on five measures of structure, Social Networks (3): 41-52. Friends of the Earth International (2003) Annual Report, Amsterdam. Friends of the Earth Scotland (2003) Credit Where it’s Due, The Ecological Debt Education Project, Edinburgh: Friends of the Earth Scotland. Gandhi, Ajay (2003) Developing compliance and resistance: the state, transnational social movements and tribal peoples contesting India's Narmada project, Global Networks 3 (4), 481-495. Guidry, JA Kennedy, MD. and Zald, MN, eds (2000) Globalizations and Social Movements: Culture, Power and the Transnational Public Sphere, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Haynes, J. (1999)‘Power, Politics and Environmental Movements in the Third World’, Environmental Politics, 8, 1: 222-42. Keck, M.E. and Sikkink, (1998) Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kellow, A. (2000) ‘Norms, Interests and Environmental NGOs: the Limits of Cosmopolitanism’, Environmental Politics, 9, 3: 1-22. Lichterman, P. (1996) The Search for Political Community: American Activists Re-inventing Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lichterman, P. (1999) ‘Talking Identities in the Public Sphere: Broad Visions and Small Spaces in Sexual Identity Poltics’, Theory and Society, 28: 101-141. Magnusson, W. and Shaw, K. eds (2003) A Political Space: Reading the Global through Clayoquot Sound, Minneapolis, MS: University of Minnesota Press. Martinez-Alier, J. (2002) The Environmentalism of the Poor, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Mawdsley, E.E. (2004) 'India's Middle Classes and the Environment'. Development and Change. 35 (1): 79-103. Melucci (1996) Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Monbiot, G. (2001) ‘Sleeping with the Enemy’ The Guardian 4 September. Newell, P. (2001) ‘Campaigning for Corporate Change: Global Citizen Action on the Environment’, in Edwards, M and Gaventa, J. eds. (2000) Global Citizen Activism, London: Earthscan. Newman, P. (2000) ‘Theoretical and Methodological Issues Relating to Boundaries’, Paper presented at ‘Rethinking Boundaries: Geopolitics, Identities and Sustainabilities Conference, University of the Panjab, 20-24 February. Peet, R. and Watts, M. eds, second edition (2004) Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development and Social Movements, London: Routledge. Princen, T. and Finger, M., eds (1994) Environmental NGOs in World Politics, London: Routledge. Redclift, M. (1987) Sustainable Development, London: Methuen Rootes, C. (1999) ‘Acting Globally, Thinking Locally? Prospects for a Global Environmental Movement’, Environmental Politics, 8, 1: 290-310 Rootes, C. ed. (2003) Environmental Protest in Western Europe, Oxford: OUP. Smith, J. (1997) ‘Building Political Will after UNCED: EarthAction International’ in Smith, J., Chatfield, C. and Pagnucco, R.. ed.Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press Smith, J. (2002) ‘Bridging Global Divides? Strategic Framing and Solidarity in Transnational Social Movement Organizations’, International Sociology, 17, 4: 505-528. Smith, J. and Johnston, H. eds. (2002) Globalization and Resistance: Transnational Dimensions of Social Movements, Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. Tarrow, S. (1998) Power in Movement, Cambridge: CUP. Tilly, C. (2002) Stories, Identities and Political Change, Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield.

