NGOs and Environmental Policies: Asia and Africa

NGOS AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES

NGOs and EnvironmentalPolicies: Asia and Africa

Edited by

DAVID POTTER

FRANK CASS

LONDON • PORTLAND, OR

First published in 1996 in Great Britain byFRANK CASS PUBLISHERSCrown House, 47 Chase Side,Southgate, London N14 5BP

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

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c/o ISBS, 5824 N.E. Hassalo Street,Portland, Oregon 927213–3640

Website: www.frankcass.comCopyright © 1996 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataNGOs and environmental policies: Asia and Africa

1. Environmental policy—Asia 2. Environmental policy—Africa 3. Non-governmental organizations—Asia

4. Non-governmental organizations—AfricaI. Potter, David

333.7 2 09

ISBN 0-203-98913-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-7146-4215-0 (Print Edition)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNGOs and environmental policies: Asia and Africa/edited by David

Potter.p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 0-7146-4215-0 (pbk.)

SD418.3.A78N56 1996333.75 095–dc20 95–26760

CIP

' '

'

1. Deforestation—Government policy—Asia. 2. Deforestation—Government policy—Africa. 3. Forest conservation—Governmentpolicy—Asia. 4. Forest conservation—Government policy—Africa.5. Environmental policy—Asia. 6. Environmental policy—Africa.

7. Non governmental organizations—Asia. 8. Non-governmentalorganizations—Africa. I. Potter, David, 1931–

-

This group of studies first appeared in a Special Issue of The Journal ofCommonwealth & Comparative Politics, Vol. XXXIV, No. 1 (March 1996), [NGOs

and Environmental Policies: Asia and Africa].

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic,

mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission ofFrank Cass and Company Limited.

iv

Contents

IntroductionDavid PotterAnnie Taylor

1

1 Democratisation and the Environment: NGOs andDeforestation Policies in India (Karnataka) and Indonesia(North Sumatra)David Potter

9

1.1 The First Hypothesis: Democratisation and Numbers of EnvironmentalNGOs

11

1.2 The Second Hypothesis: Democratisation and NGO Influence on Policy 14

1.3 An Indonesia-North Sumatra Story 15

1.4 A Karnataka-Uttara Kannada Story 21

1.5 Conclusion 28

2 NGO Advocacy, Democracy and Policy Development: SomeExamples Relating to Environmental Policies in Zimbabwe andBotswanaAlan Thomas

37

2.1 NGO Influence and Democratisation in Africa 38

2.2 Four Hypotheses 43

2.3 Does Democracy Matter At All? Normal Policy Development 45

2.4 Four Stories of Attempted NGO Influence 48

2.5 Analysis: Factors Affecting NGO Influence 54

2.6 Conclusion: Implications for Democratisation and for NGO Strategy 58

3 Does North-South Collaboration Enhance NGO Influence onDeforestation Policies in Malaysia and Indonesia?Bernard Eccleston

63

3.1 Global Civil Society and Optimistic Expectations for NGO Collaboration 64

3.2 Interlinked National Civil Societies and Guarded Expectations for NGOCollaboration

67

3.3 Contrasting Styles and Outcomes of NGO Collaboration 70

3.4 NGO Collaboration to Share Resources and Widen Domestic PoliticalSpace

74

3.5 NGO Collaboration to Open Up Global Political Space 76

3.6 Reactions to NGO Collaboration from Policy-Making Networks 78

3.7 Conclusion: Choices About Future NGO Collaboration 80

4 Regime Theory and Non-Governmental Organisations: TheCase of Forest ConservationDavid Humphreys

85

4.1 Regime Theory 85

4.2 NGOs and the Tropical Forestry Action Programme 88

4.3 NGOs and the International Tropical Timber Organisation 91

4.4 NGOs and the UNCED Forest Negotiations 92

4.5 NGOs and the Negotiation of the International Tropical TimberAgreement, 1994

97

4.6 The Role of NGOs in Regime Creation 98

4.7 Conclusions 102

5 NGOs and Competing Representations of Deforestation as anEnvironmental Issue in MalaysiaBernard Eccleston

111

5.1 Multiple Environmental Consequences of Forest Conversion 112

5.2 Disputing Responsibility for Over-Rapid Depletion of Tropical Forests 119

5.3 Competing Conceptions of Sustainable Forest Depletion 122

5.4 South-North Conflicts over Tropical Forest Depletion 125

5.5 Competing Claims to Ownership and Control of Forest Resources 126

5.6 Conclusion 131

6 Does the Definition of the Issue Matter? NGO Influence andthe International Convention to Combat Desertification inAfricaSusan CarrRoger Mpande

137

6.1 Defining the Problem of Desertification 138

vi

6.2 The Lead-Up to the Convention 141

6.3 Negotiating the Convention 143

6.4 NGO’s Role during the Negotiations 146

6.5 NGO’s Role over the Longer Term 150

6.6 Discussion 151

Index 159

vii

viii

IntroductionDAVID POTTER AND ANNIE TAYLOR

The eight-volume Handbook of Political Science (1975) made no reference to NGOs(Non-Governmental Organisations). Twenty years later most political scientistshave heard of NGOs but probably regard them as of marginal political significance.It therefore may come as something of a surprise to learn that there is now a growingliterature on the political work of NGOs, including transnational NGO networksand coalitions, and on the significance of NGOs in explaining political processesin different countries. One may not agree entirely with Salamon (1994:109) that‘we are in the midst of a global “associational revolution” that may prove to be assignificant to the latter twentieth century as the rise of the nation-state was to thelatter nineteenth’. But surely it is time for students of comparative politics to paycareful attention to this phenomenon in their work.

The papers in this volume aim to make a contribution in this regard bysummarising some results of new research on the political work of NGOs tryingto influence environmental policies. The papers are grounded in empirical evidenceobtained through interviews and other field research in Asia and Africa, and inEurope. They speak to a range of theoretical literatures: theories of democratisationin the field of comparative politics, regime theory and other theories ininternational relations, the literature on policy analysis and agenda setting, networkanalysis and the literatures on environmental politics and development.Comparative analysis figures prominently; comparative analysis is the organisingprinciple of both Papers 1 and 2 using a form of a ‘comparative case-orientedmethod’ (Ragin 1987) due to the very different but small number of politicalcontexts being compared, while Papers 3, 5 and 6 draw on more particularcomparisons to support the arguments being made.

All the papers address aspects of one main question: why are NGOs influential inaffecting the development of certain policies related to global environmental problems?

The concept of NGO as used here refers roughly to non-governmental, non-profit organisations. As an organisation an NGO has at least several full-time staff,some sort of hierarchy, a budget and an office (although with local NGOs this cansometimes mean little more than someone’s house or flat). Environmental NGOsare embedded in, but distinct from, environmental movements. The famousChipko movement in India, for example, involved village people in the GarwhalHimalaya, especially women, hugging trees when loggers arrived to cut them

down; but it was not an NGO because although there were leaders and followersthere was no formal organisation. The non-governmental aspect of an NGO placesit conventionally outside the state in civil society, that ‘intermediate associationalrealm between state and family populated by organisations which are separate fromthe state, enjoy autonomy in relation to the state and are formed voluntarily bymembers of society to protect or extend their interests or values’ (White 1994:379).Some NGOs within civil society are politically uninvolved but others engage withgovernment and other organisations, advocating changes in policy. IndividualNGOs can advocate progressive or reactionary policies and the NGO communitymay or may not strengthen civil society; for example, Kenya’s NGO communityhas been unable to do so due to its fragmentation, competitiveness andunrepresentative character, according to Fowler (1993, cited in Clarke 1995: 14).The distinction between NGO and government is not always easy to make; forexample, some NGOs are financed almost exclusively by governments—does thismake them an arm of the state? The non-profit aspect of NGOs can also poseboundary problems; for example, is a non-governmental environmental researchorganisation sponsored entirely by a profit-making business enterprise an NGO?Normally, there are legal distinctions; in most countries organisations must beregistered, and as such are formally classified as profit or non-profit undertakings.

The NGOs that concern us in this volume are engaged with global environmentalproblems. An environmental problem is defined, following Sloep and van Dam-Mieras (1995), as a change in the physical environment brought about by humaninterferences which are perceived by people to be unacceptable with respect to aparticular set of commonly shared norms. Many NGOs have broader remits thanjust the environment. This is particularly true in the South, where nearly allenvironmental NGOs direct their attention at development problems within whichan environmental aspect can be one of several concerns. An environmental problemis global if its consequences are global or if the political actors involved transcendthe nation-state.

Despite various boundary problems, the definition of environmental NGOs asnon-governmental, non-profit organisations engaged with environmentalproblems works reasonably well in identifying a distinct category of political actorsin the arena of environmental policy making.

An environmental policy for an NGO can be defined as a deliberate course ofaction by a target organisation, or set of organisations, designed to accomplish someend related to an environmental problem. It can involve deliberate choices to altera present course of action: it can also involve an unchanging course of action by atarget organisation ‘pursued over time in a fairly consistent way against pressure tothe contrary’ (Heidenheimer 1990:5) We refer in our main research question to

David Potter is Professor of Political Science, the Open University; AnnieTaylor, formerly at the Open University, is currently in the Politics Department,University of Southampton.

2 NGOS AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES

the development of policy, conceiving policy, following Grindle and Thomas (1991),as a continuous process with three distinguishable phases: agenda setting, policychoices and implementation processes. (There is no implication that thedevelopment of policy will necessarily be beneficial to the environment.) Agendasetting is the first stage in the policy process during which an environmental issueor set of issues becomes for an organisation a subject for policy choice. An issue ‘isany unresolved matter, controversial or non-controversial, that awaits anauthoritative decision’ (Crenson 1971:29). The potential number of issues ofpossible interest to an organisation far exceeds the capacity of the organisation toact on them; issues thus can be said to compete for a place on the policy-makingagenda. To be able to set the agenda of a target organisation, to bring anenvironmental issue to the fore and shape how it is to be considered, can be a mostimportant part of policy advocacy work (Riker 1993). The actual decision or choicemade by the target organisation is a process distinct from agenda setting.Furthermore, a policy choice, once made, must be implemented; and that also isa distinct part of the policy process because all sorts of detailed choices aresubsequently made at ground level, so to speak, by people other than those whoinitially made the policy choice. Environmental policies made by state agencies,for example, typically engage with businesses or other non-state agencies whenbeing implemented.

An NGO can be more influential in relation to one of these aspects ofenvironmental policy than another. Also, by referring in the main research questionto certain policies we acknowledge that NGOs can be influential in relation to someenvironmental policies and not others.

Influence, of course, is a complex concept. A standard definition (Knoke 1990)in the context of this research is one that says that NGO A is influential when itintentionally transmits information to target organisation B (a government agency,business or intergovernmental organisation) which alters B’s policies. Thedefinition is useful as far as it goes, but A can also intentionally influence B in orderindirectly to influence C. For example, NGOs have indirectly influenced theWorld Bank by directly lobbying the House and Senate AppropriationsSubcommittees on Foreign Operations in Washington; because the USAgovernment is the single largest shareholder in the Bank, this gives these legislativecommittees important leverage to which the Bank must pay careful attention.Further complications arise upon consideration of the fact that A may influenceB’s policies without A intentionally transmitting information. The mere existenceof A may shape B’s policies because of B’s belief in what A could or would do ifcertain policy options were adopted. Such influence is structural; it is part of abroader structure of power which shapes the interrelationships between A and Band helps to determine their relative power. The analysis of NGO advocacy workin relation to specific environmental policies of particular target organisationsinvolves both intentional transmissions of information, directly or indirectly, fromone to the other, and other interdependencies that are structural in character. Weargue in this volume, especially in Paper 2, that there are four major forms of such

INTRODUCTION 3

influence: collaboration, confrontation, complementary activities andconsciousness-raising.

Are NGOs influential? It is widely assumed that sometimes they are; but canone be certain? Answer: not really. Such uncertainty about assessing influence ispart of a general problem in interest group research: an NGO transmits informationadvocating a change of policy, the policy then changes, but there may be noconnection between the two events (the policy may have changed because ofpressure from other organisations or other factors like sheer chance). Correlationcan be mistaken for causation. Also, NGO opinions and changes in policy can bothtake place over time because of general shifts in internationally accepted norms.Such problems do not mean that determinations of NGO influence are impossible,but there is no doubt that one needs to be careful about accepting public or privateclaims by the parties involved. And even when care is taken there is still an elementof uncertainty.

Why are NGOs influential? A number of factors are involved. Some involveagency—the actions of NGOs and others. Some involve structure—constraintsand opportunities that shape what NGOs can and cannot do and determine thecontent of their demands. A structural constraint can severely limit what an NGOcan do, but it is not an irremovable obstacle. Its features can and do change overtime and such changes can provide opportunities for NGOs in the longer term.Four such constraints that NGOs confront, about which they can do very little inthe short term, are given prominence in the research reported in this volume.

First, any NGO attempting to influence an environmental policy inherits theparticular environmental issue to which the policy relates. Certain environmentalissues tend to be less amenable to NGO influence than others. For example, anenvironmental policy proposal by an NGO which would affect the vital interestsof powerful organisations is unlikely to be accepted; examples are NGOscampaigning to end commercial logging in tropical forests when the interests ofgovernment are served by land concessions as political favours to large wood-producing firms, or when policy proposals would involve agrarian reformdetrimental to powerful landed interests. Similarly, proposed environment policychanges advocated by NGOs that are self-evidently grounded in ideas aboutintergenerational equity are also difficult to bring to fruition. Many NGOs workon one particular environmental issue at a time, and if it happens that the issue isnot intrinsically amenable to NGO influence, then that is a major constraint ontheir advocacy work. But issues can also provide opportunities. For example, anenvironmental issue can become more amenable to NGO influence as it advanceson the global environmental agenda when international conventions and protocolson that issue are agreed by nation-states.

Second, a major structural constraint on NGO advocacy work is the characterof the target organisations they confront. There are three main types: organisationswithin the state (for example, a Ministry of the Environment, of Industries, ofForests, a Nuclear Inspectorate, an Overseas Aid Agency); domestic or transnationalbusiness organisations whose policies use or abuse the environment; and IGOs


(Intergovernmental Organisations) whose policies have important environmentalconsequences (for example, World Bank, the UN and its agencies, World TradeOrganisation, International Tropical Timber Organisation, G 7, G 77, relevantagencies within the EU). Basically, certain target organisations are more amenableto NGO influence than others. A secretive organisation representing very powerfulinterests and hostile to an NGO’s policy agenda is a tough target; for example,environmental NGOs were never able directly to influence GATT. But there arealso opportunities. Targets can become more accessible or vulnerable. Vulnerabilityin this context means that the organisation is accountable to some constituency or‘public’. Where there is such accountability, then political leverage can be broughtto bear. For example, commercial firms whose policies impact adversely on theenvironment can be vulnerable to consumer boycotts organised by NGOs. Suchboycotts can hurt sales and profit margins. Target organisations can also bevulnerable if their sources of funding are accessible to NGO lobbying.

Third, NGOs cannot choose the domestic political context in which they findthemselves. Some political contexts are more favourable to NGO advocacy workthan others. In this regard, the literature broadly assumes that NGOs have moreopportunities to be more influential when operating in more democratic politicalcontexts. Or, put another way, target organisations in more democratic politicalcontexts are more amenable to NGO influence than target organisations in moreauthoritarian political contexts. We take democratic regimes to be modes of makingbinding rules collectively at the level of the nation-state characterised by(1) accountability of rulers to the ruled through representative assemblies based onmulti-party elections and adult suffrage, (2) diversity of power centres within thestate and a plurality of power centres outside the state into which the state doesnot normally reach, (3) guarantees in law of civil and political rights (includingfreedoms of expression and association), and (4) popular participation by peoplethroughout society in decisions that directly affect their lives together with theprinciple of equality informing political life generally. The first three are normallyfound in conventional liberal democratic definitions. Some democratic theoristsinclude all four (for example, Beetham 1994). No democracy anywhere at any timehas met all four tests very well, certainly not in Asia and Africa. But the featuresdo enable discriminations to be made between more or less democracy at a nationallevel. They also define the dimensions on which democratisation takes place.

Fourth, structures of power that shape what NGOs can and cannot achieve byway of influencing environmental policies are not confined to local and nationalpolitical arenas. Such structures can also be global in scope. Transnational economicprocesses of global capitalism and uneven North-South development are powerfulforces about which NGOs can do nothing in the short term. However,transnational processes also provide opportunities. Northern NGOs may call onthe support of Southern NGOs in their coalitions or alliances when campaigningagainst a state-level target organisation in the North. Southern NGOs may sendaction ‘alerts’ directly to Northern NGOs who then urge their members to writeletters to environmental policy makers in a Southern country. Even very local-level

INTRODUCTION 5

NGOs will sometimes ‘go global’ when campaigning against policy-making targetsin their own country. In doing so, they in effect bypass the nation-state. The waypeople think and act within the NGO sector in the 1990s can be strikinglytransnational.

All six papers in this volume are set within the research framework summarisedabove and address certain aspects of the large question posed at the outset.

Papers 1 and 2 focus on the democracy question: are environmental NGOs moreinfluential when they work in more democratic political contexts? In addressingthis question, Paper 1 compares NGO advocacy work in India and Indonesia,paying special attention in these different political contexts to different aspects ofthe policy process—agenda setting, policy choices and policy implementation.Paper 2 compares NGO advocacy work in Zimbabwe and Botswana, developinghypotheses linking the four aspects of democracy with the four forms of policyinfluence—collaboration, confrontation, complementary activities, consciousness-raising.

Paper 3 examines transnational NGO networks, alliances and coalitions and theirbearing on NGO advocacy work. The literature on global civil society tends toexpress optimism about such linkages. The research reported in Paper 3 suggeststhat there are in fact major differences between Northern and Southern perceptionsof such transnational linkages, with NGOs in the South experiencing variousproblems with the ways such transnational connections operate. Comparativeevidence mainly from Malaysia and Indonesia is referred to in the analysis.

Papers 4, 5 and 6 are about the work of NGOs in the development ofconventions, protocols and other international agreements related to twoenvironmental issues: forests and desertification. Paper 4 examines regime theoryin this context and the work of NGOs in regime formation, paying particularattention to the role of Northern and Southern NGOs in the international politicsof the Tropical Forestry Action Programme, International Tropical TimberOrganisation, forest negotiations of the UNCED process, and the negotiation ofthe International Tropical Timber Agreement, 1994. Paper 5 draws on thetheoretical analysis in Paper 4 in order to explain why a Global Forest Conventionhas not yet been agreed, and in doing so considers the role of Southern NGOs,especially in Malaysia, in the political processes involved. Paper 6 also draws onthe theory in Paper 4 to explain why a Convention on Desertification was quicklyagreed in the mid-1990s, and examines the role of NGOs, mainly from Africa, inthis political process. Papers 5 and 6 together offer a comparison which throwslight on the general proposition that certain environmental issues are moreamenable to NGO influence and international agreement than others.

The literature on NGO advocacy and environmental policy is mostly Northernin orientation and written in the North. Where there are references to the South,they tend to be sporadic, general and uninformed by research in the South. Thisvolume aims to make a contribution by concentrating on what the literature tendsto neglect. The research reported here has a pronounced Southern orientation. Itconcentrates for the most part on Southern NGO advocacy work in relation to


global environmental issues particularly salient in the South; and much of theevidence on which it rests comes from South-North collaborative research.

This research, which commenced in 1993 and is on-going, has been funded bythe Economic and Social Research Council of the United Kingdom under theirGlobal Environmental Change Initiative, and by the Open University. We aregrateful for their assistance. The authors of the papers in this volume are membersof the GECOU (Global Environmental Change—Open University) researchgroup. The GECOU group has worked closely together as a team for some time,so much so that it is to some extent misleading to put individual names to individualpapers. Each paper in this volume can therefore be said to be a product of collectiveeffort, involving not only GECOU colleagues but also colleagues in Asia, Africaand elsewhere associated with the GECOU research (and who are acknowledgedat appropriate places in the individual papers). We also thank Arnold Hughes forreading and commenting on all the papers, John Hunt for the maps, and SallyEaton, Jennifer Potter and Joan Dale Lace for seeing the manuscript through topublication.

REFERENCES

Beetham, D. (ed.) (1994) Defining and Measuring Democracy, London, Sage.Clarke, G. (1995) ‘Participation and Protest: Non-Governmental Organisations and

Philippine Politics’, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of London.Crenson, M. (1971) The Un-Politics of Air Pollution: A Study of Non-decision Making in the

Cities, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press.Fowler, A. (1993) ‘Non-Governmental Organisations and the Promotion of Democracy in

Kenya’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Sussex.Grindle, M. and Thomas, J. (1991) Public Choices and Policy Change: The Political Economy of

Reform in Developing Countries, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press.Handbook of Political Science (1975) 8 vols., edited by Fred Greenstein and Nelson Polsby,

Reading, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.; esp. Vol. IV ‘Non-Governmental Politics’.Heidenheimer, A. et al. (1990) Comparative Public Policy, 3rd edn, New York, St Martins

Press.Knoke, D. (1990) Political Networks: The Structural Perspective, Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press.Ragin, C. (1987) The Comparative Method: Beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies,

Berkeley, University of California Press.Riker, W. (ed.) (1993) Agenda Formation, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press.Salamon, L. (1994) ‘The Rise of the Nonprofit Sector’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 4, pp.

109–22.Sloep, P. and van Dam-Mieras, M. (1995) ‘Science and Environmental Problems’ in P.

Glasbergen and A.Blowers (eds.) Environmental Policy in an International Context: Book1, Perspectives on Environmental Problems, London, Edwin Arnold.

White, G. (1994) ‘Civil Society, Democratization and Development (I): Clearing theAnalytical Ground’, Democratization, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 375–90.

INTRODUCTION 7

8

1Democratisation and the Environment:

NGOs and Deforestation Policies in India(Karnataka) and Indonesia (North

Sumatra)DAVID POTTER

Given that democracy and environmental sustainability are two prominent valuesin current international discourse, it is remarkable that the comparative politicsliterature on democratisation virtually ignores the environment. Recentcomparative analyses of democratisation drawing on modernisation theories referto a wide range of more or less propitious economic, political, social and culturalconditions; but environmental variables are not amongst them, nor is thereconsideration of the possible consequences of democratisation for the environment(for example, Dahl 1989, Diamond et al. 1989, Vanhanen 1990, Hedenius 1992,Lipset 1994, Fukuyama 1995). Such analyses framed by transition theories, in whichdemocratisation is seen as driven by the agency of particular elite initiatives, alliancesand conflicts, likewise have nothing to say on this subject (for instance, Di Palma1990, Mainwaring et al. 1992, Higley and Gunther 1992, Schmitter 1994, Pridham1995). The same is the case with respect to explanations using some form ofstructural theory, in which democratisation is regarded as one of several historicaltrajectories each shaped by changing structures of class, state and transnationalpower (for example, Haggard and Kaufman 1992, Rueschemeyer et al. 1992, Potter1993, Stephens 1993). In other recent works on democracy and democratisationthere is no mention of the environment or only the briefest of references ‘in passing’(examples are Beetham 1994, Held 1993, Parry and Moran 1994). Huntington’s(1994) major review article of the comparative politics literature on democratisationpays attention to both causes and consequences of democratisation, but there is nomention of possible environmental consequences.