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Appendix 1 National Memberships and Staff, Friends of the Earth International 2003 country member staff members founded in FoEI ARGENTINA Proteger/AdT Argentina 1 70 84 85 AUSTRALIA FoE Australia 2 4500 73? 74 AUSTRIA Global 2000 30 60000 82 98 BELGIUM AdT Belgium 4 1200 76 83 BENIN AdT Benin 0 950 88 92 BOLIVIA centro de estudios regionales de tarija 89 2002 BRAZIL Nucleo Amigos da Terra/FoE Brazil 1 250 64 87 BULGARIA Ekoglasnost/FoE Bulgaria 2 1000 89 91 CAMEROON Centre for Environment and Development 13 1200 94 99 CANADA FoE/Les Amis de la Terre Canada 35 4000 78 83 CHILE CODEFF/FoE Chile 28 4450 68 90 COLOMBIA CENSAT Agua Viva. 11 9 89 99 COSTA RICA COEICOCEIBA 5 12 99 92 CROATIA Zelena Akcija-Green Action 8 256 90 2000 CYPRUS FoE Cyprus 1 340 80 83 CZECH REPUBLIC Hnut’ Duha/FoE Czech Republic 20 600 89 93 DENMARK NOAH/FoE Denmark 1 1106 69 87 EL SALVADOR CESTA 65 3000 80 91 ESTONIA Eesti Roheline Liikumine/FoE Estonia 5 300 88 91 FINLAND Suomen Maan YstŠvŠt ry/FoE Finland 1//2 500 87 96 FRANCE AdT France 5 3000 70 71 GEORGIA Mtsvaneta Mozraoba/Dedamiwis Megobrebi/ 9 5000 89 92 GERMANY Bund fur Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland 30 350000 75 89 GHANA Friends of the Earth Ghana 19 0 86 86 GREECE Nea Ecologia/FoE Greece 1 2500 84 GRENADA, WEST INDIES FoE Grenada 0 65 91 91 HAITI COHPEDA/AdT Haiti 4 93 96 HONDURAS Movimiento Madre Tierra 2002 HUNGARY Magyar Termeszetvedok Szovetsege/ 6 121 89 94 INDONESIA WALHI/FoE Indonesia 23 50000 80 89 IRELAND Earthwatch/FoE Ireland 3 1200 85 85 ITALY Amici della Terra/FoE Italy 12 25,300 77 78 JAPAN FoE Japan 12 250 81 81 KOREA Korean federation for environmental movement 80000 93 2002 LATVIA Vides aizsardzibas klubs/FoE Latvia 3 3400 87 92 LITHUANIA Lietuvos Zaliuju Judejimas 4,2 600 88 98 LUXEMBOURG Mouvement Ecologique/FoE Luxembourg 3 3100 68 90 MACEDONIA Dvizenje na ekologistite na Makedonija/ 7 10000 90 93 MALAYSIA Sahabat Alam Malaysia/FoE Malaysia 7 100 77 83 MALI GUAMINA/FoE Mali 43 66 1988 MALTA Moviment ghall-Ambjent/FoE Malta 0 320 85 91 MAURITIUS MUDESCO/FoE Mauritius 4 200 85 2000 NEPAL forum for protection of public interest 2002 NETHERLANDS FoE Netherlands 60 70000 72 75 NETH ANTILLES Amigu di Tera/FoE Cura�ao 0,5 530 89 89 NEW ZEALAND Friends of the Earth New Zealand 0 370 75 83 NICARAGUA centro humboldt 42 300 90 99 NIGERIA ERA/FoE Nigeria 3 300 96 NORWAY Norges Naturvernforbund/FoE Norway 15 25000 14 92

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PAPUA NEW GUINEA CELCOR 10 2000 2002 PARAGUAY Sobrevivencia/AdT Paraguay 23 101 86 92 PERU labor/AdT Peru 10? 81 PHILIPPINES LRDC/FoE Philippines 33 0 87 92 POLAND PKE/FoE poland 5 4000 80 86 SCOTLAND (U.K.) FoE Scotland 15 5000 78 79 SIERRA LEONE FoE Sierra Leone 2 1000 89 89 SLOVAKIA FoE Slovakia 14 500 97 97 SOUTH AFRICA GroundWork 6 99 2002 SPAIN AdT Spain 6 15000 79 83 SRI LANKA Environmental Foundation Ltd./FoE Sri Lanka 18 115 81 2000 SWEDEN Miljoforbundet Jordens Vanner/FoE Sweden 3 2200 71 71 SWITZERLAND Pro Natura/FoE Switzerland 44 98500 1909 95 TOGO AdT Togo 8 336 90 92 TUNISIA ATPNE/AdT Tunesia 10 2000 71 95 U.S.A. FoE US 40 20000 69 71 UKRAINE Zelenyi Svit/FoE Ukraine 3 10000 87 91 UNITED KINGDOM FoE EWNI 137 100000 71 71 URUGUAY REDES/FoE Uruguay 8 700 88 88