The growing academic literature on environmental politics likewise has had littleto say systematically on the subject of democracy and the environment (for instance,Hurrell and Kingsbury 1992, Lipschutz and

Conca 1993, Ghai 1994, Princen and Finger 1994). This is also true of the majorreports on the environment (examples are, Brundtland et al. 1988, Tolba et al. (forUNEP) 1992, Agenda 21 1992, World Bank 1994). The standard annualenvironmental publications also largely avoid the issue, like the Green Globeyearbooks (for instance, Bergesen and Parman 1994) and the Worldwatch

David Potter is Professor of Political Science, the Open University.

Institute’s State of the World reports (for example, Brown 1995). Where there hasbeen reference to the subject it has amounted to a general presumption that eitherthe consequences of democratisation are beneficial for the environment (examplesare, Clark 1991, Hardoy 1992, Fowler 1993) or that the consequences of globalenvironmental crisis or collapse could produce a strong trend toward authoritarianregimes in both capitalist and socialist countries (a review of such views is inPhaehlke, 1989).

Very recently, several political scientists have begun to try to theorise moresystematically the relationship generally between democracy and the environment(Payne 1995, Gleditsch and Sverdrup 1995, Munslow and Ekoko 1995). One partof such discussions is directed at what is perceived as the greater role ofenvironmental NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations) in more democraticpolitical contexts. Payne argues that (i) in democracies ‘citizens are free to gatherand disseminate environmental information and lobby their governmentcollectively’ resulting in there being more environmental NGOs in democraciesthan in non-democracies, and (ii) democratic states are ‘more likely to beaccountable and responsive to demands’ with the result that NGOs as pressuregroups ‘enjoy greater success in democratic societies’. Gleditsch and Sverdrupsimilarly argue that democratisation ‘tends to mobilise counterforces’ like NGOswhich are likely to become more influential in relation to environmental policieswith more democratisation. These arguments can be stated summarily in terms oftwo linked hypotheses about democratisation and environmental NGOs:

1. In more democratic regimes there are more environmental NGOs providingopposition to policies adversely affecting the environment;

2. Environmental NGOs in more democratic regimes have more influence onpolicies adversely affecting the environment than NGOs in less democraticregimes.

In this paper, I consider these two linked hypotheses by comparing the numberand influence of environmental NGOs on policies affecting a particularenvironmental problem—tropical deforestation—in democratic India (Karnataka)and non-democratic Indonesia (North Sumatra). The analysis is based mainly onfield research in India and Indonesia during 1993–95. The assistance of those whohelped the most in this regard is gratefully acknowledged at the end of this paper.The comparative analysis suggests that these two conventional hypotheses may notrepresent accurately the relationships between democratisation and the numberand influence of environmental NGOs.


1.1THE FIRST HYPOTHESIS: DEMOCRATISATION AND

NUMBERS OF ENVIRONMENTAL NGOS

In discriminating between more or less democratisation in Asia, I use the criteriaset out in the working definition of democracy in the introduction to this volume.On this basis, India is one of Asia’s more democratic regimes. A large literature hasexamined critically its various features (for example, Rudolph and Rudolph 1987,Frankel and Rao 1989 and 1990, Kohli 1990, Mitra 1992, Brass 1994). The polityhas been noted for competitive elections at national, state and local levels. Thereis also a plurality of power centres inside the state. As for civil and political rights,data produced by Amnesty International and the US State Department for the1980s (as reported in PIOOM 1990), for example, were not complimentary,primarily due to a record of dreadful abuses of human rights by police and securityforces in North India, especially in Kashmir, Punjab and Assam. Other rankingsfor the 1980s put India toward the top for organisational freedoms and freedom ofopinion (for example, Hadenius 1992:67–88). India also has probably the mostactive civil rights movements in Asia (Rubin 1987). As with most other liberaldemocracies, there was not much popular participation by the majority of peoplein state decision-making arenas apart from the power exercised by their vote atperiodic elections. Deploying these democratisation criteria regionally, Karnatakain South India could be rated as one of the most democratic states in India, perhapsin Asia. It has, for example, a lengthy history of comparatively stable multi-partypolitics, a free and lively press, and a ‘culture of accountability’ (Crook and Manor1995).

By comparison, Indonesia has been since the mid-1960s one of Asia’s mostauthoritarian regimes. The political leadership has not been accountable to voters.The electoral system was organised to ensure that the government party GOLKARwon. There were opposition parties but they were strictly controlled. Politicalactivity was banned between elections and the rural population—most Indonesians—was not allowed to belong to a political party. Pluralism inside and outside thestate in Indonesia was minimal. There was a virtual ‘fusion of state, local and foreigncapital’ (Chan and Clark 1992:44), with generals, politicians and bureaucratspursuing power, patronage and revenues through their control of state monopolies,concessions, licences and subsidies (Robison 1993). In 1980, 24 of the 34 localcompanies engaged in the timber business involved military interests (Bresnan 1993:212). Other ‘centres of power outside the government were eliminated orappeased’ (Dauvergne 1994:505). Within the state, the fusion of executive-legislative-judicial power was striking, together with military penetration of thecivilian apparatus. In 1990, probably more than 60 per cent of the senior officialsin central government ministries were military people; in 1987 21 of the 27governors were active or ‘retired’ generals or colonels (Dauvergne 1994:504). Asfor political rights and freedoms, Indonesia was regularly rated very low for the

DEMOCRATISATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT 11

1980s by Amnesty International, the US State Department and other rankings (forexample, Hadenius 1992).

An environmental NGO is defined in the introduction to this volume as anorganisation that is non-governmental and non-profit making and engaged in anenvironmental problem or problems. Does democratic India have manyenvironmental NGOs? Does non-democratic Indonesia have very few or none atall?

India’s political scientists have remarked on the country’s vigorous associationallife and ‘extraordinary pluralism’ (Kothari 1988:136). Indeed, it has been estimatedthat ‘the number of NGOs active in rural development in India range from fewerthan 10,000 to several 100,000 depending upon the type of classification used’(Farrington and Lewis 1993:92–3). Only a small percentage of these engage directlywith environmental issues, fewer still with policies affecting a particularenvironmental problem like deforestation. Very few indeed deal with onlyenvironmental problems.

Karnataka in the mid-1990s, with a population of 48 million, probably hadroughly 400 NGOs involved in development issues with at least someenvironmental interest. A few of these were large hierarchical organisations, forexample, MYRADA (Mysore Relief and Development Agency) in Bangalore.Most were so small that they occupied a borderline position as an ‘organisation’ interms of full-time staff, size of budget, extent of record keeping and so on. Anexample was Spandana Samaja Seva Samudaya, near Sirsi in Uttara KannadaDistrict. Spandana aimed at sustainable agricultural development in a small area. Its60 members in 1994 engaged in activities to promote environmental awareness,use of alternative sources of energy, and so on. There was a membership fee of Rs100 and a managing committee. They kept rudimentary records related to theirsources of funding, but there were no paid employees. Spandana may not havebeen quite a formal organisation, but it was certainly a little NGO engaged indevelopment work and environmental advocacy. Spandana in 1994 was one of tenlittle development/environmental NGOs in Uttara Kannada District (one of 20districts in Karnataka). Uttara Kannada, with a population of about 1.3 million in1994, had somewhat fewer development/environmental NGOs per head ofpopulation than most other districts in the State.

By comparison, one might expect from the first hypothesis that non-democraticIndonesia might have very few, if any, development/ environmental NGOs. Noestimate of the total number of such NGOs in Indonesia is available, but there islittle doubt that there are fewer per head of population than in India. The surprise,however, is that there is a lively NGO sector of some size and significance in whathas clearly been a most unpromising political context. Some years ago the authorsof probably the most authoritative study (unpublished) of environmental NGOsin Indonesia prepared for ANGOC (Asian NGO Coalition) and the AsianDevelopment Bank (Purnomo et al. 1989) remarked on the ‘great expansion andmaturation’ of the NGO sector and hundreds ‘springing up throughout the nation’(p. 5). Belcher and Gennino (1993) profiled 44 indigenous NGOs working more


or less on forest protection issues: 11 in Jakarta and Bogor, four in the rest of Java,eight in Kalimantan, seven in Sumatra, five in Irian Jaya and nine in other areas.In 1994, WALHI (Indonesia Forum for the Environment) had network links withover 300 environmental NGOs throughout the country. WALHI conductedresearch, engaged in policy advocacy work related to the environment, andcampaigned publicly on environmental issues. Its basic stance was to promotedecentralised management of Indonesia’s natural resources and to strengthen localNGOs. Another national forum or networking secretariat for NGOs was SKEPHI(NGO Network for Forest Conservation in Indonesia); it linked student and othergroups and NGOs throughout Indonesia working to stop forest destruction andsupported the rights of local communities dependent on the forests. Other nationalnetworking secretariats of NGOs working in the environmental field includedINDHRRA (Indonesian Secretariat for the Development of Human Resourcesin Rural Areas), KRAPP (Indonesian Pesticides Action Network) and SKREPP(NGO Network against Pollution).

North Sumatra is one of Indonesia’s 27 provinces with a population in themid-1990s of about 7.5 million (excluding the city of Medan). According to OsmarTanjung, Executive Secretary of an NGO forum in North Sumatra called WIM(Wahana Informasi Masyarakat), there were ‘at least 27 and no more than 62’development/environmental NGOs in the province in 1994, some very small.WIM itself had paid workers, files and records, an office, and was linked to manyother NGOs throughout Indonesia via WALHI in Jakarta.

Identifying the number of NGOs is never easy because there are alwaysnumerous examples on the boundaries of the definition. There is an added problemin Indonesia, where even the term ‘non-governmental organisation’ in itsIndonesian translation is not acceptable to many environmental organisationsbecause it is too confrontational; a ‘non-governmental organisation’ may beperceived by government agencies as an ‘anti-government’ political institution,which can attract unnecessary government harassment and intimidation. It is farbetter to be known as a ‘self-reliant community organisation’ (lembaga swadayamasyarakat), even better if your community organisation is part of a looselystructured forum or coalition of organisations and individuals who act collectively,thereby making it tougher for the government to single you out for retribution.

The interim conclusions from this very brief survey are:

1. The number of development/environmental NGOs in a local area of non-democratic Indonesia can be roughly the same as the number in a local areaof democratic India;

2. There are more environmental NGOs per head of population in India as awhole than in Indonesia;

3. A non-democratic regime like Indonesia can have a fairly substantialenvironmental NGO sector, even though it may not be as large as the sectorin a more democratic regime.


To these three can be added a fourth: NGOs can be virtually non-existent in (other)non-democratic regimes with strong political parties. Vietnam, for example, witha population of 74 million in 1994, had only 20 indigenous development NGOs,only four of which had anything to do with the environment; these four were allvery small, recently formed and located in Hanoi (Mulla and Boothroyd 1994).

It is clear that these four interim conclusions are not well caught by the firsthypothesis stated in the introduction. I shall come back to this point in theconclusion.

1.2THE SECOND HYPOTHESIS: DEMOCRATISATION

AND NGO INFLUENCE ON POLICY

In order to consider the second hypothesis I compare an Indonesian and Indian‘influence story’. Both relate to the advocacy work of NGOs in relation to policiesaffecting tropical forests. In each case the particular story was identified for me byNGO people and others in the country as the one from which they said (roughlyspeaking), ‘much can be learned by you about NGO advocacy work here’. Thesewere not necessarily the most ‘successful efforts’, but my informants regarded themas significant. Our definitions of influence and policy are briefly set out in theintroduction to this volume.

Both stories relate to policies affecting tropical deforestation, a particularly urgentproblem in Asia. In the early 1990s the rate of destruction escalated in many places.A cautious expert in these matters (Myers 1993) estimated that the 1991deforestation rate, if projected, would mean all the main tropical forests would begone within 50 years. The rates are far from uniform. The current destruction inIndonesia is so ferocious that little of the forests will be left within 20 years outsidea few pockets in Kalimantan and Irian Jaya. These new estimates may be tooconservative. The data on which they are based come from either forest departmentreports or satellite pictures. The former are notoriously inexact and the latterportray surprisingly little. For example, it is almost impossible to distinguish in asatellite picture between moist forest canopy and a plantation of eucalyptus trees,and pictures showing canopy can hide extensive degradation below. There are alsostrong reasons for believing that the current accelerating rate of deforestation willitself accelerate, unless vigorous measures are taken to tackle the main causes—commercial logging, shifting agriculture, government sponsored transmigrationschemes, and large-scale development projects such as dams and mining operations.If current rates continue, then millions of forest dwelling people will be dispossessedof their livelihoods; soils will be degraded through erosion and water suppliesthreatened; tropical storms will be more devastating; the loss of biological diversitywill mean millions of unique animal and plant species will become extinct; a uniquesource of food, industrial materials and medicines will be lost forever; billions oftonnes of greenhouse gases will be released into the atmosphere. The destruction


of these moist forests is largely irreversible; they are extremely fragile and once theyare destroyed they cannot be recreated.

1.3AN INDONESIA-NORTH SUMATRA STORY

The Indonesian Government claims the sole legal jurisdiction over all designatedforest lands (74 per cent of Indonesia’s land area). However,

these forest lands are also a vast “commons” in so far as a wide range ofactors…have loosely restricted access to them, …such “open access” beinga powerful incentive to deforest and degrade lands since none of these actorsholds a secure right to forest lands that might serve as an incentive for careful,long-term management, and none possess the practical means to control orexclude others, especially in remote areas. (WRI 1994:13)

The main actors include the commercial firms that dominate and profit from timberproduction and processing, ‘bureaucratic capitalists’ (Shin 1989) within the statewho maintain beneficial business links with the private firms, Ministry of Forestrybureaucrats whose jobs and responsibilities under the law are involved, NGOs andlocal communities. The changing support structures and conflicts of interestsbetween these actors frame the politics of deforestation in Indonesia.

The sector of the Indonesian state that deals with forests and implements forestspolicy is large and highly centralised. There are the Ministry of Forestry in Jakarta,regional offices, provincial forestry services and four state-owned forestrycorporations. They all report directly to the Minister and are basically under theMinistry’s control. Government policies are premised on forest officials in the fieldmanaging the forests, but the ratio in the field of forestry staff to hectares of forestsis 1:314,000 in East Kalimantan, roughly 1:120,00 elsewhere in Indonesia, exceptJava (GOI/ FAO 1990). The capacity of the Ministry of Forestry even just tomonitor what is going on in the moist forest is minimal.

Since 1965, under President Suharto, the Ministry of Forestry and thegovernment more generally has encouraged the exploitation of the forests for woodand wood products by commercial firms largely for export, particularly to Japan.Such commercial activity was consistent with a broad strategy of the IndonesianGovernment to pursue development principally by providing infrastructure toenable the dynamism of capitalist enterprises to flourish. The results of this strategywere impressive from the government’s point of view. Indonesia’s per capita GDPgrew from $75 in 1966 to an expected $1000 in 1996, one of the highest growthrates in the world during that period (McBeth 1995:48). Export of timber productsand rattan (stems of climbing palms used in wicker work, thongs, and so on) earned$4.2 billion in foreign exchange in 1991 (World Bank 1993) and half the world’splywood came from Indonesia. The wood-based pulp and paper industry alsoexpanded dramatically.


One aspect of that strategy of development had been, in 1965, to create hugelogging concessions in the moist forest on 20-year (renewable) leases. The leaseswere ‘consigned on a non-competitive basis to individuals closely related to themilitary government and its senior officials, and to business organisations controlledby the military directly’ (Rush 1991:36). That system remained virtually unchangedin the early 1990s. In 1991, 580 logging concessionaires held claim to more than60 million hectares, that is, more than 41 per cent of designated forest lands(Djamaluddin 1991). About 25 million hectares had already been ‘logged out’ bymid-1990 (WALHI/ LBH 1992). The concessionaires were powerful indeed, andcould largely ignore any local forester bold enough to try either to investigatebreaches of concession agreements or to collect unpaid taxes. Illegal, untaxed andunreported logging on a wide scale by cheap labour, with governments standingidly by, meant enormous profits for the concessionaires.

The livelihoods of local forest people were adversely affected. The concessionsand related regulations enabled the companies to ‘own’ former community forests.Local people were then forbidden to enter the forests. Wood carvers found theyhad to ‘steal’ from ‘their’ former forest to keep up their traditional crafts and meansof existence. Family needs of other families were threatened because the rattanculled from the nearby forest by women and then sold in local markets was nolonger available. People who used to gather incense from the community forestwere no longer able to do so. Indigenous forest peoples protested fairly frequentlyat the loss of their customary rights under the traditional adat law of access to theforest and its products, but received little response.

Local NGOs worked with local communities, broadly tried to represent theirinterests and engaged in advocacy work on their behalf. Many were linked withother local NGOs and also with NGOs at provincial and national levels, forexample, the WIM-WALHI links mentioned earlier. There were conflicts betweenNGOs, but most advocated promoting sustainable forest uses, enforcingconcession-holders’ responsibilities under their contracts, phasing out concessionsthat threaten areas ecologically unsuited to logging and forests that established localcommunities depend upon for a significant share of their livelihood, and grantinglegal recognition of customary adat land and resource rights in areas wherecommunities are willing to work with government and others to manage forestresources sustainably (WRI, 1994).

The particular NGO influence story summarised here involved WALHI andSKEPHI in Jakarta and, in North Sumatra, WIM in the city of Medan, and KSPPM(Kelompok Studi Pengembangan Prakarsa Masyarakat) working in an area nearLake Toba. The area around Lake Toba is known for the rich cultural life of thelocal Batak people and the natural beauty of the surrounding countryside and itsforests. The NGO targets were several Ministries in the central government, theprovincial government and the company which held the concession in the LakeToba area, namely PT Inti Indorayon Utama Ltd. Indorayon runs a pulp and rayonfactory on the Asahan River and hires the loggers to obtain the wood from thesurrounding forests to feed the factory. Indorayon is a joint venture of Canadian,


Korean and Indonesian partners backed by President Suharto’s eldest son and partof the Raja Garuda Mas Group owned by Sukanto Tanoto (alias Tan Kuang Ho),the ‘timber King’ of Sumatra.

Tanoto obtained a permit from the government’s Central InvestmentCoordinating Board (BKPM) in 1983 to build the pulp and rayon factory and inthe next few years the Ministry of Forestry granted the necessary forest concessionsand land use permits for an area totalling about 150,000 hectares along the AsahanRiver near Lake Toba and the region surrounding the Lake itself. Other necessarylicences were obtained from the Governor of the Province and the Ministry ofIndustry. Various conditions were attached to these permits and concessions,including ones meant to safeguard the environment. The Minister of Populationand Environment, Emil Salim, expressed concern when it was decided to locatethe factory on the Asahan River, as did other organisations working in the areaincluding the Asian Development Bank which was assisting an irrigationdevelopment project in the area and feared deforestation would cause seriousreductions in the amount of irrigation water. But all these concerns were sweptaside by Indorayon, which had the backing of the more powerful governmentministries and the President’s office.

Virtually from the outset, it is clear that Indorayon behaved cavalierly with regardto the environmental conditions laid down in the various licences and concessions.For example, it ignored detailed stipulations about the disposal of waste water fromthe factory, simply dumping most of it into the Asahan River. Even more serious,in the forests there was indiscriminate tree felling despite the stipulations thatIndonesia’s Selective Felling System should be adhered to. On 9 August 1988 anaerated lagoon used by Indorayon as a place of storage for waste materials spranga leak during a trial run. Tests conducted only hours afterwards found harmfulchemicals from this leak in the river. Fish died and local people complained of skinirritation. This incident triggered considerable media attention, and Indorayon’slarge-scale forest felling activities were also publicly aired at this time. This wasaccompanied by angry protests from some politicians, environmental NGOs andlocal people.

WALHI (Indonesian Forum for the Environment) in Jakarta had been trying toinvestigate the impact of Indorayon’s activities on the environment for more thantwo years. It had also been urging local NGOs in North Sumatra to become moreactively involved in such work, without much success (Tanjung 1992). Using themomentum created by the burst lagoon, WALHI and LBH (the Indonesian LegalAid Foundation) filed a lawsuit in December 1988 against Indorayon, theChairperson of the BKPM, the Minister of Industries, Minister of Forestry,Minister of Environment and Population and the Governor of North Sumatra.WALHI and LBH charged that the company and the government officials andagencies had neglected to conduct a proper EIA as stipulated in the 1986Environment Impact Assessment Regulations and were therefore legallyresponsible for pollution and deforestation in the area covered by Indorayon’soperation.


FIGURE 1.1 MAP OF INDONESIA AND NORTH SUMATRA


Before filing this suit, WALHI sought support, including financial support, fromindividuals and groups in Indonesia and abroad. It sent a questionnaire to about180 Indonesian NGOs asking if they approved such an unprecedented step. EightyNGOs returned the questionnaire all approving the idea of suing the governmentand the industry. According to the director of WALHI at that time (Purnomo1994) the 80 NGOs also recorded on their questionnaire remarks urging WALHIto be cautious in the action, and these shaped the moderate tone adopted byWALHI and LBH during the trial. WALHI also held meetings with NGOs andlocal people in North Sumatra, including a training workshop in ‘Bare-FootEnvironmental Assessment Training’. Together with local NGOs in NorthSumatra WALHI helped the village people suffering from the factory’s pollutionto file another lawsuit at the provincial level.

The case brought by WALHI and LBH, which was prolonged and costly, isregarded now as a ‘milestone in the history of environmental advocacy work inIndonesia’ (Purnomo 1994). This was the first NGO lawsuit brought before thecourts and established an important precedent: an NGO can sue the governmentand/or a company on behalf of the environment. Although WALHI and LBHunsurprisingly lost the case, the court recognised WALHI’s right to file a suit inthe interests of the public and its domain. NGOs believe this judgment may havelaid the groundwork for later, more winnable, cases. Certainly the case was widelyreported at the time and appears to have breathed new life into many NGOsthroughout Indonesia. As for the government agencies, being sued by an NGOwas something of a disgrace even though they ‘won’ the case. The action seemsto have been one factor in subsequent slight shifts in government policy towardsgetting a bit tougher with those concessionaires which persistently ignoredconditions in their contracts or certain other government regulations meant tosafeguard the environment.

Back at Lake Toba, conflict between Indorayon and local people/NGOscontinued. Indorayon expanded its operation while being denounced locally,nationally and internationally for their logging and pollution practices. Locally,KSPPM and other local NGOs and individuals monitored the deforestation in thearea and reported it to the environmental fora in which they were involved. Therewere also periodic demonstrations by local people outside the Indorayon factoryand police arrests. In 1991 KSPPM was closed down by the government for sixmonths without explanation and allowed to resume its work on condition that itdiscontinue its legal aid programme for local people (WALHI, LBH 1992).Nationally, WALHI and SKEPHI reported what the North Sumatra NGOs werelearning about Indorayon to relevant government agencies in Jakarta. SKEPHI inparticular reported what was going on to international NGOs through action alertsand its journal Setiakawan; prominent in this international campaign were theWorld Rainforest Movement, Asia-Pacific Peoples Environmental Network,Rainforest Action Network, International Campaign for Ecological Justice inIndonesia, Friends of the Earth and the European Rainforest Movement.