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Appendix 2 FOEI List of Member and Affiliated Groups (2004) argentina australia austria bangladesh belgium belgium (flanders) bolivia brazil bulgaria cameroon canada chile colombia costa rica croatia curacao cyprus czech republic denmark el salvador england/wales northern ireland estonia finland

france georgia germany ghana grenada guatemala haiti honduras hungary indonesia ireland italy japan korea latvia lithuania luxembourg Macedonia malaysia mali malta mauritius nepal netherlands

new zealand nicaragua nigeria norway palestine papua new guinea paraguay peru philippines poland scotland sierra leone slovakia south africa spain sri lanka swaziland sweden switzerland togo tunisia ukraine united states uruguay

Affiliated Groups africa earthlife africa australia mineral policy institute rainforest information centre brazil amigos da terra - amazônia brasileira grupo de trabalho amazonico (gta) canada blue planet project czech republic cee bankwatch

japan peace boat middle east foe middle east netherlands aseed europe corporate europe observatory north sea foundation (stichting de noordzee) wise europe usa corpwatch international rivers network rainforest action network

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Appendix 3 FOEI Priority Campaigns (as defined in 2003) Institutional objectives: long term: FoEI aims to convince governments to adopt national and international responsibilities to stop dangerous climate change, to reverse policies that promote unsustainable consumption and production, and to elevate biodiversity protection above free trade priorities. We are responsible for safeguarding the resources upon which the survival of future generations depends. Governments must transcend their tendency to adopt shortsighted economic imperatives that will sorely limit the choices of our children, and their children to come. Friends of the Earth International will also continue to challenge the policies of global international financial institutions, multinational corporations and investment banks. We will strive to convince governments that they must invest in equitable and sustainable development. We will lobby governments, support research and develop alternatives. And we will partake in and support public resistance. Specific campaign targets corporates resisting corporate domination Shell, Monsanto, Rio Tinto, Exxon, Novartis, Newmont, Lyonnaise: these are just a few of the big corporations that Friends of the Earth groups around the world have exposed for their irresponsible projects and practices. Our groups, together with Indigenous Peoples and communities, are resisting hundreds of mining, forests, food, energy and water projects that threaten the environment and livelihoods. rights for people, rules for big business As corporations have proven incapable of regulating themselves, we are calling for rights for communities and citizens to choose their local economies and to hold corporations legally accountable for bad practices. We also challenge the powerful role of corporations in institutions like the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the UN system and the World Economic Forum. trade economic globalization hurts Neoliberal policies are leading to a global system of unsustainable production and consumption that benefits giant corporations but fails people. Natural resources that sustain livelihoods are being extracted or destroyed, and inequality between people and societies is increasing. less wto, more sustainable economies We are campaigning to replace corporate globalization with a sustainable framework for trade regulation, based on democracy, equity, reduced consumption, cooperation and caution. The first step is to curb the power and scope of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other regional trade agreements. We are working with others to build an international movement opposing the expansion of the WTO, and demanding that food, natural resources and environment and development agreements not be subject to trade rules.

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international financial institutions (IFIs) get out of oil, mining and gas! Oil, mining and gas exploration inevitably cause environmental destruction and social disruption. Friends of the Earth believes that such projects should not be subsidized with taxpayer money from public institutions like the World Bank and Export Credit Agencies. stop the drive to privatize and liberalize We oppose the role of international financial institutions in facilitating corporate-led globalization, public sector privatization, investment deregulation and trade liberalization. We support a shift in financial flows from IFIs towards sustainable initiatives. let the people decide We are calling for civil society control over international financial institutions, and for the rights of communities to say “no” to projects and programmes that do not benefit them. mining leave gold in the ground! Digging for gold is a dirty and dangerous business. Friends of the Earth is calling for an international ban on cyanide heap leach gold mining in order to protect people's health and the environment. cut the greenwash We are convinced that the expansion of the global mining industry will mean more human rights abuses, biodiversity loss, waste production and poverty, and oppose attempts by so-called “green” mining industry bodies like the Global Mining Initiative to depict mining as part of a sustainable world. less mining for a better world We support the community resistance to mining projects around the world, and push for the rights of those most affected to determine whether, where, when and how mining takes place. Climate change stop climate change Friends of the Earth aims to prevent climate change, the biggest environmental threat to the planet. We are demanding strong national emissions reductions targets, and have initiated lawsuits against the world's worst polluters, including major oil corporations and the US government. climate justice for all We are challenging a number of big oil projects around the world that will accelerate climate change, and have allied with climate-affected communities to build a global movement that addresses social and economic equity between and within countries. forests save what's left The world's trees are in trouble. Half of global forests have disappeared, deforestation continues, and the health of remaining forests is declining rapidly. Friends of the Earth is calling for strong controls on the forest industry and a halt to illegal logging and the unsustainable conversion of forests to agriculture and pastures. We oppose "carbon sink" schemes that replace diverse forests with tree plantations. We need drastic reductions

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in energy consumption and paper use and the export of grains for cattle feed in order to conserve the forests that remain. community care for trees We believe that sustainable forest management and small-scale agriculture can best be left to Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and that these people should be granted land and resource rights. GMOs GMOs out of our food and the environment Although the biotechnology industry has promised to benefit farmers and consumers with revolutionary new products, it has had disastrous impacts including contamination of the food supply with illegal StarLink corn, lost exports due to widespread consumer rejection, and lawsuits by biotech companies against farmers. Friends of the Earth supports the right of countries to ban or otherwise restrict the introduction of Genetically-Modified Organisms (GMOs). stop food aid dumping Thanks to the biotech industry, much of the food aid that is sent to developing countries contains GMOs. We believe that countries have the right to decide what they want to eat, and we support sustainable agricultural practices and food sovereignty in order to avoid food crises in the first place.

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Appendix 4 FoEI achievements (Based on FoEI Annual Report 2003:

FoEI’s achievements are to be considered on three different levels: 1) international policy successes; 2) international pressure combined with national advocacy of member groups leading to changes of national policies, promoting community-based sustainable development alternatives, halting environmentally destructive projects; and 3) successful facilitation of grassroots, democratic international policy development and decision-making among the 68 member groups. Some of the international successes resulting from FoEI campaign pressure (mostly in alliance with other NGOs):

Developing countries' rejection of the 'new issues' at the WTO demonstrated the resolve of poor nations to stand up to the rich countries and their multinational corporations who were lobbying for greater access to developing countries' markets.

The EU's continuing strong stance on GMOs, including the EU labelling law.

Monsanto, the world's leading agricultural biotechnology company, abandoning its efforts to produce pharmaceuticals in genetically engineered crops.

The report of the Extractive Industries Review committee (which was established after a targeted FoEI campaign to stop World Bank investment in oil, mining and gas) concluding after two years of information gathering and regional consultations that the World Bank should phase out its support for oil and coal projects, not invest in dangerous mining technologies, establish 'no go zones' of high biodiversity, not invest in extractive industries in countries with weak governance, include human rights and Core Labor Standards, and strengthen its safeguard policies before it invests in any new projects.

the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development adoption of a compliance mechanism in March 2003, which will enable communities affected by its projects to officially seek redress.

Increased transparency of Export Credit Agencies, which have also adopted environmental and social policies.

The adoption and ratification (by 50 countries) of the Biosafety Protocol. As it has come into force in September 2003, the Biosafety Protocol meant a significant step forward towards improving biosafety at the global level.