The conflict at Lake Toba escalated when, on 5 November 1993, a chlorinetank at Indorayon’s factory on the Asahan River exploded. Employees and peopleliving nearby fled, fearing the chlorine gas billowing up in the air was dangerous.Indorayon’s officials wearing gas masks tried to assure the people that all was safe.The next day, about 2,000 people demonstrated at the factory demanding thatoperations be halted and an explanation given of what had happened; uponreceiving unsatisfactory answers, they broke into the plant and damaged factoryproperty worth $2.4 million. NGO people and students at Medan alsodemonstrated at the Provincial Assembly buildings on 9 November, insisting thatthe government investigate the incident. National and international NGOs werealso alerted. The factory was shut down for only five days while perfunctorygovernment inspections were carried out. Ignoring the protests, the Minister forIndustry allowed the company to resume operations, but also ordered Bapedal (theEnvironment Impact Management Agency) to arrange a full audit, the first suchaudit of a private company in Indonesia. Labat Anderson, an environmentalauditing company from the USA, was engaged to carry out the audit, whichincluded in its terms of reference Indorayon’s management of the forests and itspollution control. Labat Anderson were instructed to obtain input from localNGOs.

The audit commenced in early 1994 and ran on for the rest of the year. Thatsuch an audit was being carried out under government auspices via Bapedal wasunusual and attracted considerable publicity. Also, there was a four-hour meetingon 1 February 1994 in Medan between the owner of the company (and two of hisstaff) and representatives of seven NGOs in North Sumatra, including KSPPM andWIM. The company made clear that they knew their environmental record waspoor and promised to try and improve, to relate more openly to the localcommunity, to communicate more openly with NGOs and so on. In June therewas a meeting of three of the Labat Anderson auditing team, an adviser from theMinistry of Environment, a representative of the Forest Department and localNGOs. Such meetings involving NGOs were unprecedented in Indonesia outsideJakarta. The NGOs were sceptical about the audit process because of the heavygovernment presence in it. They were also concerned about its highly publicisednature and their involvement in it, which provided the government with anopportunity to claim that NGOs supported Indorayon. Although sceptical, theywere nevertheless of the view that the 1994 audit had resulted in some shift incompany policy affecting the environment. They believe that part of the reasonfor the shift may have been related to Indorayon’s negotiations with CS First BostonCorporation in 1994 for a loan of $110 million and the company’s concern thatFirst Boston might pull out because of lobbying of First Boston by USA NGOsdemanding that the corporation withdraw from the loan. They also accepted thattheir efforts locally and nationally had helped to bring about some shift in companyand government policies affecting the environment.


FIGURE 1.2 MAP OF KARNATAKA STATE, INDIA


1.4A KARNATAKA-UTTARA KANNADA STORY

The Government of Karnataka is not a ‘sovereign’ entity like the Government ofIndonesia, but as one of India’s states in India’s Federal Union it has been givenunder the constitution virtually complete responsibility for the management of theforests within its boundaries. The NGO story considered here is about forestmanagement. The influence of the Indian Government on forest policies inKarnataka can be important, as will be noted in a moment, but the advocacy workof NGOs in relation to forest management policy is basically a state-local story.

The local end of this story is in Uttara Kannada District in the Western Ghats.The humid tropical forests in the Western Ghats have been described by notedecologists as ‘of considerable significance for India’ because they ‘constitute aneconomic resource, protect watersheds of all the major rivers in the SouthernPeninsula, support livelihoods of substantial peasant and tribal populations and are

a depository of biodiversity surpassed only by the Eastern Himalaya’; and it is ‘amatter of considerable concern therefore that the Western Ghats have sufferedsubstantial outright loss of forest cover, loss of standing biomass in areas retainingforest cover and loss of biodiversity’—forest cover in Uttara Kannada specificallyhaving declined from 8,000 square kilometres to 6,000 square kilometres duringthe past 40 years (Daniels et al. 1993:16). The reasons are various, including over-utilisation by logging industries, poaching, over-grazing and over-use generally bylocal people.

Explanations for the historical destruction and degradation of forests in theWestern Ghats and elsewhere have centred on the radical transformation of thesocial relations of resource use that were initiated during colonial rule and thenbecame more firmly entrenched with the coming of democracy in the 1950s. Suchprocesses involve the use of state power to undervalue the products of the forestsand organise their supply at subsidised rates to powerful urban elites and dominantclasses. The people who in effect have paid for this system have been the rural poor.They traditionally practised a form of sustainable forestry because they relied onthe forests for many of their basic needs. The colonial state then abolished mosttraditional rights in common lands when setting up the system of forest extraction.Since then, the rural poor gradually have become the victims of deforestation.Today, many living in or near what is left of the forests cannot or will not cooperatein their prudent management because the forests have been largely taken fromthem. They now prey upon the forests too.

This analysis of deforestation fed into the discourse on forest managementpractices locally and globally, which began to shift in the 1970s and 1980s. Animportant early marker was the energy crisis of 1973. ‘For more than a third of theworld’s people’, Eckholm (1975) remarked, ‘the world energy crisis is a dailyscramble to cook dinner’. The fuelwood crisis became linked to the escalating ratesof deforestation in tropical forests, which began to receive prominence in the mediaat this time. All this connected with another trend in the 1970s towards payingincreased attention to rural ‘basic needs’. These events and processes began toinfluence the thinking of some people who mattered in the world of forestry. In1978, for example, the theme of the Eighth World Forestry Congress was ‘Forestsfor People’. This marked the increased importance being given to the subject inteaching and research in the forestry schools throughout the world; and this mayhave influenced professional foresters trained in the schools who began to fill theforestry departments of governments and international agencies. In the same year,the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the UN agency concerned with forestsand rural development, published a policy paper on ‘community forestry’ (FAO1978). Forestry, they said, must start at the ‘grassroots’. Such ideas globally becamemore prominent during the 1980s (for example, as summarised in FAO 1991).

These ideas began to have consequences for forest policy agendas in India. Forexample, various ‘social forestry’ policies were set in motion in many states duringthe 1980s. By the early 1990s most states were beginning to implement new policiessetting up joint forest management schemes involving forest officials, village


communities and NGOs. The main premise of such schemes was that theregeneration of forests can be achieved only with the active participation of localforest communities in their management. What triggered such policy shifts in thestates, including Karnataka, were definite statements in favour of such action bythe Government of India. A new National Forest Policy, presented to Parliamentin December 1988, clearly indicated that a move in that direction would bedesirable. This emphasis was subsequently built into the Eighth Five Year Plan(1992–97). Most important was a circular of 1 June 1990 sent from the Secretaryof Environments and Forests, Government of India, to the Forests Secretaries ofall states setting out the details of a new policy called: ‘Involvement of VillageCommunities and Voluntary Associations in the Regeneration of Degraded ForestLands’ (reprinted in SPWD 1993). These and other Government of Indiastatements and policy directives contain the results of political work by policy elitesin New Delhi in the 1980s who succeeded in redefining government policy onforest management practices (a story not pursued in this paper). In doing so, theydrew upon ideas in the changing discourse about sustainable forest management,linking these ideas to events and political forces in India in order to make a casefor joint forest management.

Of the 13 state governments that had by August 1993 issued government orderssetting up joint forest management schemes, Karnataka’s Order (GO AHF 232FAP 86, dated 12.4.93) establishing JFPM (Joint Forest Planning and Management)was one of the longest and most detailed. Its provisions can perhaps be summarisedbriefly in terms of six main features:

1. JFPM is restricted at present to degraded areas of forests, where the canopycover is less than 25 per cent, and certain other forest lands. Reserved forests(Classes A and B) with better canopy cover, which comprised the bulk offorests controlled by the Forestry Department, are excluded from JFPM.

2. Village Forest Committees (VFCs) are formed consisting of beneficiaries ofthe scheme in a village or group of villages in or adjacent to JFPM forest areas.One member per family is eligible to become a member upon payment of asmall fee. A number of ex-officio members also join the VFC, including anNGO representative nominated by the relevant Deputy Conservator ofForests. A VFC has a number of duties and responsibilities, such as to ‘helpthe Forest Department in preparing a Joint Management Plan in the area,protect and develop the forests areas and other government waste landsassigned to it’.

3. Each VFC has a Managing Committee elected for a period of five years bythe members: a ‘Chairman’, ten other elected members, and four ex-officiomembers (the village accountant, mandal panchayat secretary, NGOrepresentative and a forester). The Managing Committee is expected to meetat least once a month. It has various powers, including ‘to apprehend the forestoffenders and hand them over to the forest authorities’; ‘to check and toprevent those indulging in forest encroachment, illicit cutting, smuggling and


poaching’; ‘to seize wood illegally cut’; ‘to impound cattle engaged inunauthorized grazing’ in the forests.

4. All members/beneficiaries on the VFC are entitled to grasses, leaves andfuelwood from the JFPM area free of costs. The Managing Committeesupervises the distribution of such quotas, ensuring it is ‘fair and equitable’.When disposing of minor forest products/fruits, timber and fuelwood, ‘therequirement of the local village should be treated as a first charge on such finalproduce’, and any surplus ‘shall be disposed of by the VFC at open publicauction or local sale’. The proceeds from such transactions are shared: 50 percent to government; 25 per cent to beneficiaries on the VFC; 25 per cent tothe Village Forest Development Fund.

5. A ‘tree patta’ scheme enables private landowners adjoining the JFPM area toenjoy the usufructs from trees on roadsides and canalsides free of cost‘providing he maintains the trees at his own cost after the third year of itsplanting’. A small rent per tree per annum is charged. If no such privatelandowners are interested, then the trees are available to members/beneficiariesof the VFC.

6. The Government Order explicitly gives voluntary agencies and NGOs ‘withproven track record’ a role in JFPM, but not a very central one. NGOs ‘mayplay a supportive role in assisting the Forest Department and VFCs’.

Several months after the Karnataka Government Order was made public, theChairperson of the Committee of Forestry and Common Lands of FEVORD-K(Federation of Voluntary Organisations for Rural Development—Karnataka), themain NGO federation in the state, drafted a response to it. (The following summaryis based on the author’s interview with the Chairperson on 5 December 1993 atRennibennur, Dharwad District.) Although the NGOs in FEVORD-K generallywelcomed the Government Order as an important step forward, they wereunhappy with some of its main features. Most importantly, they objected to therestriction of JFPM to degraded areas of the forest with 25 per cent canopy or less.They urged the government to consider extending the scheme to less degradedlands also. They argued that many tribal and other forest dwellers lived in lessdegraded areas and would be unable to benefit from JFPM. They also made anumber of detailed suggestions aimed at relaxing the exclusive and rather tightcontrol of the scheme exercised by the KFD (Karnataka Forestry Department). Forexample, they recommended that the power to nominate NGOs to the VFCs andManaging Committees should be moved from the Deputy Conservator of Foreststo the Deputy Commissioner of the District in which the village(s) is(are) located.The NGOs advanced detailed proposals to ensure that women, who are mostinvolved in using forests on a day to day basis, were better represented on the VFCs.For example, they recommended that two adults from each household be eligiblefor membership of the VFC, one male and one female. The NGOs criticised thecomplex arrangements for sharing and disposal of produce from the forest landsunder JFPM. They made several suggestions aimed at making this arrangement


simpler and more transparent to VFC members. They also recommended that theVFC should simply decide how its 50 per cent share of the produce is disposed of,and it should set the rates for any produce it sells. They also urged the abolition ofthe tree patta scheme on the grounds that it amounted to the privatisation ofcommon lands.

FEVORD-K, the NGO grouping that ‘responded’ to the new policy, is anunusual ‘federation’. It has an address in Bangalore and a couple of people therewho act as a conduit for information going to and from the roughly 120 memberorganisations (in 1994). The tiny central office is not involved in the internalfunctioning of member organisations. It does not evaluate member organisationsor fund them. It does not have projects of its own. The life of FEVORD-K is inthe countryside amongst the member organisations. If the members are not active,FEVORD-K is not active.

All major decisions of FEVORD-K are made at the Annual General Meeting,which constitutes the Board of Directors and various standing committees. TheBoard has 21 members and meets about every three months. The President of theBoard and other office bearers in FEVORD-K cannot hold office for more thantwo years, nor can they be active in party politics. There were 14 standingcommittees in 1993 on different aspects of FEVORD-K work. Each committeemeets several times during the year in a location convenient to the members. TheForestry and Common Lands Standing Committee was chaired in 1993–95 by aleading figure in SPS (Samaj Parivarthana Samudaya), an NGO in DharwadDistrict. Also prominent in the affairs of the committee and FEVORD-K’s workin relation to the new forest management policy is IDS (India DevelopmentService), an NGO at work on rural development projects in several districts. Forexample, IDS appointed a person in November 1993 on a full-time basis to act asFEVORD-K’s ‘Interdevelopment Services Coordinator’ for JFPM. IDS pays hissalary. He has been travelling throughout the state alerting NGOs to theimplications of JFPM for their work, providing training programmes for NGOsabout JFPM, and encouraging the development of new NGOs needed to assist ineffective implementation of the new forest policy. This example underlines howthe life of FEVORD-K, even the financing of new initiatives, lies with individualmember organisations of the federation.

One of FEVORD-K’s major activities is to engage in advocacy work in relationto government policy. The forest subcommittee has been particularly energetic inthis regard, acting in effect as both an ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ pressure group.FEVORD-K representatives are regularly invited along as ‘insiders’ to KFDworkshops and seminars when policy proposals are being considered. Their bestknown ‘outsider’ action was their involvement in a long struggle from 1984 to1993 to return 30,000 hectares of village forest and common lands to villagecommunities, lands which had been acquired by Karnataka Pulpwood Ltd (KPL)(51 per cent shares owned by the Karnataka Government, 49 per cent by a Birlacompany, Harihar Polyfibres) set up to plant eucalyptus plantations for the exclusiveuse of the Harihar Polyfibres factory on the Tungabhadra River. Thousands of


people engaged in periodic non-violent direct action against KPL (that is, theKarnataka Government) including the Kittiko Hachchiko (Pluck and Plant)Satyagraha in 1988 during which various satyagrahis, including FEVORD-Kpeople, were arrested. At one point a FEVORD-K organisation filed a publicinterest writ in the Supreme Court of India, which issued a Stay Order against theGovernment of Karnataka. The campaign to wind up KPL went on for years andwas ultimately successful. The whole story was written up and published by SPSand others for FEVORD-K (Kanvalli 1993).

The fact that FEVORD-K engages in both ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ activity in itsadvocacy work with the Karnataka Government is symptomatic of a certain lackof overall coherence within the federation. Such problems are perhaps intrinsic toan NGO federation lacking centralised control. Some member organisations inFEVORD-K are small action groups, regularly receiving attention from the policeand other enforcement agencies of the government, which are very ‘outsider’ inorientation. Other member organisations, larger and better financed, consult withgovernment departments as ‘insiders’ on a fairly regular basis. The former tend tofeel ‘that FEVORD-K has not done much to benefit them’ (Ramaswamy andPrasad 1990:18). The latter are concerned that the ‘outsider’ action orientation ofsome members hinders their efforts as FEVORD-K representatives to workcooperatively with government. Both groups sense that this problem of overallcoherence may help to explain why a number of NGOs committed to ruraldevelopment are still not part of FEVORD-K. Despite such problems, however,FEVORD-K is without question the single most important NGO presence inKarnataka, and is recognised as such by the government.

Has FEVORD-K been influential in affecting the development of JFPM policy?Any major policy change like JFPM involves a continuous process with threedistinguishable phases—agenda setting, policy choices and implementationprocesses (Grindle and Thomas 1991). Reference has already been made to theway the agenda related to forest management policy changed over a period of twodecades as new ideas circulated in the world of forestry. FEVORD-K was onlyone of many organisations (or set of organisations) at local, national and globallevels involved in this political process. In this context, its influence, consideredseparately, on agenda setting was slight.

Policy choices within the KFD that led to JFPM occurred essentially betweenJune 1990, when the Government of India’s directive to all state governments wasreceived, and April 1993, when the Government Order summarised above waspublished. The evidence from interviews and other sources suggests that, of thearray of agencies involved in the policy choices, those within the state wereprofoundly influential, those outside much less so. Within the state generally therewas the pressure bearing down on the Karnataka Government from theGovernment of India, including the general provisions of the Seventh and EighthFive Year Plans and the directive of June 1990. The proof of the importance ofthis national directive lay in some of the language of the Karnataka JFPM policywhen it emerged in 1993; for example, both documents referred to NGOs ‘with


proven track record’. Within the Karnataka Government the Council of Ministersduring this period gave broad political direction to the KFD to produce a JFPMpolicy but left much room for detailed policy choices within the broad remit. Thesechoices were made basically within the KFD. External sources were less important.I have shown elsewhere (Potter 1995) how the Overseas Development Agency ofthe British Government, which financed much of the JFPM scheme in UttaraKannada District, had little influence on JFPM policy details worked out by theKFD and indeed were unhappy with some of them. As for FEVORD-K, theytried hard throughout 1990–93 to influence JFPM policy decisions; their criticalresponse to the policy content of the 1993 Government Order summarised earlierin this paper is one important indicator of their relative lack of influence on thepolicy choices made by KFD during 1990–93.

Implementation of JFPM in Karnataka had, by 1994, gone furthest in UttaraKannada District. Field research by Dr Kripa Ananthpur was conducted in 1994in all five of the districts’ Forest Divisions. This involved interviewing people inall ten NGOs there working on JFPM, 16 forest officials in the district (oneConservator of Forests, seven Deputy Conservators of Forests, and eight RangeForest Officers); and people in 25 villages: five villages where an NGO was activeand JFPM had been implemented; nine with JFPM and no NGO; six where anNGO was active and there was no JFPM; and five where there was no NGO andno JFPM. Care was taken to ensure that no forest guards were present whenvillagers were interviewed. Further interviewing in the district is taking place in1995 and 1996. The main provisional finding from the 1994 interviews in UttaraKannada is that FEVORD-K and other local NGOs appear to be having an impacton the implementation of JFPM policy.

For example, in those villages where JFPM had been implemented and NGOswere active, the people interviewed in 1994 had a noticeably clearer understandingof JFPM and more enthusiasm for it than in JFPM villages where no NGOs werepresent. Villages where there was no JFPM and no NGO either had not heard ofJFPM or were less interested in taking part in it than villages with whom NGOswere involved. This suggests that NGOs can play an important role in bothexplaining environmental policy to local communities and building support forsuch policy. Also, it was particularly noticeable that women were more involvedin JFPM where NGOs worked than in villages where they did not. In SirsiDivision, where the local NGOs were not keen on JFPM, implementation via theKFD without active NGO involvement appears to have been less successful. Also,in Honavar Division where there was no NGO involvement, village peopleinterviewed were either unaware of JFPM or, where it had been implemented,were less enthusiastic or knowledgeable about it; one NGO there had repeatedlyapproached the local KFD officials wanting to get involved but had been rebuffed.Throughout the district it was striking that where NGOs were present in JFPMvillages, the VFCs tended to give more emphasis in their plans for the JFPM forestplot to long-term ecological conservation, for example, the planting of a varietyof different types of trees, including fruit trees. Where no NGOs were present, the


tendency was for the VFC to emphasise considerations like the planting of treesonly giving timber intended to provide financial benefits for the members in theshorter term.

These findings clearly suggest that environmental NGOs in India working locallycan have an important influence upon the implementation of state policies affectingthe environment. NGO people tend to be better than forest officials at explainingenvironmental policies to local communities; they can help to build the localsupport needed for successful policy implementation; their work in promoting theparticipation of women is noteworthy; and where environmental NGOs arepresent greater emphasis by local communities appears to be given to both the long-term ecological conservation of forests and the regeneration of forest lands.

1.5CONCLUSION

This paper has considered the hypothesis that environmental NGOs in moredemocratic regimes have more influence upon policies affecting the environmentthan NGOs in less democratic regimes by reporting briefly on two stories of NGOsattempting to influence policies affecting tropical forests in democratic India andless democratic Indonesia. The stories are comparable because, although they arein many ways very different, they both do relate to NGOs trying to influence theformulation and implementation of particular forest policies; as regardsimplementation, for example, NGOs in Indonesia have tried to get Indorayon inNorth Sumatra to abide by the environmental stipulations in its contracts with theState, whereas NGOs in Karnataka have tried to get the forest department in UttaraKannada District to abide by the environmental and other stipulations in the JFPMGovernment Order. The comparison appears to suggest that the extent of NGOinfluence on forest policy may be largely unaffected by the extent to which thedomestic political context in which NGOs work is democratic; instead, the analysisfinds that NGOs in both democratic and non-democratic political contexts mayhave little direct influence on forest policy choices, more influence on policyimplementation. I comment very briefly on these findings by way of conclusion.

First, the evidence reported here is, of course, limited. It relates only to NGOstrying to influence environmental policy on forests in parts of India and Indonesia.NGOs in other political regimes in the South can have more political influenceon policy making than has been reported here; the two most prominent examplesare probably Chile (Loveman 1993) and the Philippines (Clarke 1995). Also,democratic contexts may have more salience for NGOs trying to influence policyon other environmental issues. (That the nature of the environmental issue mayaffect the influence of NGOs is a subject taken up in Papers 5 and 6 in this volume.)In sum, the conclusions drawn from the comparison in this Paper about relationsbetween democracy, NGOs and the environment are necessarily only suggestiveand provisional.


Second, it is hardly surprising that NGOs in Karnataka and Indonesia have littleinfluence on forest policy choices. Even though NGOs are linked together in afederation (FEVORD-K) or forum (for example, WALHI, SKEPHI), theirpolitical resources are unimpressive when compared to those of the stateorganisations and transnational enterprises they seek to influence. In Indonesia thestate-business nexus is powerful, unaccountable and virtually inaccessible. NGOsare defined out of the political process that produces policy choices. Furthermore,NGOs have had to operate in what they call a ‘climate of terror’—a pervasivefeeling that someone is always watching and ready to punish them if they behave‘irresponsibly’. So they must try to straddle a more or less supportive line ongovernment policies and the dominant ideology of pancasila. This can blunt theiradvocacy position over time on environmental issues, rendering it ambiguous orcontradictory. By contrast, NGOs in Karnataka operate in a much freer politicalcontext, in which there is a political ‘culture of accountability’. Pluralist theorymight suggest that environmental NGOs as interest groups in democratic Karnatakawould have considerable influence on public policy from time to time. However,prominent analyses of India’s ‘demand groups’ show clearly that the state dominatespluralist representation and policy choice (for example, Rudolph and Rudolph1987). Kochanek (1974: xii) pointed out years ago that ‘policy initiatives usuallycome from government…so most groups are forced to take a negative or defensiverather than a positive stance…the pattern of public policy…has concentrated vastpowers in the hands of government officials’. Environmental NGOs may haveconsiderable influence on some policy choices in Northern democratic contexts(for example, Princen and Finger 1994), but it is wrong simply to suppose they aresimilarly influential in Southern democracies. In Karnataka also, FEVORD-Kdeliberately stays out of electoral politics and the work of political parties, therebyoperating on the margins of the political process that produces state policy choices.

Third, when it comes to implementing forest policies, NGOs and peopledependent on the forests are not on the margins of the process, they are at thecentre of it. Forest officials in Uttara Kannada District are thin on the ground; totranslate policy choices into reality requires relating to such people. Where thereare NGOs, the implementation of JFPM policy has worked particularly well. Ourresearch in Uttara Kannada shows this clearly. NGO presence also has noticeablybeneficial consequences for the environment. The unusual structure of FEVORD-K reflects the strengths and weaknesses of NGO advocacy work on environmentalpolicy in Karnataka: FEVORD-K hardly exists in Bangalore, the centre of policychoice, whereas FEVORD-K is prominent in the countryside, where policy isimplemented.

The position of NGOs and people dependent on the forests in North Sumatrais broadly similar. Local communities struggle against the activities of Indorayonwhich is ‘implementing’ only very partially environmental policies of the state inthe forests around Lake Toba and on the Asahan River. Forest officials are thin onthe ground, but KSPPM and other small NGOs work closely with localcommunities in their struggle over the forests. NGOs in their forums at provincial


and national levels may have been defined out of any direct influence on policychoices in Jakarta and Medan, but they have had some influence on the actions ofthe concessionaires locally and government agencies which support them, forexample, the environmental audit of Indorayon, the slight shift in Indorayon’sforest and industrial practices. Even these modest achievements in influencing theimplementation of policy are noteworthy in such an authoritarian political context.

Why does the state juggernaut in Indonesia allow NGOs to oppose its policies,or even allow NGOs to exist? There are various reasons. One is that certainenvironmental agencies in the Indonesian Government, whose budgets in the1980s were small and whose remit included the environment, actually tried tomobilise public support for their activities by assisting the development ofenvironmental NGOs. Other government agencies allowed this because studentswere predominant in many such NGOs and NGOs therefore offered for thegovernment a politically useful means of channelling student frustration at thattime. By the 1990s, as Macandrews (1994:376) remarks, ‘student activism insupport of environmental causes is quite acceptable in Indonesia whereas moredirect protest against the government and its other policies is not’.

Another important reason is that most environmental NGOs are part of globalNGO forums, coalitions or alliances. For example, WALHI is part of Friends ofthe Earth International, SKEPHI is part of the World Rainforest Movement. Theircolleagues in Northern NGOs operating in more democratic political contexts andmore highly regarded there are sometimes influential in relation to Northerngovernments, the World Bank and other intergovernmental organisations whosepolicies profoundly affect the timber trade and international capital markets, andtherefore affect the vital interests of the Indonesian State and the concessionaires.In such an international context, it would be politically unwise for the IndonesianGovernment to wipe out the Indonesian end of these global NGO networks. Thisis an aspect of what Wapner (1995:337) called ‘world civic politics’ or ‘interactionsthat take place above the individual and below the state yet across nationalboundaries’ and that ‘are distinct from the instrumentalities of state rule’. Onetherefore cannot explain the existence of NGOs and their influence onenvironmental policy in Indonesia only in terms of more or less democracy inIndonesia. There is a global political dimension involved; NGOs in authoritarianIndonesia can exist and be influential because they are linked to influential NGOsworking in more democratic contexts elsewhere.

Finally, this paper has focused mainly on NGO advocacy work directly aimedat trying to influence environmental policy choices and implementation. Less hasbeen said about agenda setting and longer term NGO effort which indirectly andeventually may shift ideologies and other structural constraints. There is little doubtthat the normal work of NGOs, year in and year out, can gradually have theconsequence of transforming political consciousness about the environment, and,in so doing, shift the calculations of environmental policy makers. This aspect ofNGO influence is given more consideration in Paper 2.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research on which this paper is based was funded mainly by the UK Economicand Social Research Council under its Global Environmental Change Initiative,and partly by the Open University. I am grateful for their support.

The Karnataka research reported here is based largely on interviews by mein Bangalore, Uttara Kannada District and elsewhere during November-December 1993 and on field research by my research associate Dr (Ms) KripaAnanthpur in Uttara Kannada District in 1994 and 1995. Many helped, butI wish to acknowledge in particular Kripa’s work and the assistance of: inBangalore, E.Raghavan (Times of India), Ms Shobha Raghuram (HIVOS),Professor Madhav Gadgil (Centre for Ecological Sciences), AloysiusFernandez (MYRADA), M.K.Bhatt (NOVIB), Gerry Pais (OXFAM), MsTamsin Barton (Action Aid), Dhirendra Singh (former Secretary, ForestDepartment), A.S.Sadashivaiah (Chief Conservator of Forests); in Mysore,Professor V.K. Nataraj and V.V.Gadgil (Institute of Development Studies);in Dharwad District, S.R.Hiremath and Dilip Kumar and Ms Shobha Karjagi(SPS); in Uttara Kannada District, Ranjan Rao Yerdoor (IDS), Ms SheelaKhare (Vikasa Rural Development Society), Shivappa Poojary (SiddiParisana Vardhini), Pandurang Hegde (Parisara Samrakshana Kendra—Appiko Movement), Susairaj Reddy and Ms Theresa Reddy and Ganesh andApa Belurkar (all of Karwar Rural Women and Children DevelopmentSociety), T.H.Mallakarjunaiah (Deputy Conservator of Forests—JFPM); inNew Delhi, Eric Hanley (ODA, British High Commission), R. Sudarshan(UNDP), H.N. Mathur and R.K. Mukherjee (SPWD), Shiv Visvanath(Centre for the Study of Developing Societies), Murray Culshaw (OXFAM),S.Meenakshisundaram (Ministry of Rural Development); in the UK,Professor James Manor (IDS, University of Sussex), Ms Tricia Feeney(OXFAM).

The Indonesia-North Sumatra research reported here is based partly on interviewsby me during January-February 1994. Ms Indira Simbolon acted as translator whennecessary. I wish to acknowledge the assistance in particular of the followingpersons who helped with arrangements and/or from whom I learned much: inJakarta, Mas Achmod Santosa, (LBH and WALHI), Ms Suraya Afiff (WALHI),Mohammed Anung (WALHI), Achmad Taufik (WALHI), MsArimbi Heroepoetri (WALHI), Indro Tjahjono (SKEPHI), Saleh Abdullah(SKEPHI), Ms Hardini Indarti (SKEPHI), Agus Purnomo (Pelangi), Ms BinnyBuchari (INFID), Ms Hira Jhamtani (Konphalindo), Alastair Fraser (ODA,Programme Director, Ministry of Forestry), Chip Fay (Ford Foundation), MartinMcCann (CUSO); in Medan, Osmar Tanjung (WIM), Ms Cindy Gilbert (WIM),Jafar Siddiq (LBH); in Parapat, Ms Saur Tumiur Situmorang (KSPPM), Ms IndiraSimbolon (KSPPM); in the USA, Professor Ann Hawkins (University of Oregon),


Professor Harry Wolcott (University of Oregon), Craig Thorburn (University ofCalifornia—Berkeley), Ms Martha Belcher (Rainforest Action Network, SanFrancisco).

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Politics’, World Politics, Vol. 47 (April), pp. 311–40.World Bank (1993) Indonesia: Sustaining Development, Washington DC, World Bank.World Bank (1994) Indonesia: Environment and Development, Washington DC, World Bank.World Bank (1994) Making Development Sustainable: The World Bank Group and the

Environment, Fiscal 1994, Washington DC, World Bank.WRI (World Resources Institute) (1994) Breaking the Logjam: Obstacles to Forest Policy in

Indonesia and the United States, by C.Barber et al., Washington DC, World ResourcesInstitute.


36

2NGO Advocacy, Democracy and PolicyDevelopment: Some Examples Relatingto Environmental Policies in Zimbabwe

and BotswanaALAN THOMAS

Why are non-governmental organisations (NGOs) influential in the developmentof certain policies relating to global environmental issues? They are certainly notalways influential and their influence varies in different parts of the world andaccording to the particular environmental issue in question. This paper paysparticular attention to democracy and its relationship with NGO influence, usingexamples from Zimbabwe and Botswana, countries with highly contrasting claimsto democratic credentials.

As Paper 1 argues, it is too simplistic to say that NGOs are likely to have moreinfluence in a more democratic context. However, in general and in the Africancontext in particular, there are high expectations both for the process ofdemocratisation and for the role of NGOs. The first main section below discussesNGO influence and democratisation. It differentiates between forms of influenceand between aspects of democracy. The following section develops a set ofhypotheses suggesting how different types of NGO campaign might be more orless influential in different democratic contexts.

An alternative view is that, as far as NGO influence is concerned, democracy isnot significant. In this view, factors relating more directly to the particularenvironmental issue are more likely to determine whether or not NGOs can haveinfluence. Such factors might include the political and economic centrality of anissue in a particular country, its relation to the sequence of policy development andimplementation, and the potential for internationalisation of the issue. To illustratethis, the next section introduces four stories of attempted NGO influence inZimbabwe and Botswana, of which two (one each from each country) are examplesof

normal policy development with little NGO influence and two (again, onefrom each country) involve policy changes following NGO campaigns over specificprojects.

The following section then describes the four stories in more detail in terms ofwhat the NGOs concerned actually did in their attempts to influence

Alan Thomas is Senior Lecturer in Systems and Co-Chair of the DevelopmentStudies subject group at the Open University.

environmental policy. Although the outcomes were, in crude terms, quite similarbetween the two countries, there were important differences in how influence wasachieved (where there was NGO influence) and in why influence could not beachieved in the other cases.

The final sections analyse how and why influence may or may not be achievedin terms of the hypotheses put forward and the other factors relating to the particularenvironmental issue, and conclude with some implications for democratisation andfor NGO strategy.

2.1NGO INFLUENCE AND DEMOCRATISATION IN

AFRICA

In Paper 1, David Potter pointed out that there is little in the comparative politicsliterature associating environmental issues directly with democracy ordemocratisation. However, links are frequently made between NGOs anddemocratisation. A typical example is the 1992 Special Issue of Review of AfricanPolitical Economy on ‘Democracy, Civil Society and NGOs’, the editorialintroduction to which starts with the assumption that ‘progressive commentators’now agree that ‘the mere existence of multi-party competitions and elections donot guarantee genuine democracy’. What is required is ‘a widespread and complexprocess involving the strengthening of civil society’. As for NGOs, they are ‘oneof the institutional forms that can deepen [civil society]’ (ROAPE 1992:3–4).

Democratisation and Features of Democracy

Democracy has always been a hugely contested idea with many competing models.Although the liberal democratic model is now dominant, with its emphasis onindividual choice and on political competition between parties in tandem witheconomic competition between firms, Africa post-independence has beenimportant for the number of deliberate attempts to develop alternative models ofdemocracy. In several African countries, nationalist movements led afterindependence to both de facto and constitutional one-party states claiming a socialistform of democracy in which the state aims to transform society into an ‘organicwhole with common interests’ (Pinkney 1993:10). This occurred either where aliberation movement took power following an independence struggle or where anationalist party won an overwhelming election victory after the outgoing colonialpower had set up mechanisms for multi-party democracy. Simple mechanismscould not compensate for the general lack of a tradition of pluralism, especiallysince the colonial state itself had generally concentrated power in itself until almostthe last moment.

Such a one-party or socialist model of democracy emphasises people’s directparticipation (or mobilisation) and unity. Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia argued infavour of the de facto one-party state as follows:

38 NGO ADVOCACY, DEMOCRACY AND POLICY DEVELOPMENT

Democracy is first, last, and all the time sovereignty of the people, or it isnothing. If the people have such confidence in a particular party that theygive it an overwhelming majority at the polls then the best possible power-structure has been created for mobilising national resources for nation-building. (Kaunda 1966:107)

Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, in a statement on ‘Democracy and the One-PartySystem’ in January 1963, claimed that ‘w here there is one party, and that party isidentified with the nation as a whole, the foundations of democracy are firmer thanthey can ever be where you have two or more parties’ (quoted in Cliffe 1969:139).

Generally, however, the one-party or African socialist democracies have beenvictim to military coups, degenerated into autocratic and/or corrupt regimes, orbecome discredited as they failed to provide lasting economic improvements. Therecent trend to democratisation comes from a combination of internal pressuresvia the struggles of elements of civil society and external pressures including politicalconditionality on the part of the donor community and the Bretton Woodsinstitutions, making the continuation of aid dependent on the adoption of certainof the forms of liberal democracy and linking structural adjustment programmes topolitical reforms such as the (re)introduction of multi-party elections (Rasheed1995).

Although multi-party elections are the most testable of the demands of politicalconditionality, in practice the donor community tends to promote a much broaderversion of democracy, on the one hand linking it to good governance andeconomic liberalisation, while on the other hand including elements such aspolitical participation which were central to the socialist or one-party model. Thusin December 1993 the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC)endorsed a number of ‘Orientations on participatory development and goodgovernance’, in a document which links democratisation to participatorydevelopment and human rights and defines democratisation itself as requiring notonly periodic free and fair elections but also ‘the development of a pluralist civilsociety comprised of a range of institutions and associations which represent diverseinterests and provide a counterweight to government’ (OECD 1994:12). As forthose in receipt of aid, Rasheed quotes from a document of the Global Coalitionfor Africa in which African countries accepted the idea of evaluating themselvesagainst criteria for ‘democratic governance’ within broad areas as follows: ‘rule oflaw; accountability and transparency; budgetary policies and priorities;administrative and bureaucratic consistency; political openness and tolerance;participation and communication; and a favourable environment for privateenterprise’ (1995:349).

Precisely which criteria for democracy should be used is open to debate. TheIntroduction to this volume puts forward the following four ‘features of democraticregimes…at the level of the nation state’ (p. 5): accountability through multi-partyelections; civil and political rights; diversity of power centres; political participation.

NGOS AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES 39

In the African context these features taken together represent more or less thecurrent broad liberal democratic consensus. Though the last feature in particularmay derive from socialist or African one-party democratic traditions, it has beenincorporated, though not necessarily in the same form, into that consensus.

Neither of the two countries which provide the examples in this paper,Zimbabwe or Botswana, has followed the path outlined above as typical for Africanone-party states. Botswana is generally regarded as one of Africa’s few successfulmulti-party democracies. It is certainly unusual in that the liberal democraticinstitutions set up by the departing colonialists have survived continuously sinceindependence. For some commentators, even those who espouse some form ofvariety of democratic ideals like the lists above (for example, Pinkney 1993), thismakes Botswana one of only two ‘continuous democracies’ in Africa (the otherbeing Mauritius; there was a third example in the Gambia until 1994 when amilitary coup occurred there). Such commentators imply that Zimbabwe, as avirtual one-party state, is undemocratic. However, it may be better to conceive ofZimbabwe as exemplifying other forms of democracy also surviving in Africa.Zimbabwe is an example, another being Tanzania, where the socialist emphasis onpeople’s participation and mobilisation has continued since independence.

If one does conceive of Botswana and Zimbabwe as both to some extentdemocratic, they certainly contrast with respect to the above four features. Thereare similarities, not least in both countries having had regular multi-party electionswith the same party always winning. However, in Botswana multi-partyism mayprovide more accountability because there is a credible opposition party whichwins parliamentary seats and, from time to time, control of certain local councilsin urban areas. By contrast, in Zimbabwe, ZAPU, which would have been thepermanent opposition party, merged at the end of 1987 into the electorallydominant ZANU(PF) after armed ZAPU ‘dissidents’ caused a near civil war, aprocess of what Stoneman (1992:2) calls ‘shot-gun unity’. Since then Zimbabwehas had no effective opposition party.

In terms of civil and political rights, the two countries are not dissimilar. Despitea long history of suppression of rights and freedoms, Zimbabwe has become moreopen, particularly since about 1989, with a lively political culture and variedindependent media. Botswana has been in principle politically ‘free’ sinceindependence, though there have been self-imposed restrictions on this freedom,justified until recently by the need to guard against possible retaliation by SouthAfrica for Botswana’s support of the struggle against apartheid (Zaffiro 1989).

The two countries differ markedly in terms of which types of alternative powercentre are more important. The state itself is rather centralised in both countries.In Botswana it is run by a politico-administrative elite with ‘a high degree ofreciprocity and cross-fertilisation of ideas’ (Charlton, 1991: 273) between the twokey groupings of senior bureaucrats and politicians. There is some plurality withinthe state, although as Molutsi (1993:5) points out: ‘The country’s institutions anddemocracy are imposed from above. Starting from the highest—parliament—downto the most grassroots, the village development committee (VDC), [they] were


handed down to the population.’ At a local level, particularly in rural areas,traditional institutions, such as the kgotla system of community meetings (originallythese were local chiefs’ courts), persist alongside the modern VDCs and localcouncils. However, there has been very little spontaneous development of NGOsor other institutions of civil society, and those which have emerged have oftenbeen coopted or dominated by government, leaving civil society relatively weak(Molutsi and Holm 1990). In Zimbabwe there is more plurality outside the statewith, for example, white commercial interests quite separate and an NGO sectorsecond only to that of Kenya within Africa (Muir 1992, Copestake 1993). Also,since the economy is much weaker than that of Botswana, the government has toallow independent actions by donors providing aid and by their local NGOpartners, if only to fill the gaps in state provision and bring in foreign exchange.

As for the last feature, political participation is not surprisingly more importantin Zimbabwe with its pretensions to socialist democracy. There was a period ofpolitical debate and participation within the liberation movement itself, with ideasof voluntary participation, cooperation and cell organisation formed alongside theimportance of loyalty to the central leadership. Hence, the period of struggle andits eventual success left a legacy of expectations, both that the government shouldbe working for the improvement of all the people and that there should be a rightto political participation, though more likely through the party rather than inopposition to it. By contrast, in Botswana independence was gainedthrough negotiation between the ruling colonialists and the local national elite andthere is no strong popular political culture at a national level.

NGOs, Democracy and Forms of Influence

The discussion so far has differentiated between features of democracy, each ofwhich might have a separate effect on NGOs. It is also necessary to differentiatebetween different ways in which NGOs might seek influence.

Edwards (1993) distinguishes between direct advocacy work aimed at changingparticular policies of specific institutional targets, and campaigning work, aimed atindirect influence over the long term through changing public opinion and norms.Rose (1993) uses similar distinctions in arguing that Northern NGOs such asGreenpeace should move from issue-based campaigning aimed at raising awarenessto actions aimed at specific results in terms of policy changes.

Thus one strategy is to work in the most indirect way, on public opinion at thewidest level. Within the other, direct advocacy, strategy, it is worth making furtherdistinctions in terms of how directly NGOs work on particular targets and policies.Potter (1994) suggests following a policy network approach (Smith, 1993). Thisleads one to ask whether NGOs should try to ‘get in’ to such networks, so as tobe able to influence policy changes directly at the risk of being coopted, or ‘stayout’, maintaining independence but having no direct input into policy-makingprocesses. This would give two general models, which one could call entryism (orcollaboration) and opposition.


However, severe constraints prevent this from being a free choice of strategy forNGOs. As noted by Christiansen and Dowding (1994) with respect to AmnestyInternational (British Section) and its relationships with the UK Government, anNGO, even when it ‘possesses all the necessary attributes of a legitimate/insidergroup’, can be ‘frozen out of the policy-making process at the very point at whichits preferences diverge from those of the government’, showing that ‘thegovernment is clearly the source of the “legitimacy” granted or withheld’(Christiansen and Dowding 1994: 24). Thus entryism would imply accepting theterms of those already in the policy networks, notably politicians, governmentofficials and their advisers, while, if an NGO is known to differ fundamentally fromgovernment or other type of target institution, collaboration of any kind may notbe an option.

Other writers suggest more than two types of direct policy influence. In theZimbabwean context Moyo (1991) suggests four models of NGO advocacy:entryist; complementary; passive resistance; oppositional. If one regards ‘passiveresistance’ as a kind of opposition, one is left with roughly the same three-folddistinction as in Clark (1991) who suggested NGOs are bound to act in one ofthree general ways with respect to the state: reforming the state, complementingthe state or opposing the state. One can generalise this to working with, apart fromor against any target institution.

It may not be immediately obvious what is meant by complementary activitiesor how they constitute a form of advocacy. Complementary activities are projectsor programmes carried out independently of government or other decision makers.Their success can oblige those decision makers to change their policy toaccommodate the new development. Most development NGOs, Northern andSouthern, undertake or support projects of the complementary activity type. Theyhave been criticised for merely ‘gap-filling’ (Vivian 1994), but may also beexercising comparative advantage over governments (Fowler 1988) by, forexample, putting innovative ideas into practice.

Here it is interesting to contrast some Northern environmentalist NGOs withwhat is more typical of development NGOs, and see how circumstances have ledthe behaviour of these two types of NGO to converge in this regard. Thus Rosefrom his position within Greenpeace states that ‘in effect NGOs came into existenceto define issues’ (1993:291), but suggests that they should now move on to‘enforcing solutions’ through ‘interventions’ (295) such as Greenpeace’s work ondeveloping, publicising and promoting the so-called ‘Green Fridge’—an archetypalcomplementary activity. Development NGOs, on the other hand, tend to startwith such activities, may later wish to ‘scale up’ in order to make a bigger impact(Annis 1988) and may then realise that this implies policy advocacy. As severalwriters have noted, this attempt at ‘making a difference’ (Edwards and Hulme 1992)can still take different forms, notably ‘lobbying and political action’ by the NGOsthemselves or, alternatively, mobilisation work at grassroots level (Diaz-Albertini1993, Clark 1991).


Thus complementary activities are often combined with other activities to forman advocacy strategy. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this paper it is useful todifferentiate complementary activities from entryism on the one hand andopposition on the other and to regard all three as forms of direct influence orattempted influence by NGOs. Indirect, generalised campaigning or consciousness-raising should not be ignored and is a fourth form of influence, although it is notdirected at specific targets.

Thus there are four main ways in which NGOs try to achieve influence. Theymay be summarised as the ‘four Cs’: (i) collaboration (including reform andentryism); (ii) confrontation (or opposition); (iii) complementary activities; and (iv)consciousness-raising (indirect, generalised campaigning).

This is not to argue that NGOs must make their attempts at policy influence injust one of these ways. It is certainly possible to combine them. One interestingsuggestion in this regard is Fowler’s (1993) ‘onion-skin strategy’, where an NGOis on the surface pursuing a collaborative or complementary strategy, but at a deeperlevel is simultaneously holding oppositional beliefs and may undertake indirectcampaigning or consciousness-raising as and when it is feasible to do so.

2.2FOUR HYPOTHESES

A set of four hypotheses is proposed, designed to reflect the complexity of theconcept of democracy and the variety of ways in which NGOs may seek influence.Each hypothesis links one of the forms of influence with one or more of the featuresof democracy. A previously conducted general review of the roles of NGOs inenvironmental politics in Zimbabwe and Botswana (Thomas 1995) suggested theserespective features as most crucial to the success of NGO advocacy efforts of eachform. The four hypotheses may be summarised as follows:

Hypothesis 1 NGO influence via the collaborative, entryist route is most likelyto be effective in a highly participative political culture. In other words, insuch a culture, working in policy networks with members of the targetinstitutions or the government is likely to achieve real change.

However, this will also imply working within ‘allowed’ parameters as defined bygovernment. This hypothesis was derived partly from noting, in Zimbabwe, asignificant amount of NGO collaboration with government agencies in fieldsrelevant to the environment such as indigenous seed research, policy on droughtalleviation and rural food security (Ndiweni 1993, Wellard and Copestake 1993).NGOs in Zimbabwe have also been active in national consultations onenvironmental policy, including the National Conservation Strategy in themid-1980s and, more recently, policy on Environmental Impact Assessments(EIAs). In Botswana, although NGOs have been involved in formal consultationson environmental policy, they do not have such a strong input (Thomas 1995:7).


Hypothesis 2 NGO activity of the complementary kind is most likely toinfluence policy where there is a diversity of power centres in civil society,particularly ones with links to interests external to the country.