As a result of FoEI corporate accountability campaign Governments committed at the WSSD meeting in Johannesburg to: “Actively promote

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corporate responsibility and accountability, based on Rio Principles, including through the full development and effective implementation of intergovernmental agreements and measures, international initiatives and public-private partnerships, appropriate national regulations, and continuous improvement in corporate practices in all countries.” Some national victories as result of combined national/international pressure:

As a result of FoEI's campaign and legal battle, Shell announced that they were pulling out of an oil exploration project in the Kirthar National Park, one of Pakistan's largest protected areas.

In September 2003, the US Export-Import Bank decided not to get involved in the destruction of the Peruvian jungle by refusing to finance the Camisea gas project. FoEI and our African member groups supported the Zambian government and NGOs with research of the status of hunger and the existence of alternatives to GM food aid in Zambia, thereby helping the government with their rejection of GM good aid forced upon them by the US government.

FoEI supported local NGOs with the testing and campaigning against food aid in Nicaragua, Bolivia and Guatemala, where we discovered StarLink and other forbidden varieties.

FoEI supported REDES/Friends of the Earth Uruguay, which together with other social movements, including the water workers union, farmers, the Neighborhood Association in Defense of Water and the Sustainable Uruguay Programme launched a national campaign to protect water from privatization. They succeeded in getting the required 250,000 signatures needed to require a constitutional amendment that would secure the recognition of water as a public good and fundamental human right that must be managed sustainably.

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APPENDIX 5: Campaigns by national groups, FOEI 2003

country cc

agric /food forests biodiversity

biotech

ifis gender

eco debt

mining trade tnc's

HR desert.

dams/ rivers

energy nuclear

energy (renew)

indigen. peoples

maritime/ fisheries militarism oil

ozone pesticides recycling sustain

g8 transport

ARGENTINA AUSTRALIA x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x AUSTRIA x x x x x x x x x x x x BELGIUM BENIN BOLIVIA BRAZIL x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x BULGARIA x x x x x x x x CAMEROON CANADA x x x CHILE x x x x x x x x COLOMBIA x x x x x x x x x x x x x

COSTA RICA x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

CROATIA x x x x CYPRUS x x x x x x x x CZECH REPUBLIC x x x x x x x x x x x x x DENMARK x x x x x x x x EL SALVADOR x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x ESTONIA x x x x x x x x x x x FINLAND x x x

FRANCE x x x x x

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GEORGIA x x x x x x x

GERMANY x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x GHANA GREECE x x x x x x x x x x x x GRENADA, WEST INDIES

HAITI x x x x x HONDURAS

HUNGARY x x x x x x x x x INDONESIA x x x x x x x x x x x x x IRELAND x x x x x x x x

ITALY x x x x x x x x x x x JAPAN x x x x x KOREA LATVIA x x x x x x x x LITHUANIA x x x x x x x x x x x LUXEMBOURG x x x x MACEDONIA x x x x x x x x

MALAYSIA x x x x x x x x x x MALI x x x x x x MALTA x x x x x MAURITIUS x x x x x x x x x x x x x NEPAL

NETHERLANDS x x x x x x x x x x x x x x Neth. ANTILLES x x x x x x x x x x NEW ZEALAND x x x x x x x x x x NICARAGUA x x x x x x x x NIGERIA

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NORWAY x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x PAPUA NEW GUINEA

PARAGUAY x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x PERU PHILIPPINES x x x x x x x POLAND x x x x x x x x x

SCOTLAND (U.K.) x x x x x x x SIERRA LEONE SLOVAKIA x x SOUTH AFRICA SPAIN x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

SRI LANKA x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x SWEDEN x x x x x x x x x x x SWITZERLAND x x x x x x x x x x x TOGO x x x x x x x x x x x x x x TUNISIA

U.S.A. x x x x x x x x x x x x x x UKRAINE x x x x x x x x x x UNITED KINGDOM x x x x x x x x x x x x x x URUGUAY x x x x x x x x x x x x

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