These complementary activities can include both pure gap-filling and institutionalor technical innovations. They can lead to major policy shifts as state or otheragencies are obliged to change policy to accommodate them. Zimbabwe, whichacts as a regional focus for environmental NGOs and also has a considerable numberof local NGO development projects supported by international NGOs, aboundsin this type of activity. Thus the Zimbabwean Government’s national report to the1992 UNCED conference at Rio de Janeiro was complemented by an ‘alternative’report prepared by two NGOs with strong international links (Gore, Katerere andMoyo 1992). Another example from Zimbabwe is the Campfire programme oflocal community-based natural resource management schemes, the experience ofwhich may provide its NGO backers with the ammunition to force policy changes.By contrast, in Botswana civil society is relatively weak (Molutsi and Holm 1990)and such initiatives are generally quickly coopted into the state apparatus.According to this hypothesis, one would not expect complementary activities tobe a source of NGO influence in that country.

Hypothesis 3 A confrontational approach by NGOs may work where there isaccountability through multi-party elections and internal plurality of powercentres within civil society or particularly the state.

As noted above, Botswana has a well-established multi-party system, with free andfair elections, a credible opposition party, and alternative power centres in certaintowns and regions, as well as the continued use of the traditional kgotla mechanismof community-level consultative meetings. There appear to be at least one or twoexamples of confrontation from NGOs leading to the cancellation or shelving ofprojects. One can also note one example where oppositional strategy led to a changein Zimbabwe, namely the case of Mobil Oil prospecting in the Zambezi valley(Thomas 1995:6). This involved an alternative internal centre of power inZimbabwean civil society, though a limited one, in the white commercial interestsrepresented by the Zambezi Society.

Hypothesis 4 Finally, consciousness-raising or indirect campaigning is most likelyto be successful where civil and political rights are upheld.

As a strategy, consciousness-raising is very indirect and NGO activities tend tocombine it with other forms of attempted influence. Some NGOs engage in it inBotswana, and the fact that it is increasing in Zimbabwe as the political culturefrees up from the more repressive past gives some credence to the hypothesis. Inthe long term consciousness-raising may be the most significant of all the forms ofinfluence, and it may often arise indirectly from the various ways of trying to


achieve direct influence in the sense of effecting a change of policy on the part ofsome ‘target’ institution.

This paper reports on work done to test these hypotheses, particularly the firstthree. Four stories are presented of attempted influence by NGOs onenvironmental policy, two in Zimbabwe and two in Botswana, and analysed tosee how far the NGOs’ successes or failures were actually due to the factorsenvisaged.

2.3DOES DEMOCRACY MATTER AT ALL? NORMAL

POLICY DEVELOPMENT

The four stories of attempted NGO influence are:

• The development of the New Agricultural Policy and the fencing of communallands in Botswana;

• The review of land tenure policy in Zimbabwe by the Land TenureCommission, and its impact on community-based resource management;

• The NGO campaign against the Southern Okavango Integrated WaterDevelopment Project (SOIWDP);

• The campaign for water from the Zambezi for Bulawayo.

The first two of these stories are examples of policy development with little NGOinfluence while the second two are examples of policy changes involving NGOcampaigns over specific projects. These four stories have been chosen partly becauseat first sight they appear to offer some credence to what might be termed a ‘null’hypothesis, namely that the presence or absence of various features of democracyhas no effect on NGOs’ ability to influence policy. As noted in the Introduction,NGO influence on policy can be looked at in terms of three stages in the policyprocess, namely: agenda-setting, policy choices and implementation. While thisdoes not imply a normal process of policy development entirely unaffected bydemocracy, one can see how such a ‘null’ hypothesis would restrict any part playedby NGOs strictly to the beginning and end of the process. In the early stages ofthe policy process NGOs can be one source of information about the interests theyrepresent or the groups they work with; later on, they can assist withimplementation. In this view it would only be on specific projects, where particularinterests may be involved or threatened, that NGOs may be able to have any largerimpact, and then only on that particular project and not the larger policies of whichit may be a part.

On the face of it, the first two stories appear quite similar. In both countriesthere has been an historic division of land into commercial farmland, alienated bywhite settlers and now held under private tenure, and other lands remaining undermore or less traditional forms of communal tenure. In Zimbabwe the division ismore extreme with commercial farmland comprising a considerable proportion


(36 per cent) of the country’s area and a much higher proportion of the best andbest-watered land. Fifty-six per cent of the population lives in the communal areaswhich occupy only about 42 per cent of the country, and almost three-quarters ofthe communal area land is in regions with the least agro-ecological potential (Moyoet al. 1991:57, 61). This land is subject to seasonal drought, at best marginal forrain-fed maize cultivation, and suitable mainly for semi-intensive or extensiveanimal husbandry. In Botswana, by contrast, there were relatively few white settlersand most of the land (80 per cent at independence) remained under communal (ortribal) forms of tenure. This is virtually all arid or semi-arid rangeland with a lowpopulation density. However, there is a similar movement in the two countriestowards the adoption of private tenure as a more generalised norm, and in bothcountries there is some opposition to this movement which includes most NGOs.

Environmental arguments are brought forward on both sides, particularly sinceit is clear that the unequal historical division of lands has a lot to do withcontemporary problems of land degradation. In Zimbabwe, in particular, some ofthe worst degradation occurs on densely populated communal lands, where thevicious cycle between poverty and over-exploitation of soil, water and forestresources tends to appear (see, for example, Moyo et al. 1991). In support ofprivatisation of land is the suggestion that land degradation is in fact caused, or atleast exacerbated, by communal tenure. This is argued on the grounds that if nosingle person or organisation has ownership, no one will take responsibility forconserving or improving land or any other natural resource. Private ownership, itis said, will give better security of tenure and by allowing landholders to excludeother users will make it worthwhile for them to invest in improvements to theirland and adopt improved farming practices (Selolwane 1995). Thus the officialperception in Botswana is that overgrazing and hence environmental degradationis occasioned partly by the communal land tenure system and partly by the poormanagement practices of the poverty-stricken majority of land users. Poor landmanagement by local farmers in communal areas is also often cited as the immediatecause of land degradation in Zimbabwe (Vivian 1994).

Those opposed to this view agree that security of tenure is required beforefarmers will invest in land conservation or learn new techniques. However, asVivian (1994:178–9) points out, it is not clear which form of tenure gives the bestsecurity. It can be argued that under the private system sales under duress couldwell become the norm, and that communal tenure in fact provides better securityfor the poorer sections of the population. Those opposed to privatisation alsosuggest that degradation on communal lands is caused not by communal tenure assuch but by factors such as overcrowding, lack of investment and poverty, in thecontext of an historically unequal distribution of land and other resources, forcingpeople to over-utilise resources (Moyo et al. 1991:71, 123). Private control of land,with no public accountability, is no guarantee of good management practices. Thus,in Botswana, the resilience of the ecosystem is said to have been damaged byovergrazing under the enclosed private tenure system, the productivity of privatefarmers may be no better than that on communal lands and the traditional cattlepost


system may even be more productive than the commercial ranch, while themajority of ranchers have not in fact adopted the improved management practicesrecommended by the Ministry of Agriculture (Selolwane 1994). This argumentends by suggesting that, rather than gradually doing away with communal tenure,communal institutions need strengthening and modernising—otherwise, given theimpact of commercialisation and other changes, communal tenure cannot work asit traditionally did. One specific point, again in Botswana, would be the questionof ‘dual grazing rights’, where an individual with a commercial herd may retainhereditary rights to communal grazing and thus be able to move cattle betweencommunal and commercially zoned areas, to the environmental detriment of theformer. Abolishing dual grazing rights does not require increased privatisation butrather a clarity about the rights and responsibilities enjoyed under both systemstogether with enough power delegated to communal institutions for them toregulate the users of communal lands.

However, these latter arguments, whether from NGOs or from others, are nothaving much impact on the issue. This may be because, although environmentalarguments are invoked on both sides, the issue of tenure is a more central economicand political matter than that of environmental degradation. Private ownership isregarded as an aspect of modernisation and a necessary part of developing a moderneconomy, particularly since it is the commercial farmers and cattle-ranchers whosucceed in turning agriculture into an exporting industry. Politically, while historicinjustices make land tenure an extremely emotive issue, particularly in Zimbabwe,in practice those likely to benefit from privatisation tend to be members of theruling elites.

The third and fourth cases also look quite similar. Both involve proposals forlarge-scale water engineering works in arid areas. The environmental argumentsare similar in the two cases. On the one hand, there is the need for the sustainablemanagement of water as a scarce but crucial resource, with some importantcompetition between different uses (domestic, irrigation, mining or industry). Onthe other hand, there are questions of possible adverse environmental impact.

These two cases differ in the position of the local NGOs involved. In theOkavango the Tshomorelo Okavango Conservation Trust (TOCT) wascampaigning to stop the SOIWDP, because of its likely impact on conservationand tourism potential, and also on local communities and their traditional uses ofresources. However, in Bulawayo the Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project(MZWP) was set up to work for the building of a pipeline from the Zambezi. Inthis case the water resource problems were more critical, and any adverseenvironmental impact from the proposed project was not thought to be serious.Nevertheless, the two cases were similar in that they both involved a change ofgovernment policy in which NGOs were apparently implicated. In each case, too,the local NGO concerned was able to internationalise the issue so that its respectivegovernment was forced to take notice.

Can one say, then, that democracy does not matter? Irrespective of anydifferences between Zimbabwe and Botswana in terms of more or less democracy,


when an issue (like land tenure) is of basic historical, economic and politicalimportance it appears that the normal process of policy development will excludeNGOs. All NGOs seem able to do is occasionally to force changes to specificprojects on the basis of special local interests, particularly if they can bringinternational concern to bear as well.

Democracy certainly is not the only consideration that determines NGOinfluence. However, I argue that the different aspects of democracy do have somesignificance. To see this, one has to look more closely at the four examples.

2.4FOUR STORIES OF ATTEMPTED NGO INFLUENCE

In all these cases, what did the NGOs actually do to try to effect change? In thefirst two stories, did their efforts achieve at least some minimal impact? In the lasttwo, to what extent were NGOs responsible for the changes in policy? The answeris that they adopted different strategies which could be categorised as variouscombinations of collaborative, complementary or confrontational activity. Let uslook at each of the stories in turn.

The Development of the New Agricultural Policy and the Fencing ofCommunal Lands in Botswana

In Botswana, NGO action against the fencing policy has been restricted tooccasional participation in government-led consultations and some publicstatements, with scattered local actions supporting communities likely to be affectedby proposed fencing of particular stretches of rangeland (Selolwane 1994; 1995).Not surprisingly, given the general weakness in civil society and lack of participativeculture, these forms of NGO opposition to fencing policy have had very little effect.

Botswana’s system of policy making, which has succeeded in delivering a highrate of economic growth together with a degree of universal welfare provision overalmost three decades, has been termed ‘paternalistic developmentalism’ (Charlton1991:276). Under this system, there is clear political control over major policydecisions, while technical aspects are generally worked out by officials in therelevant departments in some secrecy before any new policy is announced. TheNew Agricultural Policy was typical in having technocratic origins in the planningunit of the Ministry of Agriculture. In fact the element of this policy on fencingcommunal lands is not new, being ‘an extension of the 1975 Tribal Grazing LandPolicy’ (Selolwane 1994:14). Nevertheless, it only came to involve other parties,including the extension officers of that Ministry, in its later stages of considerationfor implementation. The first consultative conference took place in 1990 andincluded participants from various government ministries as well as some NGOs.

Few NGOs were present at the 1990 conference, and their views do not appearto have had much impact on the form of the new agricultural policy as far as fencingof communal lands is concerned. The role of NGOs was strongly limited by the


fact that consultations began at an advanced stage, when crucial policy choices wereprobably already made. One NGO activist commented that, as usual, policies onlyopen up for discussion when virtually at implementation stage.

The Botswana Government apparently envisages some role for NGOs inimplementation, though it is not clear how this might come about. Selolwane(1994:22) points out that

although the policy documents give [NGOs] prominence as major partnersin this development programme in fact these have not been involved in theplanning and implementation of the programme so far. The Governmentstructure for implementing this policy…completely excludes NGOs.

This policy may be delayed in its full implementation, perhaps partly because ofuncertainty over certain aspects including some of the points raised in oppositionby NGOs. However, it is going ahead with hardly any modification despitevehement opposition from several quarters. In any case fencing is a gradual processthat happens here and there, so it does not need a clear new policy to beimplemented, whereas to halt the process would need a very clear commitment toa policy change from government.

The Review of Land Tenure Policy in Zimbabwe by the Land TenureCommission, and its Impact on Community-Based Resource

Management

In Zimbabwe there have been some opportunities for NGOs to makerepresentations to the Land Tenure Commission, and the more participativepolitical culture has meant, for example, that there have been NGO-sponsoredworkshops and some public debate. Nevertheless, there has been little impact. Infact, many Zimbabwean NGOs have not attempted to enter the debate, althoughthe channels were apparently open for them to do so. Some have tried, however,notably the NGOs in the Campfire Co-ordinating Group (CCG). They felt thatcertain specific needs of community-based resource management were threatenedby the promotion of private land tenure, or, alternatively, that the review of landtenure systems offered an opportunity. Thus these NGOs wish to ensure that anychange to more private tenure would not adversely affect local Campfire schemes,and they also hope that the review may provide scope for local Campfire groupsto obtain a new status to allow them legal control over the benefits accruing fromcommunally managed natural resource utilisation.

It is not clear if the CCG will succeed. The Land Tenure Commission reportwas concluded before the end of 1994, but not immediately published. ZANU(PF)won another overwhelming victory in the 1995 election, losing only twoparliamentary seats. What will actually be implemented after this remains to beseen. However, to the extent that Campfire may succeed in shifting policy in thecourse of its development, that will surely only be due to its previous history of


complementary activity (plus some collaboration; the CCG consists of severalNGOs and government departments working together). A set of projects has beenbuilt up covering some 23 districts, including all the communal areas where wildlifeis of importance. These projects have international support and embody principlesof community-based resource management which make them an internationallyknown model. The government is thus more or less obliged to take them intoaccount when formulating policy (though, despite their large numbers, sinceCampfire projects are mostly in economically marginal areas they probably neednot threaten the general trend towards private tenure and commercialisation).

The NGO Campaign against the Southern Okavango IntegratedWater Development Project (SOIWDP)

By contrast, the campaign against the SOIWDP was mainly confrontational. It waslargely a matter of mobilising local opposition—TOCT was itself formed out ofthis campaign. On an international level, Greenpeace and other NGOs, such asthe South Africa-based Okavango Wild Life Society (OWLS), have also been vocalin opposition to the SOIWDP, and there have been suggestions of potentialcampaigns aimed at harming Botswana’s diamond exports or lobbying to reduceBotswana’s EC beef quota.

The Okavango Delta, in the north-west of the country, is one of the world’sgreatest wetlands, famous for its wildlife and hence of increasing importance fortourism. It also has especial importance in an otherwise arid region in providinglivelihoods for over 100,000 people of a variety of ethnic groups. The SOIWDPwas planned in the government’s Department of Water Affairs (DWA) as ‘amultisectoral project for meeting a wide range of goals’. Water was to be providedfor commercial irrigation, village-based flood recession agriculture, communitiesand livestock throughout the area, but particularly the town of Maun andsurrounding areas and the De Beers diamond mine at Orapa. Apart from dredgingand bunding 42 km of the Boro river (one of the main Okavango waterways), thescheme included building two reservoirs each 100 km long, one providing mainlyirrigation and the other water for the diamond mine and a number of communities(see Figure 2.1).

When earth-moving equipment began to arrive in Maun in late 1990, a newlocal community-based environmental action group was formed (TOCT), whichmounted a very effective local campaign culminating in a kgotla meeting at whichgovernment officials were harangued for several hours by hundreds of people whohad come from a wide area around. In parallel with the mobilisation campaign,local and South African environmentalists allied to TOCT contacted GreenpeaceInternational and other international NGOs. Greenpeace in turn wrote to theBotswana Government and on its invitation undertook a study tour andrecommended shelving the project pending further scientific enquiry. The sameenvironmentalist activists appear to have used the media in South Africa andBotswana to spread rumours that Greenpeace might add a ‘Diamonds are for Death’


campaign to its anti-furs work or lobby within the European Community for areduction in Botswana’s beef quota. Although there is no evidence that Greenpeacemade any specific threats, Botswana Government spokespersons to this day seemhappy to give credence to these rumours and to paint Greenpeace as anunrepresentative, interfering, Northern organisation.

Whether as a result of the campaigns by TOCT and Greenpeace or simply inresponse to general local opposition, the Botswana Government suspended theSOIWDP and commissioned an independent study through the WorldConservation Union (IUCN), who got together a team of 13 under an Americanexpert, Ted Scudder. To the surprise of the DWA, the report was negative. In factit made some positive proposals for alternative developments of the water resourceof the Okavango, which amounted to a combination of several small-scaleimprovements, mostly aimed at supporting the livelihoods of local people.However, although there was no official response the project was ‘terminated’.

One interpretation of these events is that the anti-SOIWDP campaign was ledby expatriates in Maun with interest specifically in wildlife conservation andconnections to safari companies. In this view the local NGOs such as TOCT that

FIGURE 2.1 MAP OF NORTH-WEST BOTSWANA SHOWING OKAVANGODELTA AND PROPOSED ENGINEERING WORKS FOR SOIWDP


became involved were not really representative of local opinion and theinternational NGOs such as Greenpeace took up the issue without reallyunderstanding the local situation. Nevertheless the threat from internationallobbying was sufficient for the Botswana Government to drop the project, at leastfor the time being. In this interpretation, confrontation between NGOs andgovernment was more significant than scientific consideration of the issue. Evenwhere NGOs might have apparently been collaborating with the government, aswith the IUCN assessment of the SOIWDP, the result was pointed disagreement,with Scudder accusing the Botswana Government of ignoring his team’s alternativerecommendations in order to keep open the option of putting forward a similarproject at a future date.

The Campaign for Water from the Zambezi for Bulawayo

MZWP was formed, after previous collaborative attempts had failed to shift thegovernment’s opposition to the pipeline idea despite repeated and worsening watershortages in Bulawayo and Matabeleland generally, specifically to raise funds andto promote the project itself. Figure 2.2 shows the likely route of the pipeline,which could be constructed either as a one-off project or as the culmination of alinked series of dams.

Gunby and Mpande (1995) give details of the MZWP campaign. They describehow the NGO was carefully constituted so as to incorporate a broad base of support,including representation from Ndebele political leaders and from thepredominantly white business community. Those politicians in MZWP wereamong the most senior Ndebele figures in ZANU(PF), although the party itselfwas not formally represented in the NGO. Within less than a year, MZWPaccumulated funds and pledges from local sources totalling Z$8m (over US $1m),a unique achievement for a Zimbabwean NGO. Local and international mediawere targeted so as to promote the idea of the pipeline project as widely as possible,and help was obtained from Zimbabwe Environmental Research Organisation(ZERO), an environmental research NGO, on the relationship of the pipeline ideato other possible uses for Zambezi water by other countries in the region. MZWPwent on to commission feasibility studies and negotiated directly with foreigndonors for aid for the project, and would have gone ahead with actually buildingthe pipeline if the government had not stepped in. In my terms, MZWP wasengaged in complementary activities.

There was also a small element of confrontation in the Zambezi water case.Bulawayo and Matabeleland generally provided the Ndebele base of the ZAPUopposition in the early 1980s and of the ‘dissidents’ of the mid-1980s. Thoughthere is no specifically Ndebele-based opposition party since the ‘shot-gun’ mergerof ZAPU with ZANU(PF) in 1987, Matabeleland is still the nearest thing politicallyto an alternative internal power centre in Zimbabwe. However, tribally basedconfrontation is recognised on both sides to be extremely dangerous and on thewhole this aspect of the issue has been deliberately played down. In fact the broad


basis of MZWP, with its inclusion both of white business leaders and of politicalleaders with senior positions in national and regional government, was designed tobe non-confrontational. It was when MZWP began acting as a development agentin its own right alongside government (complementary activity) that the ZimbabweGovernment was obliged to take notice. The involvement of internationalagencies, which operate as important externally based power sources, coupled withthe government’s own lack of capacity, meant that the MZWP’s activities couldnot be suppressed. The only alternative was a change of policy so that governmentadopted the idea of water from the Zambezi for Bulawayo among its national waterdevelopment options.

Rather than simply take on the pipeline project itself, the government set up anew organisation, namely the Matabeleland Zambezi Water Trust (MZWT), withsome overlapping membership with MZWP but including formal representationfrom ZANU(PF), regional and national government agencies, and MZWP itself.By 1995 there was concern that this could be a way of delaying action indefinitely,

FIGURE 2.2 MAP SHOWING PROPOSED ROUTE OF MATABELELANDZAMBEZI WATER PIPELINE


since MZWP had been rendered more or less inactive. However, the electioncampaign was used by members of the old MZWP to oblige the President, on acampaigning visit to Matabeleland, to make a very public pledge to move aheadwith the project quickly.

2.5ANALYSIS: FACTORS AFFECTING NGO INFLUENCE

Political and Economic Centrality of the Issue

The presentation of the four stories as two pairs suggested that it might be ‘normal’for NGOs to be excluded from certain issues, almost irrespective ofdemocratisation. Such issues would be those of central importance: land tenure,for example.

However, there is a good deal of national specificity in the relationship betweeneconomic and political power in a particular country. In Botswana, for example,the politico-administrative elite is closely related to the class of large-scale cattle-owners (Tsie 1993), so that questions concerning the beef industry, ranching andexport quotas, including the fencing of communal lands, are of central importanceto the government as a class as well as to the economy of the country. Notsurprisingly, then, NGOs have virtually no influence in this area.

Similarly, in Zimbabwe, the reform of the land-tenure system is an issue whichcombines historical resonances relating to racially based inequities with present-daymatters where members of the ruling elite have material interests. However,although NGOs are largely excluded from influence here as well, there are somedifferences, both in the ways in which they attempt to exercise influence and inthe extent to which there may be some minimal areas of influence open to them.As the issues on which NGOs attempt to have influence become less central to theinterests of the government or the ruling elite, so these differences become moremarked. Hence it is worth looking back at the first three hypotheses in more detailand then at some additional points which emerge.

Revisiting the First Three Hypotheses

To the extent that in Zimbabwe there is less accountability through multi-partyelections, according to the hypotheses one would not expect confrontation on thepart of NGOs to succeed. Although NGOs provide a legitimate form ofautonomous organisation, the political system in Zimbabwe is extremely intolerantof such autonomy and there are increasing restrictions on NGOs with newlegislation to control them and exclude them from anything that could be regardedas political activities. The only exception could be for an NGO to relate itsconfrontational activities to a strong alternative internal power centre, but thiswould be a very high-risk strategy carrying the possibility of a backlash from the


government. As we have seen, the only element of confrontation in theZimbabwean stories examined was in the activities of the MZWP, which didindeed relate to Bulawayo/Matabeleland as an alternative centre, but on the wholethis confrontation was played down for fear of the risks involved. Nevertheless,the electoral process was utilised by campaigners.

In Botswana, on the other hand, multi-partyism is more meaningful as a sourceof accountability, and the government is very sensitive to its democratic credentials.This means that issues cannot remain unresolved or open lest the opposition takethem up to their political advantage. Not only the local councils but also thetraditional forms of consultation such as the kgotla system provide some (limited)internal alternative power centres. If there is clear dissent from a governmentposition at these levels then the government may give way at least temporarily, ifonly to ensure that it controls the political agenda in the longer term. Hence thesuccess of the TOCT campaign against the SOIWDP, at least in the short term.

Thus the third hypothesis, that a confrontational approach is most likely to leadto influence in a multi-party system where there are alternative internal powercentres, seems to be reinforced.

Conversely, in Zimbabwe other aspects of democracy may be more in evidencethan in Botswana. In particular, there may be a more participative political cultureat some levels, and the state certainly has less capacity (or ‘reach’), so that a varietyof international organisations act as important external power centres. This leavesroom, first, for collaboration from NGOs prepared to accept the government’sagenda and the role allocated to them, and, second, for a variety of complementaryactivities, including both simple ‘gap-filling’ and some institutional creativity aswith the notion of Campfire. Thus the success of MZWP in forcing the Zambezipipeline into the government’s plans was achieved through complementaryactivities, and the only hint of any NGO influence on the land tenure debate camefrom the CCG.

Botswana’s ‘paternalistic developmentalism’, with its strong technocratic andpolitical elite, leaves little room for complementary activities and has little need forcollaboration with NGOs. Consultation is even more on the government’s termsthan in Zimbabwe, and hence the influence of NGOs on actual policy developmentis even more marginal. However, as noted above, NGO influence on matters ofcentral economic or political importance, like land tenure, is minimal in bothcountries.

Thus, with this proviso about how the economic or political centrality of aparticular issue may override considerations of democracy, the first and secondhypotheses also seem to be reinforced, although evidence from these stories is quiteweak on the first hypothesis. In other words, it still appears that the collaborativeform of influence is more likely to be effective in a more participative culture. Onemight suggest even more strongly the proposition that complementary activitiesare likely to be effective in influencing policy where there is a diversity of powercentres with links to interests external to the country.


International Links

It is clear that the possibility of linking to international agendas, either in terms ofissues or in terms of specific organisational links, offers an additional dimension toNGO influence. However, as noted by Bernard Eccleston in Paper 3, collaborationwith Northern NGOs can be a two-edged weapon as far as Southern NGOs areconcerned, and this is borne out in the stories covered here.

Eccleston notes that moving an issue to an international level can be a way ofaccessing additional resources and opening up political space. With regard to theformer, the whole area of complementary activities is typified by rural developmentprojects run by indigenous NGOs in countries like Zimbabwe with support fromNorthern NGO partners. The Campfire projects are no exception; links throughthe World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Zimbabwe Trust bringadditional development funds into the country. In fact, this is one of the mainreasons why the Zimbabwe Government continues to allow NGO activities,despite its intolerance, noted above, of autonomous organisations.

How moving to an international level can create additional political space canbe seen from both the campaign for water from the Zambezi and the campaignagainst the SOIWDP. In the latter case, the issue may appear at a national level tobe a rather small local debate about the best way of utilising resources in a region.It becomes internationally a debate about the conservation of an ecosystem of globalsignificance.

However, Eccleston also notes how internationalising an issue can galvanise thepolicy-making system (in this case the various institutions and forces in favour oflarge-scale development of the water resources of the Okavango) into becomingmore effective proponents of their cause. There are certainly signs in Botswana ofgovernment spokespersons talking up the impact of the suggested threat fromGreenpeace International in terms of Northern conservationist interests wantingto prevent development. To the extent that local conservationists (especiallyexpatriates and other whites) can be portrayed as in league with Greenpeace, thentheir alliance with local community interests in the area around the Okavango maybe shaken and a future proposal might not meet with such united opposition.

In the case of the MZWP also, the fact that an NGO went direct to foreigndonors may have prodded the Zimbabwe Government into action, but it may alsohave led that same government to try to ensure that MZWP cannot in future actindependently.

Capacity and Autonomy of the State

The space afforded to NGOs in Zimbabwe comes largely from the fact that thegovernment does not have the capacity to regulate their activities and indeed needsthe resources they bring in and the projects they carry out. This is true particularlyof welfare organisations. Limited reach on the part of the state may allow NGOseffectively to form a kind of alternative power centre, and thus relates to the third


of the four features of democracy. However, the question of the autonomy orcapacity of a given state is a separate issue and cuts across the issue ofdemocratisation. Just as both authoritarian and more democratic governments canexhibit the capacity for developmentalism found in Botswana as well as in certainSouth-East Asian states (Leftwich 1994), so one can find both authoritarian andmore democratic states lacking in capacity.

Lack of capacity can lead to collaboration with NGOs, though not necessarilyto much real influence for them. Environment is one area where even relativelystrong, autonomous states may well lack expertise, scientific knowledge andexperience. This is partly because it is an area whose importance has been pushedinternationally in the period leading up to and following the Rio UNCEDconference, a period in which many African countries have been undergoingstructural adjustment and hence when new resources and staffing have not beenavailable to build up new ministries or other institutions. Compared to longerestablished line ministries, a new environment ministry, as in Zimbabwe, may havefew resources and also few direct powers. Thus it may build up a culture ofcollaboration with NGOs even if this goes against the norm for other ministries;hence the scenario of extensive consultation without much real influence on thepart of the NGOs, since they are collaborating with a rather weak part ofgovernment.

In fact, as seen in the cases of MZWP and the CCG, it is through building oncomplementary activities that NGOs can utilise lack of governmental capacity toinfluence policy. However, this is only likely to be effective where there is a basicmeasure of agreement with government. Even weak governments are likely to usewhat capacity they do have to clamp down on autonomous activity by NGOswhich is seen as contrary to national interests.

Policy Development as a Process

As noted above and in the Introduction, NGO influence on policy can be relatedto three stages in the policy process, namely: agenda-setting, policy choices andimplementation. Agenda-setting can itself be thought of in the relatively short andthen the longer term. It is probably through the fourth form of influence(consciousness-raising) that NGOs affect agendas over the long term, although itis enormously hard to document and evaluate. However, one should note that,with respect to the stories described here, there has been a global shift in attitudes(some might say a paradigm shift) on environmental issues, which has brought inits wake both a general scepticism around large-scale water development projectsand a willingness to confer increased importance on indigenous knowledge andcommunity-based resource management techniques. The traditional cattle-postsystem in Botswana and some aspects of Campfire projects might both come intothis category.

In Botswana, NGOs have not so far been able to utilise these shifts in globalopinion to make much impact on agenda-setting amongst policy makers. This may


be because of the closed policy network in that country, as well as the continuingrelative weakness of the NGO sector. In Zimbabwe there is perhaps a little moreindication of NGO impact on agenda-setting, particularly with the CCG pushingcommunity-based resource management onto the agenda. (The MZWP, in itspromotion of a large-scale water project, could be seen as working withgovernment against the global trend.)

Policy formation is perhaps the area where NGOs have least influence onenvironmental policies. This is certainly the case in Botswana, where policyformation is the province par excellence of the politico-administrative elite. InZimbabwe, however, where the new environment ministry lacks technicalcapacity, so the formation of policy on questions like EIAs is subject to a great dealof consultation with NGOs. What status such policy will have when it cuts acrossestablished practices of more powerful line ministries is not clear.

It is when policies reach the implementation stage that there is most chance ofNGO involvement. In Botswana this is the only stage at which the governmentofficially sees a role for NGOs, though that role would preferably be one of helpingto explain policies and helping local government officials to make the details ofpolicy work, rather than actually making any changes in response to NGOrepresentations. It is also the stage at which policies become public, so that thereis opportunity for opposition, which, as in the SOIWDP case, occasionally succeedsin preventing certain projects from going ahead as planned. However, whereNGOs have played more of a role in agenda-setting or policy formation, as in thetwo Zimbabwean stories, one sees that they typically suffer even more from lackof capacity than does the government. Implementation is rarely something thatNGOs can do alone, once it goes beyond small numbers of localised projects.

2.6CONCLUSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR

DEMOCRATISATION AND FOR NGO STRATEGY

The first conclusion is that democratisation does indeed assist NGO influence. Onemust go beyond the simple idea of a normal process of policy development fromwhich NGOs are excluded, plus some possibilities for NGO influence onperipheral matters such as the details of particular projects. The first threehypotheses suggest ways in which different aspects of democracy affect the abilityof NGOs to achieve direct influence. To a large extent the stories reinforce thehypotheses. However, some additional points have emerged: the importance ofinternational networking; questions about the capacity and autonomy of aparticular state, above all, the idea of policy development as a process combinedwith the fact that different issues have different degrees of political and economiccentrality in different countries.

Thus, it may be relatively easy for an NGO to effect a short-term reversal of aspecific decision on the implementation of a policy of relatively peripheralimportance; it is much more unlikely, and a greater test of democracy, for a


government to be open to NGO influence on the formulation of policy,particularly on questions of central importance.

There is a possibility, however, of a virtuous circle between democratisation andNGO influence. First, one of the features of democracy allows NGO influence insome form. Then the exercise of that influence, so long as it is not done in such away as to provoke a backlash, may in turn reinforce democratisation. For example,in the Zambezi pipeline case, although the government eventually restricted theMZWP, it was obliged to act through another institution (MZWT), effectivelypluralising the political context a little more.

Implications for NGO Strategy Choice

Even where, as in Botswana, confrontation may appear to be potentially effective,NGOs cannot choose it as a constant strategy. This is because their interests oftencoincide at least partially with those of decision makers in government andelsewhere. However, if there is clear conflict between policy about to beimplemented and interests represented by NGOs, the above stories tend to showthat, in a multi-party system, outright opposition may be more likely to get resultsthan trying to collaborate and hoping for agreed modifications.

Advocacy built on complementary activities requires considerable capacity onthe part of an NGO. In turn, it is likely to be effective where the state has limitedcapacity, as well as where there are international interests involved. Indeed,international links are probably essential if either of these two strategies is tosucceed. Such links clearly work best if there is an international dimension to theparticular issue. However, there is the danger of different perceptions of an issuefrom outside and within a particular country, and also the possibility of aninternational campaign provoking more effective action on the part of the targetdecision-making institution in the future.

On local issues, indirect campaigning may be more likely to succeed in the longterm than attempts at advocacy on a collaborative basis. Real opportunities forNGO activists to enter the policy networks are likely to remain limited, and maycarry very strong dangers of cooptation. There may be relatively more opportunityfor collaboration where, as in Zimbabwe, there is a somewhat participative nationalculture, though effective influence is not likely to extend to matters of centraleconomic or political importance like land tenure.

Up to now international concern for environment in Africa has mostly relatedto issues around wildlife and biodiversity. However, the desertification conventionis now signed (see Paper 6) and includes reference to community-based sustainabledevelopment, the importance of indigenous knowledge and techniques, and theneed for independent EIAs on big engineering projects. It may then becomepossible for NGOs in countries like Zimbabwe and Botswana to invoke thisinternational convention and gain international support at the policy formation oreven agenda-setting stage for a broader, more participative approach onenvironmental issues such as those discussed in this paper.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research on which this paper is based was funded mainly by the UK Economicand Social Research Council under its Global Environmental Change Initiative,and partly by the Open University. I am grateful for their support. Research inZimbabwe and Botswana is being carried out in collaboration with Roger Mpandeof Commutech, Harare, Dr Derek Gunby of Planafric Consultancy, Bulawayo,and Dr Onalenna Selolwane of the University of Botswana, and I fullyacknowledge their contribution. Much of the information on the role of NGOsin Zimbabwe and Botswana and the four stories comes from interviews carried outin these countries in October 1993, July 1994 and December 1994, and I wouldlike to thank all the NGO staff, officials and others who were so open andinformative and to apologise for any misconstructions I may have placed on whatthey said.

A version of this paper was presented at the Workshop on ‘Dryland Advocacy:NGO Influence on Policy on Land Degradation and Sustainable ResourceManagement in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Milton Keynes, 16 May 1995. My final thanksare to those who attended and whose comments allowed me to develop the ideasfurther.

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3Does North-South Collaboration

Enhance NGO Influence on DeforestationPolicies in Malaysia and Indonesia?

BERNARD ECCLESTON

Papers 1 and 2 in this volume examine the impact of the national political contextwithin which NGOs operate. This paper concentrates on another variable thataffects the degree of NGO influence on policy making by looking in particular atthe assumption that international collaboration would be more likely to makeNGOs influential than if they acted alone.

Our starting point with this line of enquiry was based partly on previous researchin political science that highlights the additional influence collaboration betweenconventional political actors can deliver. In studies of environmental politics NGOcollaboration is said to provide continuity between periodic global conferencesespecially through the shrinking of communication space with advances inelectronic information transmission. Caldwell indeed has argued that such advanceshave meant that the ‘organised environmental movement has become truly global’(1988:19). Similarly, when reflecting on the impact of the United NationsConference on Environment and Development (UNCED) at Rio in 1992 for thelong-term development of NGOs, Hinchberger refers to the near-unanimous viewthat the visibility of networking was one of the most important results (1993:52).Unfortunately, though, there has been little detailed research on how exactlycollaboration affects NGO campaigning. As Haufler commented, ‘A weakempirical base hinders extensive theoretical and conceptual developmentconcerning the role of NGOs and transnational coalitions’ (1993:111). Thisweakness is especially evident as regards evidence from NGOs in the South.

This paper examines Southern reactions to the impact of international NGOcollaboration that emerged in answers to a series of structured questions raised withgroups involved in tropical deforestation campaigns. These responses, gathered invisits to Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan between April 1993 and April 1995, wereexplicitly directed to elucidate whether collaboration had increased or diminishedNGO influence with policy makers. Initially we approached NGOs known fromvarious directories to be engaged in advocacy work on tropical forestry and thiswas then supplemented by suggested local contacts. Wherever possible we alsoattempted to interview others involved in forestry issues such as government

Bernard Eccleston is Social Sciences Staff Tutor, the Open University.

agencies, research institutes and the local representatives of Northern donors andfoundations. In addition to over 50 interviews in Asia, another 15 meetings werelater held with NGOs in Europe who campaign on Asian forestry issues whichallows us to assess both sides of the collaborative process.

What generally emerged from these interviews was confirmation thatcollaboration with NGOs from the North had indeed allowed Southern NGOs towiden the political space within which they campaign. Collaboration had alsoenabled them to mobilise additional resources in terms of information, finance andexpertise.

At the same time almost every interview in Asia produced some comment onthe way collaboration had the potential to diminish NGO influence on policymakers and we were given examples where this had actually happened. SometimesNGO influence was diminished because of problems in the internal managementof the system of collaboration. In addition, there were cases where the potential ofNorth-South collaboration was so threatening to Southern government intereststhat already limited domestic political space for NGOs was curtailed even further.This latter cause of diminished influence I will elaborate later as a factor externalto, but in some ways linked with, the way collaboration was managed by the NGOpartners.

Contrasting perceptions of optimism about the potential offered by North-Southcollaboration and at the same time awareness of the difficulties this may bring ismirrored in more general literature on global environmental politics. In the nexttwo sections I outline why some scholars are optimistic about the prospects forNGO collaboration and why others have reservations. With such differences inmind I then analyse how differing styles of collaboration have been managed andexplain how this sometimes increased but sometimes diminished NGO influence.Comparing Malaysian with Indonesian experience allows me to consider howcollaboration affects the domestic political space policy makers allocate to NGOsin more and less democratic systems. In addition, I can contrast the greater potentialfor combined NGO leverage on Northern donors that Indonesia’s greaterdependence on external funding for forest projects allows. Because Malaysiafinances forest exploitation from internal sources, NGOs do not havethis additional point of leverage and globalising their campaigns is related more tomobilising opposition to domestic forest policies.

First, though, what in the current literature of global politics encourages peopleto be optimistic about the potential power of North-South collaboration amongstNGOs?

3.1GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY AND OPTIMISTIC

EXPECTATIONS FOR NGO COLLABORATION

In the past two decades the primacy of nation-states across a host of issues such asnuclear disarmament, social discrimination, consumer protection and

64 NGO INFLUENCE ON DEFORESTATION POLICIES

environmental pollution has been challenged in two interlinked dimensions.Internally, a variety of social movements forced concern over these issues ontonational political agendas. Externally, intergovernmental organisations (IGOs)provide important sites for joint international activity by civil society interests. Bothof these trends have encouraged some authors to connect national and internationalspheres into the disintegration of nation-state sovereignty or the emergence of‘sovereignty-free actors’ in a global civil society. Though this type of conclusionhas been challenged in a number of ways, as I will show later, the perception of adramatically enlarged global political space for non-state actors has been a sourceof high expectations. ‘Groups, movements and institutions within global societyare making themselves felt within the international state system…[and] we shouldstop seeing them as intruders’ (Shaw 1992:431).

NGOs campaigning on environmental issues have been singled out for specialattention in an emergent global civil society because they compensate for theinadequacies of nation-states and play a pivotal role in cementing the contributionof IGOs and the scientific community. The spatial horizons of nation-states are apoor basis for the management of environmental problems which by their verynature cannot be confined within their sovereign jurisdiction. Efforts by nation-states to forge cross-boundary cooperation seem inevitably to fall foul ofcompetition over scarce resources and expectations that some neighbours will be‘free-riders’ to international agreements. In contrast, environmental NGOs canwiden horizons because of their greater global consciousness or their ‘green cultureas earth nationalism’ (Deudney 1993). Similarly NGOs can compensate for theshorter time horizons within which nation-states operate. By moving outside theimmediate time frame of politicians, NGOs can press the case for intergenerationalequity by emphasising that ‘Most environmental problems will outlast the policymakers charged with addressing them’ (Litfin 1993: 100). As participants in a globalcivil society, NGOs can add the dimension of global responsibilities to encouragestates to ‘respond to demands for global environmental management’ (Shaw 1992:431).

To be sure, NGOs are only one element in the process of formulating globalresponsibilities, but it can be argued that their role is pivotal. While IGOs forinstance have played a key entrepreneurial role in establishing a number ofinstitutions for global environmental management, NGOs can perform somefunctions in such systems that IGOs cannot. Local knowledge can help IGOsidentify states that in practice do not comply as fully with international agreementsas their official statements imply. By being able to be more critical than either IGOsor other states, ‘The resources and influence of NGOs provide them with thecapacity to publicise non-compliance by states, to establish and fund their ownmonitoring and investigation’ (Hurrell and Kingsbury 1992:30). In the processNGOs work with IGOs to make states more accountable and their policies moretransparent in ‘networks over, around and within states that generate the meansand incentives for effective cooperation’ (Haas, Keohane and Levy 1993:23).


NGOs also interrelate with scientific communities, which together with IGOshave been important in raising global concerns, thereby placing specificenvironmental issues on global agendas. NGOs can assist in the diffusion ofscientific knowledge between and within nation-states in what have been termedtranslational linkages. Environmental NGOs ‘inject scientific and earth-centredconcerns into political and economic situations which would otherwise relegatesuch concerns to the margins’ (Princen and Finger 1994: 232). Emphasising theconnections between NGOs, IGOs and the scientific community within a globalcivil society gives a clear sense of optimism that nation-states can be encouragedto cooperate in managing the global environment. Though NGOs may be onlyone force in this process, optimism about their pivotal position is underpinned bythe widely shared perception that they articulate a ‘common bond of humanity’(Counsell 1994).

Leaving on one side for the moment the accuracy of such a perception, howcan this ‘common bond’ be used by NGOs to maintain global civil society’senvironmental concerns in world politics? At this point we come to the essentialimportance of international collaboration which binds the decentralised activitiesof NGOs. Simply focusing on NGOs as ‘diverse and inchoate groups of agencieshaving no official status…misses the functional relationships among these NGOsand the interactive network they form on many environmental issues’ (Caldwell1988:25). Breymen echoes these thoughts and sees North-South movementcoalitions as ‘A critical component of the globalisation of environmental issues’(1993: 142). Kamieniecki likewise argues that ‘nongovernmental transnationalorganisations are frequently able to influence governments through their membersand sympathisers within individual nations’ (1991:354). Laferriere goes a stagefurther to suggest that the greater vulnerability of Southern NGOs to state pressuremay be ‘compensated by the political reach of Northern groups’ (1994:105) whenthey collaborate in global NGO networks.

One prominent example of this collaborative process is well documented in thecampaign to slow the rate of deforestation in Brazil by targeting MultilateralDevelopment Banks (MDBs) and the Congress in the US. Although policy makersin Brazil were the obvious target, local NGOs had no access to domestic politicalnetworks but in collaboration with US NGOs the campaign was able to exertindirect leverage by targeting Northern donors of project aid. As a joint campaign,NGOs from Brazil contributed local knowledge about the impact of Northern-funded projects on indigenous peoples and their environment. In return US NGOscontributed their access experience at US financial institutions and the World Bankwhere the dominance of US Government funding gave NGOs an additional sourceof leverage via Congress. Joint campaigning here was ‘a matter of necessity: theNGOs in the North had insufficient credibility and NGOs in the South had noaccess’ (Bramble and Porter 1992:348).

Potentially, PAN (Pesticides Action Network) is a vehicle for internationalNGO collaboration because IGOs regulating the trade in hazardous pesticides haveinstitutionalised NGO participation (Paarlberg 1993:345). Trade in restricted


products has to be formally registered by exporters usually from the North, andimporters usually from the South. In this case local NGO knowledge from Northand South can be used to allow IGO regulators to scrutinise more effectively officialreturns. Though it is more often than not the Northern NGOs who attend formalIGO sessions, electronic communication improvements mean that Southernresponses can be incorporated ‘within minutes’ (Starke 1990:67).

In addition to monitoring official statements, collaboration through PAN showsthat the work of Southern NGOs can be of value to domestic environmentalagencies whose own regulatory capacity is not strong (Haas, Keohane and Levy1993:402). In such cases the NGO network can also raise the credibility of SouthernNGOs, as it is said to do in the organisation of debt-for-nature swaps. Theseprojects involve Northern NGOs, purchasing a country’s foreign debt in returnfor a Southern government’s agreement to preserve tropical rainforests. For thoseSouthern NGOs involved, access to policy-making circles in the North strengthenstheir credibility with their local membership and NGO legitimacy withgovernment (Klinger 1994:243). These examples imply an international divisionof labour between NGOs and suggest that collaboration involves specialisationbetween local, national and global levels. ‘Single NGOs do not have to make allthe connections… But most can be effective via networks and coalitions’ (Princenand Finger 1994:232). Confidence about collaboration is built on good experiencewith specific campaigns which can then form the basis for more enduringcollaboration, as it has arguably done for example in extending the MDB Brazilcampaign into a more general ‘greening’ of the World Bank. Optimistic assessmentsof the continuing importance of international NGO collaboration suggest ‘Theties between varied movements may be seen as the construction of new institutionsthat both respond to, and deepen, global ecological interdependence’ (Breymen1993:143).

3.2INTERLINKED NATIONAL CIVIL SOCIETIES AND

GUARDED EXPECTATIONS FOR NGOCOLLABORATION

There are then a range of factors that encourage a mood of optimism about thepotential for international collaboration among environmental NGOs.Nevertheless, many Southern NGOs we interviewed gave only guarded supportfor the impact of collaboration in their campaigning. To some extent this reflectsthe fact that optimistic assessments come mainly from Northern sources, which attimes appear to accept the emergence of a global civil society too uncritically. Inaddition, they may exaggerate both the erosion of nation-state power and theincreasing influence of NGOs.

A clear danger in challenging state-centric theories of international relationsbecause they marginalise non-state actors is implying a zero-sum power gamewhere raising the profile of NGOs, for instance, means minimising the role of


nation-states. This is highly questionable in the tropical forestry debate becausestates are at the heart of the process given the national property rights they assert.More generally, it is states that enter agreements, sign conventions and accede toregulations, not representatives of civil society. Even the activities of IGOs aredeeply affected by the constraints imposed by participating nation-states, who canand do override IGO initiatives to widen NGO access. ‘Although environmentalgroups have achieved observer status with many IGOs, they have yet to penetratepolicy circles’ (Lafferriere 1994:105). Nation-states acting individually may well beinsufficient when dealing with global environmental problems, but they are alsoessential, not least in conforming to agreements. As Rosenau suggests in the widercontext of a bifurcation of world politics, the state is ‘both indispensable andinadequate’ (quoted Litfin 1993:96).

In addition to being indispensable to environmental management, the state isalso crucial in determining the autonomy of civil society and the extent ofconnections made with other groups in different societies. Thus some states canclose off opportunities for external collaboration where this leads to threateningrevelations of non-compliance with international agreements. On the other hand,collaboration may be encouraged if this helps to put additional pressure on otherstates or MDBs when negotiating loan or debt facilities. Quite apart from directmethods of controlling the connections between civil societies, the nation-statehas a role to play in the more general sense of confirming the national identity ofgroups in civil society. In contrast to optimistic expectations about a global civilsociety, Peterson quite rightly points out that global visions and loyalties may beshared by a few groups but ‘are not yet very widespread’ (1992:377). Indeed it isthe absence of well-established common global values, even in the environmentalmovement, that encourages him to propose not a global civil society, but aninternational one comprising a range of interlinked national civil societies (Peterson1992:378).

Being cautious about the continued importance of nation-states and thesociocultural differences between national civil societies does not mean rejectingthe potential of international linkages between civil societies. Rather it is to acceptthat they are ‘unlikely to become central to world politics in the short or mediumterm’ (Shaw 1992:434).

Caution in discussing the power of common bonds that link civil societies hasbecome increasingly evident in assessments of collaboration between developmentNGOs. Many of these assessments have been made by Northern NGOs reflectingon the disappointments of the past decade during which they have become muchmore involved in joint projects with Southern groups. A special supplement toWorld Development in 1987 emphasised time and again the need to avoid imposingprojects without proper consultation and to be more alert to empowering SouthernNGOs. Similarly a report on the quality of Dutch development cooperation talksabout patronising Northern interventions using simplistic representations of theSouth to deliver images more important to fund-raising than effective advocacy(van Dijk 1992:12). Then again, Brown, in a survey of development projects in


Asia, highlights what he calls different traditions among NGOs. Northern groups,he argues, tend to emphasise problem solving by working more closely withwhoever makes key decisions. In contrast Southern NGOs were said to be moreconcerned with empowering the poor, oppressed and disenfranchised (1993).

Such different attitudes between NGOs in the North and South have morerecently begun to resonate within the environmental movement. In one sense thecentral theme of the Earth Summit at Rio, by attempting to link environmentaland developmental issues, served to make visible differences in priorities betweenNGOs. Put very crudely, there is a perception in the South that Northern NGOsprioritise the conservation of nature either out of choice or because they need tomatch the preferences of their Northern constituencies. While not denying a placefor these concerns, Southern NGOs are more vociferous in making links betweenenvironmental degradation and questions of equity and local livelihoods. WhereSouthern NGOs choose to join the dominant discourse of the North in order toutilise its greater potential for leverage on policy makers, the way is opened fordivisions within the South.

While involvement in debt-for-nature swaps may raise the credibility of thoseNGOs for whom conservation is the more salient issue, ‘It is unlikely that otherkinds of NGOs will be energised to quite the same extent’ (Klinger 1994:242).More crucially, such a high profile for just some NGOs can provoke divisions basedon jealousies and matters of principle when other NGOs see global debtcancellation as the moral duty of the North.

Such divisions also occur over initiatives by Northern NGOs to campaign for aboycott of tropical timber especially by consumers in the North. Southern NGOscan see the potential for such a boycott as a means of galvanising Southern statesinto more effective forest management. However, they are deeply divided inbalancing the impact of uncertain state responses against the immediate threat tolivelihoods in countries dependent on timber for export earnings (Eccleston Paper5 in this volume).

At this juncture we can see in clear relief a source of global dissensus on thepurpose of international collaboration. For Princen and Finger, linkages tointernational institutions help forest peoples to ‘ensure their preferred way of life’(1994:40). Whereas for others, such international linkages between favouredNGOs and state agencies exclude ‘local communities and residents whose role inthe overall debate have been limited’ (Hawkins 1993:240). Notwithstanding theimpact of international collaboration to confront the threat to Brazil’s rainforests,there are voices doubting the effectiveness of the outcome. Rather than stimulatinga real policy shift in Brazil, Arnt argues, the campaign merely meant that thegovernment put on old policies a ‘gloss of scenic and figurative environmentalism’(1992:22). In the process, policy is still decided over the heads of local peoples. Toquote a petition from Amazonian peoples to the community of concernedenvironmentalists and the World Bank: ‘While we appreciate your efforts on ourbehalf, we want to make it clear that we never delegated any power of


representation to any individual or organisation within that community’ (quotedin Hawkins 1993:241).

Even though the empirical base on environmental NGO collaboration is notextensive, it is becoming clearer that there are optimistic as well as more pessimisticperceptions of the value of this new phenomenon for increasing the influence ofNGOs. Optimists see collaboration as a check on veto coalitions of nation-statesthrough a more vociferous global civil society. Pessimists are more guarded aboutboth the declining power of sovereign states and the cohesiveness of globalenvironmental values between civil societies. Such uncertainties among academicresearchers is reflected in the views of environmental NGOs in Malaysia andIndonesia as they react to past experience of collaboration in tropical forestcampaigns. It is to this particular experience that I now turn.

3.3CONTRASTING STYLES AND OUTCOMES OF NGO

COLLABORATION

One major difficulty in analysing reactions to collaboration is the ambiguous andinconsistent way in which the process of coordination between NGOs is labelled.

This inconsistency is also apparent in the literature where labels, such asnetworks, coalitions, alliances or confederations, are used as though there were nodifference between them. In fact the different styles of collaboration described inour interviews involved quite different coordination costs to the participants.Together with the different styles were different expectations about what othersshould contribute and what outcomes might be expected. A broad indication ofthe escalating costs and expectations of various collaboration styles is shown inFigure 3.1.

Networking was the most random style of collaboration depending to an extenton chance personal encounters at global conferences or unpredictable decisions toread reports from other NGOs either in hard copy or in electronic form. Thoughthe quantity of information about environmental issues has increased hugely, thecost constraints on the NGOs we interviewed made them fairly passive users ofnetworking per se.

In contrast, being participants of more specific networks was more attractive asinformation could be filtered through a bridging organisation such as CAN(Climate Action Network) or APPEN (Asia-Pacific Peoples EnvironmentNetwork). Membership of these organisations helps NGOs by disseminatingcommunications in a format abridged by a trusted secretariat (Brown 1991). Ofequal importance, membership of such networks did not compromise independentcampaigns, which was crucial to NGOs such as MNS (Malayan Nature Society)who jealously guard their scientific mission.

Where specific campaigns were thought to need direct collaboration, coalitionswere an instrumental option based on an agreed division of responsibilities and thecollaboration was restricted in duration to take account of long-term differences


in goals. Campaigning for or against particular policy shifts by MDBs or IGOs werethought to be ideal reasons for coalition activity especially in Indonesia wherepolicy targets in the North have a little more leverage over national forestryprojects. In contrast, domestic coalitions were important in Malaysia especially incampaigns to protect designated national parks from unrestricted logging or toameliorate the environmental impact of hydroelectric dam projects (Eccleston1995). Coalitions even here reflect short-term interests which, as Diani suggests,do not ‘imply necessarily any sort of continuity beyond the limits of the specificconflictual campaign’ (1992:17).

Only very rarely were the outcomes of previous collaboration so positive as toencourage NGOs into a more permanent alliance. This was partly because theexpectations were seen as severe on participants but also because managing thisstyle of collaboration requires the biggest commitment of resources. WRM (WorldRainforest Movement) was the only example mentioned where dual headquartersin Penang (Malaysia) and in the UK symbolised a commitment to North-SouthNGO equality around the central importance of indigenous peoples to theirtropical forestry campaigns. WRM tries to energise these shared values inmethodical communication and at biennial strategy meetings for NGO membersfrom India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, as well asfrom Europe and the US.

A more formal structure of collaboration exists for those NGOs federated toINGOs (International NGOs) such as WWF (Malaysia) or SAM (Sahabat AlamMalaysia) and WALHI (Indonesian Environment Forum), both of which are

FIGURE 3.1 GLOBAL COLLABORATION METHODS AMONGENVIRONMENTAL NGOS


members of FOE (Friends of the Earth) International. In one sense, as both INGOshave an international secretariat, albeit with limited resources, they function asnetworks. But the continuing federal connections incline some analysts to thinkof INGOs as alliances because of their more enduring relationships. According toour interviewees, though, it remains problematic whether the process ofcollaboration between national organisations really reflects notions ofempowerment and shared values that are perceived to be essential in alliances.Especially within WWF, the tendency of other ‘headstrong WWF groups inEurope’ (Zain 1993) to campaign on Malaysian forestry without purposiveconsultation inclines WWF (Malaysia) to think that the unpredictability inherentin networking makes it a more appropriate label.

This attempt to classify different expectations attached to each style ofcollaboration is not a matter of academic semantics. Rather it is an attempt to focuson the actual process of coordination and to stress the importance of eachcollaborating NGO knowing clearly what to expect and what it should contribute.While political scientists like Hinckley have shown that collaboration can increasethe influence of political actors, she also stresses that successful outcomes are highlydependent on each partner knowing and following the rules of the game (1981:64–70).

One example where this clearly did not happen came during a campaign inwhich Austrian NGOs proposed a ban on imports of tropical timber not certifiedas the product of sustainably managed forests. One factor explaining why thiscampaign failed in the longer term was, in my view, because Northern NGOsthought they were in coalition with Southern NGOs, whereas NGOs in Malaysiaand Indonesia regarded the collaboration as networking.

It was Greenpeace (Austria) who succeeded in organising unilateral action bytheir government to reflect concern over the contribution of tropical deforestationto global warming. The legislation passed in June 1992, raised the import duty ontropical wood and its products from eight to 70 per cent and imposed mandatoryeco-labelling to isolate the products of unsustainably managed tropical forests(Chase 1993:761). Southern NGOs were expected to support the legislation,generally as an initiative to slow deforestation, but in particular to assist conservationprojects which were to be financed from the revenue gained from the raised importduty. Expectation for such support seems to have been based on little more thanan open letter from the European Rainforest Movement which had been agreedand signed by some Asian representatives of NGOs within WRM.

In practice the legislation was scrapped within six months, after a massivecounter-offensive by producer states led by Malaysia, during which time almostno public support for the Austrian initiative was forthcoming from MalaysianNGOs. Reflecting later on their failed campaign, Greenpeace (Austria) admittedthat if the campaign ‘had been better explained to Southern groups, maybe thiswould have helped to create better understanding especially within FoE Malaysia(SAM)’ (Anderson 1993). In addition, Greenpeace reflected on their failure to


include all unsustainably produced timber in the legislation, not just tropical timber,and on the absence of prior consultation with Southern governments.

SAM itself echoes all these sentiments in what was for them an ‘unrealisticcampaign which would dissipate valuable and scarce resources’. What was more,if they had been accorded coalition-style consultation rather than ‘sketchyinformation’ (Chee 1993), they would have been able to point out in advance whatGreenpeace concluded in their post-mortem. They would certainly have warnedNorthern NGOs of their government’s campaigns on the need to treat all timbersequally that had been under way since 1989 (Seda 1992:32; Chase 1993:762). Asimportant, they would have highlighted the forest conservation fund as a ‘tokengesture’ (Chee 1993), not least because to produce significant project revenue an80 per cent import duty would have needed an unrealistically inelastic demand byAustrian consumers. Whereas in the North the campaign was initiated in the beliefthat Southern partners were part of a global coalition, the whole episode from aSouthern perspective was symptomatic of unpredictable networking withoutagreed ground rules or prior consultation.

Other researchers working on national collaboration between environmentalistsin the North have also highlighted the importance of careful preparation foreffective outcomes. The work of Klandermans in particular provides a usefulframework to assess the benefits and costs of partnership campaigns (1990). Buildingon his research into the Dutch peace movement, Klandermans attempts to bridgethe gap between students of NSMs (New Social Movements) in Europe and theUS by challenging the assumption of the former that NSMs are characterised bydetachment from existing political institutions. This proposition certainly reflectsthe attitudes of environmental NGOs in Asia who, while they eschew involvementwith conventional political parties, certainly aim to penetrate policy-makingnetworks. What for Klandermans is ‘new’ about NSMs is rather the extent ofnational linkages between them and the political opportunities such linkages offer.

In particular, NSM networks pool collective resources in the form of finance,equipment, experience and leadership to create wider opportunities to influencepolicy. As far as environmental NGOs are concerned, I would add very explicitlythe importance of pooling information resources. And when thinking about globalas opposed to national linkages, I would add the opportunities these offer toinfluence international policy makers directly, or for them in turn to exert indirectpressure on individual nation-states.

When he assesses the impact of NSM network linkages, Klandermans takes careto stress that policy makers too are part of a network which may well reactnegatively and oppose the demands of social movements. This type of reaction wasalso highlighted by Knoke’s work on the US civil rights movement which wasopposed by ‘many groups that benefit from contemporary power arrangementswho do not want their privileged situations disturbed’ (1990:77). In the case oftropical forestry in South-East Asia, the groups routinely opposing NGO demandswould be the interlinked networks of elected politicians, unelected bureaucrats,especially in forestry, energy and economic ministries, together with business


interests in the timber industry. For Indonesia I would also add the military becausetheir political patronage involves allocation of logging concessions. It is essential,therefore, in judging the impact of NGO collaboration, to take into account theway establishment networks can react to impressive campaigns by depriving NGOsof resources and decreasing their political opportunities. In short, establishmentnetworks can make counterproductive the decision of NGOs to collaborate.

Klandermans’ analysis, however, does not stop there because, he argues, thereaction of the establishment may be so negative as to solidify the NSM networkin the face of such adversity. Examples of a similar process for environmental NGOsare found when authoritarian regimes attempt a degree of repression that raisestheir plight as an international cause célèbre. At the same time, more overt forms ofrepression may lead to divisions within the established political order whichencourage dialogue in new bargaining institutions. There are signs in Asian forestrycampaigns, for example, that bureaucrats in environment agencies are lessconfrontational and of divisions appearing between civilian and military politiciansonce campaigns take on a more global focus through NGO collaboration.

In the remaining sections I examine our NGO interview responses under thesame headings suggested by Klandermans to assess the impact of internationalcollaboration on the influence of NGOs. What has been the impact of poolingresources with foreign NGOs and has this opened up more or less politicalopportunities? What has been the reaction of established policy-making intereststo NGOs campaigning on a more global scale? Has this resulted in more securelong-term political space for NGOs?

3.4NGO COLLABORATION TO SHARE RESOURCES

AND WIDEN DOMESTIC POLITICAL SPACE

Our interviews provided a number of references to financial and material supportfrom Northern NGOs being used to supplement the meagre funds of NGOs inthe South where lower per capita incomes and weak financial systems limit localfund-raising potential. Sometimes this allowed Southern NGOs to intensify theirlocal campaigning by using documentation supplied by Northern partners(Hadraku and Zelter 1994). Alternatively, it allowed them to participate in overseasmeetings such as those associated with CAN (Blacker 1994). More indirectmethods of boosting the finances of Southern NGOs come where Northernpartners facilitate increased sales of publications produced for example by SAM andrelated organisations in Penang, Malaysia. More intangible assistance comes in theform of moral support: as one person put it, ‘collaboration helps us to feel less aloneand we know that other people are at least listening to us’ (Maezawa 1993).

Despite the apparent benefits of foreign financial support, most of the NGOswere reluctant to divulge too much information because of the risk that Southerngovernments would identify global collaboration as outside ‘interference’ innational affairs. This justification has been noted by others writing about the


harassment of NGOs in Sri Lanka, China and Brazil because of their foreign funding(Hinchberger 1993:51; Hurrell 1992:422). We also heard in Malaysia and Indonesiathat being too closely associated with Northern NGOs has often been used as anexcuse to limit NGO participation in policy making. Even more serious, duringthe government crackdown on all civil society groups in Malaysia during 1987,was the imprisonment of environmentalists accused of being agents of foreigninterests because of their association with global campaigns on the forests of Sarawak(Means 1991:194).

Accepting resources from abroad can, then, reduce the influence of SouthernNGOs because of the external reaction by those in power, and equally it can affectthe internal dynamics of the NGO partnership. Where a Southern NGO isdependent on funding from Northern partners this can lead to an unwillingness tochallenge the campaign emphasis coming from the North because this would puttheir funding at risk. At best this might make the global campaign inappropriate tothe South and at worst it could make it counterproductive if the emphasis on landrights, for example, has to be sacrificed for a broader stance on global warming. Insome ways this latter danger then makes local support-mobilisation even moredifficult in the South because the global campaign is too distant from local problems.

Additional information resources flowing from Northern NGOs are at one levelvery important to the work of partners in the South. Generally, better access toscientific knowledge through collaboration can raise the status and credibility ofSouthern NGOs when they have contact with policy makers whose own expertisemay well be less than adequate. This seems to have been important in allowingsome NGOs more access to domestic discussions in preparations for UNCED atRio, when collaboration made them much more aware of global issues than manybureaucrats who were drafting papers for politicians. Just as interesting werecomments that information from Northern partners about the position taken bytheir own governments at various global fora allowed NGOs in Asia to find outmore than they could have done at home! Similarly, when campaigning againstNorthern MNCs, the work of NGOs in the South is made more effective wherethey can use examples of environmental damage inflicted by such companieselsewhere in the world. In a related way, information from Northern partners cancompensate for the inability of NGOs in the South to know whom, for instance,in MDBs to target most effectively in their campaigns.

Once again, though, our interviews highlighted problems in realising thepotential of information flows. Every single NGO—North and South—mentioned the huge effort involved in trying to assimilate messages coming bypost, fax or, if they possess the equipment, on electronic bulletin boards. Whenexperience, cultures and languages are so spatially diverse, the opportunity cost ofemploying specialist staff to verify incoming information flows means, to poorlyfinanced NGOs in the South, reducing the staff available to organise actualcampaigns. As one very experienced global campaigner put it, ‘Northern NGOsappear very glib about the power and potential of IT and e-mail, when in fact itsuse is terrifyingly ad hoc’ (Colchester 1993).


Failing to understand just how difficult it is for Southern NGOs to accessinformation coming in a different language was another reason why the Austrianlabelling campaign failed to produce the coordinated response expected. Theintricate details of the campaign were complex—‘far too technical for us to havetime to absorb’, was the verdict of an NGO in the UK (Hadraku and Zelter 1994).More significantly, information about the campaign was transmitted to NGOs inMalaysia and Indonesia in a manner that appeared to leave no room for criticalcomment. The contact then appeared to be merely telling the South what washappening rather than empowering NGOs to be full members of the campaign.

Improving the techniques and quantity of information that flows between NGOsis certainly a factor in translating collaboration into enhanced influence on policymaking. But by itself the ability to transmit information will not have the desiredresult if reciprocal empowerment is not embedded (Lipschutz 1992:412). This helpsto explain why collaboration is not universally related to increasing the influenceof NGOs on environmental policy making.

3.5NGO COLLABORATION TO OPEN UP GLOBAL

POLITICAL SPACE

Where information flows in the opposite direction, it is very clear that having accessto the Northern media provides NGOs in Malaysia and Indonesia with anopportunity to circumvent domestic media restrictions. The global campaignsaround the plight of forest peoples in Sarawak, for example, raised the issue ofdeforestation in a way which forced the local state to at least address local NGOcampaigns (Ngidang 1993). A similar transmission of information allowedNorthern NGOs to use their own media in targeting the First Boston Bank in theUS as part of the campaign opposing Indorayon’s pulp factory in North Sumatra.Similarly, potential City of London investors in the flotation of shares by the BaritoPacific logging company were also targeted (Potter 1996).

However, many NGOs in Asia did point out to us that there are uncertaintiesin such campaigns, principally because they have little control over how thatinformation is used in the North. If the form of collaboration does not includealliance-style reciprocity, a more unilateral Northern campaign can have negativeconsequences for NGOs in the South. So, instead of sharing credit in a well-coordinated campaign, Southern NGOs are forced to share blame bestowed bytheir governments for a poorly coordinated one. Prompted by global publicityabout Sarawak, a direct action initiative by Earth First! in Malaysia during 1992weakened the position of local NGOs working on tropical forestry who wereascribed guilt by association. Such uncoordinated Northern initiatives have beenused by government as the pretext for criminalising the activities of SouthernNGOs. Collaboration can improve the quality of information to Northern NGOs,but the unpredictability of its use can make the impact on the influence of NGOsin the South equally unpredictable.


In addition to better access to the global media, Southern NGOs can also useNorthern partners to facilitate their participation in global political processes. I havereferred earlier to examples of collaboration improving access to the World Bankfor NGOs campaigning on Brazilian deforestation, and Indonesia offers similarexamples. Where deforestation projects are financed through multilateral banks orconsortia of Northern governments, the ability to collaborate with NGOs whosebase is in the North seems to increase the influence of Southern NGOs beyondthe normal constraints of their domestic political system. Similarly, the work of USNGOs around human rights conditionality on US trade and investment opens upa target of influence at the US Congress which again can be a substitute for thelack of political space inside Indonesia (Colchester 1987). Such possibilities aremuch more difficult for Malaysian NGOs because forestry projects are more oftenfinanced locally or are the product of closed bilateral deals with Japan. In additionthe main global forum where Malaysian policies can be challenged is theInternational Timber Trade Organisation (ITTO) where it has been much moredifficult to break the hegemony of tropical timber producing governments(Humphreys 1995). Nevertheless as a route to less constrained policy targets,collaboration means for Southern NGOs ‘activating allies with substantial politicalresources’ (Klandermans 1990:127). In so doing, NGOs in the South attempt totake advantage of the relatively more secure civil society status of their NorthernNGO partners.

Despite the potential advantages of global collaboration, past experience hasmeant that Southern NGOs have become circumspect about ‘going global’.Sometimes this reticence is connected to fear of losing control of campaigns toNorthern partners who, for reasons related to their own image amongst theirmembership, may stress different aspects of the environmental issue. Arnt, writingabout Brazil, accused US NGOs of taking control of campaigns to the exclusionof local NGOs in a wave of so-called ‘green imperialism’ (1992). I recorded similarfeelings amongst small NGOs in Sarawak who also believe that, once the forestissue became global through collaboration, they were marginalised. Thismarginalisation then diminished their influence, not least because they wereassociated with campaigns that prioritised the plight of one group of huntergatherers, the Penan, to the exclusion of the 37 other ethnic groups affected bylogging.

Similar divisions of emphasis between NGO partners emerge over whetherforest campaigns should centre on preservation, conservation, land rights, equityor climate change, as the divisions between Northern and Southern NGOs atUNCED illustrated. Quite apart from feeling as though they were treated as second-class participants at Rio, some Malaysian NGOs felt that Northern NGOs weremore interested in positions which would improve their own fund-raising capacitythan in the real problems facing people in the South. What seems at issue here isthat collaboration may well open up political space for Southern NGOs in globalfora, but this space may be conditional on them following an agenda set byNorthern NGOs.


Having made such criticisms, however, there are NGOs who feel that their owntenuous existence has been preserved by being part of a global network. Ratherthan emphasising the importance of NGO collaboration for more influence onpolicy makers, people at SKEPHI in Indonesia seem to rely on the support of globalfriends to prevent even more harassment than they currently suffer. Similarimpressions of the impact of global support networks in guarding what littledomestic political space NGOs have exist also in Malaysia (Stesser 1991).

But there are potential difficulties where highly visible NGOs in the South aresingled out for ‘protection’ by Northern partners. First, this may also single themout to their own government’s security services for infiltration, telephone tappingand state surveillance because of their public connection with foreign NGOs.Secondly, the work of smaller less well-known NGOs can be ignored by NGOsin the North who almost assume without question that a famous NGO is in somesense a leader of the national network in that country. As a national force, then, itis arguable that Malaysian NGOs campaigning about forests in Sarawak haveexperienced diminishing influence because of internal divisions over the leadershipof SAM whose global presence is so much more dominant.

3.6REACTIONS TO NGO COLLABORATION FROM

POLICY-MAKING NETWORKS

In certain respects—and undoubtedly an unintended consequence—the veryglobal visibility of the forest campaigns in Sarawak has served to diminish NGOinfluence in that state because the global campaigns galvanised opponents into amore effective defence of logging. International publicity exposed the Malaysianand Sarawak governments to ridicule and ‘with such a loss of face…[their]…reaction was to salvage pride through defiance’ (Rubeli 1989:52). Using thebackdrop of environmental colonialism, policy-making insiders put together acounter-movement to the NGOs based on the sovereign right to resource-basedeconomic growth. Having much more power and many more resources, theFederal government was able to resolve its differences with the local Sarawak eliteand establish a timber industry organisation to counter NGO campaigns both insideMalaysia and, more especially, in the global arena (Porter and Brown 1991: 102;Banuri 1993:56; Paper 5 in this volume). In the process they skilfully exposed theAchilles’ heel of NGOs, the fact that they are neither representative nor electorallymandated, which in turn undermined the participation of NGOs even in informalpolicy making. In regional terms this more concerted reaction to NGOcampaigning actually led in 1990 to an ad hoc coalition between ASEANgovernments designed to undermine Northern campaigns to restrict trade intropical timber (Lee 1990: 45–6).

Thinking specifically about Sarawak, policy makers were able to use their moresubstantial political resources to diminish substantially the influence of local NGOs.It is true that global collaboration between NGOs exposed the consequences of


Sarawak forest policies to a much wider public audience, but the way suchcollaboration was managed by Northern NGOs paid too little attention to thepower and integration of local political elites. In many ways this reflects an all toohasty assumption that the power of the nation-state has been reduced by theappearance of global institutions, a global polity or global civil society. Theexperience of NGOs in both Malaysia and Indonesia shows just how misplacedthis assumption is, and how much more sensitive Northern NGO partners mustbe to political constraints in the South (Eccleston and Potter 1996).

Partly as a result of negative reactions to previous collaborative campaigns, thereare signs of Northern NGOs becoming more reflective about the way theircampaigns affect partners in the South. Certainly there is some appreciation of thevery personal risks taken by people who continue to work on environmentalcampaigns in places like Malaysia or Indonesia. Signs that this may be affecting theprocess of collaboration were evident for instance in the Kuala Lumpur meetingof WWF National Organisations in 1993 that attempted to establish ground ruleswhich could signal more of an alliance than a network. In one sense then adverseexperience with previous forms of collaboration may, as Klandermans suggests,solidify NGO networks in the longer term (1990:128).

On the other side of the divide there are also indications that policy-makingnetworks in Malaysia, and to a limited extent in Indonesia, may not be as unitedas they appear. Many NGOs operating in these countries are aware of, and use,divisions between bureaucrats by forging closer relations with officials especially inenvironment agencies. Exogenous factors have assisted this process as theenvironmental degradation of everyday life in Kuala Lumpur or Jakarta underminesconfidence in econocentric development strategies. UNCED at Rio also helpedto bring NGOs and government closer together as we can gather from the post-Rio conference in Malaysia where Dr Mahathir told the NGOs ‘you are no longerour enemies’. Thereafter new bargaining institutions emerged that provided morepolitical space for NGOs to participate in policy formulation or simply, in the caseof Indonesia, on occasion to supply expertise on environmental issues. NGOs inthese countries are also adept at exploiting public differences that arise between,say, federal government and local states in Malaysia, or the military and civilianpoliticians in Indonesia.

Some of these positive signs are related to the position local NGOs hold in globalcollaboration systems which carry with them additional resources of expertise. ButI stress that Northern NGOs have to be aware of the national context within whichSouthern partners operate before they choose to campaign on Southern issues.

New bargaining institutions have emerged in the South since Rio, but theparticipation of local NGOs is often made contingent on them distancingthemselves from Northern NGOs whose priorities are represented by Southerngovernments as serving only Northern needs. Even where new institutions ofparticipation do emerge, the benefits to NGOs of getting closer to policy makersmay have costs in terms of being incorporated into government agendas. In additionthere is the related question of relative power within national bureaucracies as


between environmental and other agencies whose priority lies with the economy.For example, 1993 saw a revival of the Bakun Dam project in Sarawak whichinvolves clearing 695 square kilometres of forest to make way for the biggestreservoir in South-East Asia. Despite support from environmental bureaucrats,NGOs have been excluded from the policy network that is driving this project andhave had enormous difficulty even in pressing for the public release of the project’senvironmental impact assessment. To make campaigns even more difficult, theBakun project is being privately financed from Malaysian sources which neutralisesNGO leverage on public sector targets or on overseas donors (Eccleston 1995).

3.7CONCLUSION: CHOICES ABOUT FUTURE NGO

COLLABORATION

The wealth of evidence produced by our research shows very clearly how uncertainare the outcomes of international collaboration between NGOs. Even though it isdifficult to imagine NGOs wishing to campaign entirely in isolation from oneanother, their previous collaborative experience makes them acutely aware of theneed to choose carefully between different forms of collaboration. Such choicesinvolve assessing the possibility of securing additional political opportunities at thecost of committing already scarce resources. It may well be that internationalcontacts can add material support for their campaigns, but the effort involved inmanaging the structures of collaboration inevitably diverts staff time from theirlocal activities. Equally important is the uncertainty over how existing policy-making networks will react to more overt contacts with overseas NGOs.

Part of the unpredictability associated with collaboration is related to theunrealistic representation of the environmental movement, and its constituentNGOs, as a homogeneous collective bound together by a common bond ofhumanity. Our own research has signalled differences between NGOs along aNorth-South dimension, others have identified differences within the North (Diani1990), while our own research has yielded evidence of tensions and jealousieswithin the South. As a group, NGOs are therefore no different from other politicalinterests which are divided in terms of basic missions, strategies and tactics, all ofwhich makes the management of their collaborative ventures so time-consuming.

Joint campaigning involves elements of competition over who leads, whosename or logo takes priority, whose membership sees most visibility from their ownorganisation, all of which has an impact on the subsequent recruitment of newmembers or the retention of existing ones. ‘Turf wars’ between NGOs are beingmore publicly acknowledged (Colchester 1993), and past experience is a crucialvariable not just for the choice of NGO partners but also for the ground rules forthe particular form of collaboration. The ability to have more control overinternational connections means that Southern NGOs are now prioritising allianceswith other NGOs who have explicitly agreed missions confirmed by the experienceof working with specific individuals. These priorities, though, while making


internal management more predictable, do limit the scope of potential partners andmay mean collaborating with NGOs who do not have as much leverage in theNorth. The dilemma here lies in balancing the need for better internal controlagainst a potentially weaker global impact.

Ultimately the objective of NGOs is to open up more opportunities to influencepolicy makers, and some consider international connections to be vital given theirweak position in their own domestic political context. SAM in Malaysia feels thatdespite the damage that global collaboration has done in the past, the risk may beworth taking (Chee 1993). In contrast, MNS has informal rules that, if aninternational dimension is used at all, it should be confidential and involve onlyindividuals with personal conservation experience of Malaysia (Rubeli 1989:40;Salleh 1993). Both cases begin with a recognition of the relatively weak positionof NGOs in their domestic context but they differ in their evaluation of howdominant policy-making interests will react to the involvement of foreign NGOs.Similarly, in Indonesia SKEPHI seems determined to maintain some internationallinks with specific partners whereas WALHI is more pragmatic. SKEPHIapparently feels that international collaboration is one reason why the governmentdoes not close them down. WALHI on the other hand is more concerned thatinternationalising a campaign might solidify the policy-making network andconstrain their opportunities to exploit differences within that network.

Choices in these examples are based on differing perceptions of the current rangeof political opportunities and evaluations of what might happen in the future ifinternational collaboration is invoked. Opportunities may be widened if externaldonors in the North can be more effectively involved to encourage changes inforest policies. But opportunities may be restricted if, as in the case of Malaysia,the role of external donors is much less significant and a forceful national elite reactsnegatively to what they represent as outside interference. This is not to say thatelites in Indonesia, for example, do not react in a similarly negative fashion, butrather that the possibility of leverage through external donors may make an NGOmore likely to risk a more explicit international campaign.

One conclusion suggested by the comparison between Malaysia and Indonesiais that the possibility of external leverage through Northern donors wouldencourage NGOs in the South to persevere with international partnerships despitethe domestic political uncertainties. On the whole, the absence of external leverageopportunities in campaigns to preserve Sarawak’s forests in particular would helpto explain why Malaysian NGOs appear more circumspect about the politicalopportunities offered by international collaboration. Even with more internationalcampaigning, the experience of Indonesia, like Brazil (Hurrell 1992), raises thequestion of whether external leverage by donors can actually deliver enoughemphasis to the concerns of local forest peoples. In choosing whether to continuewith collaborative ventures, Southern NGOs are more mindful of the reactions ofelite political networks in their own nation state than vague promises about thevalue of support from a global civil society or, what Wapner calls, the new era ofworld civic politics (1995).


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research for this paper was funded mainly by the UK Economic and SocialResearch Council under its Global Environmental Change Initiative, and partlyby the Open University. I am grateful to both institutions for their support.

This paper is based partly on a series of interviews conducted between 1993 and1995 with NGOs and academic researchers in Asia and the UK. I am grateful forthe cooperation of the following Malaysian NGOs: EPSM, MNS and WWFMalaysia in Kuala Lumpur; SAM in Penang. Frank Yong, a researcher at ISIS KualaLumpur, also gave me the benefit of his experience as an observer of the NGOscene.

Unfortunately no government officials responded to my interview requests. Theonly reply I ever received was from Professor Bruenig at the Forest DepartmentSarawak who said that in view of ‘the recent limelight, people here feel that visitsand interviews are becoming too much of a burden’ (Fax communication 21 June1994). Therefore, for official views, I have had to rely on secondary sources.

The responses of NGOs in Indonesia are based on my reactions to the interviewnotes provided by David Potter from his meetings with campaigners at SKEPHI,WALHI, WIM, Konphalindo and LBH.

In Japan, a number of NGOs campaign on South-East Asian forests at a distanceand my thanks are due to FoE Japan, WWF Japan, JACSES, JATAN and the SCC.

UK interviews given to me and my colleague Annie Taylor by the followingpeople were invaluable: Marcus Colchester at WRM, Simon Counsell FoE UK,Francis Sullivan WWF UK, James Lochhead EICMAS and Tigger Hadraku andAngie Zelter, Coordinators of the UK Forests Network.

None of these people or their organisations are in any way responsible for theway I have interpreted their notes, ideas and suggestions.

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4Regime Theory and Non-Governmental

Organisations: The Case of ForestConservation

DAVID HUMPHREYS

In order fully to comprehend the roles of NGOs an understanding of theinternational political context in which they operate is necessary. It is anappreciation of this context with respect to forest conservation that this paper aimsto provide. The paper also provides a critique of regime theory. Contemporaryregime theory has principally a statecentric focus and the role of NGOs has, forthe most part, been neglected. This, it will be argued, is an omission that requiresrectification for three reasons. Firstly, even if it is accepted that states should remainthe principal focus for regime theorists, attention should be paid to how NGOadvocacy work may encourage states to undergo normatively based behaviouralshifts thus inducing them to help create or join a regime or, alternatively, to blockthe creation of or refrain from joining a regime. Secondly, it will be argued thatin the ‘environmental age’ states cannot act in isolation from national andinternational civil society if they are to ensure the maintenance of environmentalquality; the cooperation and participation of NGOs is also essential. Thirdly, it willbe argued that the regime theorist should also consider regimes that are purely non-governmental in nature.

The paper first provides a brief summary of contemporary regime theoryliterature. Attention is then paid to some of the functions that NGOs haveperformed in international forest politics. Finally it is argued that regime theoryshould broaden its range of enquiry to include NGOs and other non-governmentalactors.

4.1REGIME THEORY

Ruggie was the first international relations scholar to use the term ‘internationalregime’. In 1975 he defined a regime as ‘a set of mutual expectations, rules andregulations, plans, organisational energies and financial commitments, which havebeen accepted by a group of states’ (1975:570). However, the most frequently cited

David Humphreys is Research Fellow, Faculty of Social Sciences, the OpenUniversity.

regime definition is that regimes are ‘sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms,rules and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations convergein a given area of international relations’ (Krasner 1983:2). This is a consensusdefinition agreed upon by the contributors to a special edition of InternationalOrganization edited by Stephen Krasner in 1982. Despite definitional consensus,there is no single coherent regime theory, and the available literature on the subjectis best seen as a set of analyses that seeks to explain how and why norm-governedinternational cooperation emerges. For the purposes of this paper, these analysescan be divided into three headings: power-based theories; interest-based theories;and cognitive theories. Insufficient space exists here for other than a veryrudimentary coverage of the literature.

Power-based explanations focus on the economic capabilities of state actors andsee regimes reflecting existing power structures in the international system. Theclassic such formulation is Keohane’s notion of hegemony, defined as apreponderance of resources, namely ‘raw materials, control over sources of capital,control over markets and competitive advantages in the production of highly valuedgoods’ (1984:32). Keohane argues that a hegemonic power may act as a politicalentrepreneur and supply a regime if it estimates that the anticipated gains willexceed the costs of supplying the regime (1983:155). Webb and Krasner (1989)have found that empirical data is not consistent with the hegemonic stability thesis,and it is now widely accepted that the entrepreneurial role of supplying a regimeneed not necessarily be filled by a hegemon. Snidal (1985) has argued that collectiveleadership by smaller states may also fill an entrepreneurial role, a point thatKeohane later acknowledged (1993:34).

Litfin (1993:99) has argued that there is no hegemonic power for environmentalissues, although many analysts would argue that the US remains a hegemon forglobal security and global economic issues. Peter Haas has introduced the notionof issue-specific hegemony whereby a state may exercise power on one issue,although not necessarily on others (Haas 1993a:165). However, there is noevidence of an issue-specific hegemon for the issue of forest conservation. Whilethere are some very important forested countries, such as Brazil and Zaire, both ofwhich would undoubtedly be important members of a global forests conservationregime, neither of these countries has the power to supply a global regime to theinternational community. However, although there is no overall hegemon or issue-specific hegemon, power-based factors are a central part of any properunderstanding of global forest politics. The countries of the South possess animportant economic capability, namely tropical forests, from which they produce,either directly (for example, tropical timber) or indirectly (for example, carbonsinks), goods demanded by international society. The possession of such capabilitieseffectively empowers the governments of important tropical forest countries toblock the creation of a global forests conservation regime by joining a vetocoalition. A veto coalition is a group of states whose cooperation is necessary foragreement on a particular issue, and which has the power to block regime creationif it so chooses (Porter and Brown 1991:70). Meanwhile the North has control

86 REGIME THEORY AND NGOS

over international markets and a comparative advantage in international trade andconsequently the North has the economic power to agree to or, alternatively, toveto the demands that the South has linked to the forests issue, such as financialand technology transfers.

Interest-based theories focus on the institutional bargaining stage of regimecreation, and in particular on the relative costs and gains that may accrue to stateactors. Actors will have an incentive to cooperate if they predict that regimeparticipation will result in mutual gains for all concerned. Osherenko and Youngdistinguish between two types of bargaining in regime creation, namely integrativeand distributive bargaining, although bargaining is ‘seldom wholly integrative ordistributive, but rather constitutes a hybrid involving both types’ (Young 1989a:238). With distributive bargaining, issues are defined in jurisdictional terms, that isactors seek to demarcate geographical or functional boundaries within whichauthority may be exercised (Young 1989a:176–7). Distributive bargaining occurswhere an actor concentrates on devising tactics to procure the best possibleoutcome for itself, whereas integrative bargaining seeks to develop ‘newopportunities for mutually beneficial relationships’ (Young 1989a:178) and where‘a search for mutually beneficial solutions assumes a prominent place in the[bargaining] process’ (Osherenko and Young 1993:13). However, and asOsherenko and Young note (1989:264), bargaining is a mixed-motive activity, andeven when actors engage in a search for mutually beneficial provisions, they maystill seek to maximise relative gains.

Cognitive theories of regime creation focus on the role of consensual knowledgein determining actors’ perceptions and belief structures. To Ernst Haas, a ‘claim toknowledge becomes consensual whenever it succeeds in dominating the policy-making process’ (1980:370). Peter Haas has drawn attention to the role in regimecreation of epistemic communities defined as ‘Transnational networks ofknowledge-based communities that are politically empowered through their claimsto exercise authoritative knowledge and motivated by shared causal and principledbeliefs’ (1990: 349). Haas emphasises that epistemic communities are a new formof international cooperation. They are not composed of individuals from a singleorganisation, or even a single type of organisation. An epistemic community canbe seen as an invisible transnational knowledge-based college, the membership ofwhich is drawn from, and cuts across, a large variety of organisations and institutionsworld wide. Epistemic communities contributed to the formation of regimes forthe protection of the Mediterranean sea (Haas 1989) and of the ozone layer (Haas1990).

What is the application of the regime concept with respect to forestconservation? An international regime may be said to have come into existencewhen a group of actors adheres to a commonly accepted norm which subsequentlyshapes and defines actor behaviour with respect to the issue or issues in question.Here it is necessary to note that regimes may be issue-specific or they may be issue-dense. For example, the newly created World Trade Organisation (WTO) shouldbe seen as an issue-dense regime dealing with a multitude of trade and trade-related


issues, although this does not preclude the negotiation of issue-specific regimesnested within the framework of the WTO. Adopting the distinction between issue-specific and issue-dense regimes, it is possible to distinguish between two possibleapplications of the regime concept with respect to forest conservation. Firstly, theterm may be applied to a global forests conservation regime where actors adhereto norm-governed behaviour with respect to all the issues necessary to ensure that,world wide, there is no net loss of forest cover. The second possible application ofthe regime concept to forest conservation is more issue-specific; regime theorymay be applied to norm-governed forms of governance that address some, but notall, of the issues that may be expected to be encompassed within a global forestsconservation regime.

In the next sections consideration is given to NGO influence in fourinternational processes. The first is the Tropical Forestry Action Programme(TFAP). Donnelly would see the TFAP as a weak declaratory regime for tropicalforest conservation as it has issued international guidelines (Food and AgricultureOrganisation 1991), but the interpretation of the guidelines takes place at thenational level of tropical forest countries (Donnelly 1986: 603). Secondly, weconsider the International Tropical Timber Organisation which may also be seenas a weak declaratory regime as, like the TFAP, it has issued international guidelines(International Tropical Timber Organisation 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993), but onceagain interpretation of the guidelines takes place at the national level. The ITTOalso seeks to ensure that the trade in internationally traded tropical timber will comefrom sustainable sources by the year 2000. Thirdly, we consider the forestnegotiations that took place prior to the United Nations Conference onEnvironment and Development (UNCED). These negotiations may be seen as afailed attempt to conclude a global forests convention. Here it is necessary toemphasise that a convention should not be equated with a regime (Keohane 1993:28), although the former may provide a framework within which the latter mayemerge. At present there is neither a global forests convention nor a global forestsconservation regime, although the TFAP and the ITTO may be seen as regimesthat address some of the issues that a global forests conservation regime may beexpected to address. Finally we consider the negotiation of the InternationalTropical Timber Agreement, 1994. These negotiations saw governmentdelegations from the developing South seek unsuccessfully to broaden the scopeof the ITTO so as to deal with non-tropical timbers.

4.2NGOS AND THE TROPICAL FORESTRY ACTION

PROGRAMME

There are two roots to the Tropical Forestry Action Programme (known as theTropical Forestry Action Plan until 1990). The first originates within the UN’sFood and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). In October 1985 the FAO publishedthe Tropical Forestry Action Plan (Food and Agriculture Organisation 1985) which


elaborated five action programmes designed to halt deforestation in the tropics.1

In the same month the World Resources Institute (WRI), a Washington-basedNGO, published the report of a taskforce convened the previous year. EntitledTropical Forests: A Call for Action (World Resources Institute et al. 1985), the reporthad adopted the FAO’s five action programmes as its guiding framework. Therewas thus a conceptual linkage between what were then two separate, butcomplementary, initiatives. The two processes formally came together at a meetingin Bellagio, Italy, in 1987 when the TFAP was relaunched with four co-founders,namely the FAO, WRI, the World Bank and the United Nations DevelopmentProgramme (UNDP).

The fact that an influential and respected international NGO played a prominentrole in formulating the TFAP subsequently affected the direction the initiative tookwith respect to the participation of other NGOs, especially those at the nationaland local levels. The WRI views forestry management as a process that should bedriven by local peoples rather than by international agencies, and it has persistentlypromoted the participation of local NGOs in national forestry programmes(Hazelwood 1987, Lynch 1990, Cort 1991). At WRI’s insistence the Bellagiomeeting emphasised the importance of NGOs to the TFAP process, and an updatedversion of Tropical Forestry Action Plan published in 1987 stressed that

Local communities must be involved in managing and utilising the forests,and be convinced that this is in their interests. In this respect NGOs, workingat the grass roots level, have an important role to play (Food and AgricultureOrganisation et al. 1987:3)

Some prominent international NGOs and NGO networks had been invited to theBellagio meeting, and a joint NGO statement made at the meeting noted that‘NGOs are prepared, and express their strong desire, to participate fully in theTropical Forestry Action Plan. We demand equal responsibility and participationin all stages of implementation’ (NGO Statement at Bellagio Strategy Meeting1987). The WRI has lobbied hard since for increased local NGO participation inNational Forestry Action Programmes (NFAPs) drawn up under the auspices ofthe TFAP. To name just one example, in 1990 the WRI criticised the IndonesianNFAP on two counts: firstly the NFAP was oriented towards the timber industry;and secondly Indonesian NGOs were excluded from the NFAP planning process.Noting these problems the WRI launched a strategy to improve Indonesian NGOcoordination and to ‘strengthen the NGO position through a combined andsystematic research effort utilising the strengths of both grassroots and internationalNGOs’ (World Resources Institute 1990).

In 1990 the TFAP as an international initiative experienced severe difficulties.For example, the WRI and the World Rainforest Movement noted that the TFAPhad been unsuccessful in slowing deforestation rates as it had failed to tackle thecauses of deforestation which invariably lie outside the forest. They further notedthat the views of local communities and indigenous peoples had not been


successfully integrated into the NFAP planning and implementation process(Colchester and Lohmann 1990; Winterbottom 1990). This led to an ebbing ofdonor support, including the suspending of funding for TFAP activities by twoprominent international NGOs. In October 1990 the World Wide Fund forNature (WWF) announced that it would not fund future TFAP activities untilsuch time as the TFAP was reformed to yield a greater emphasis on conservationand local NGO participation (World Wide Fund for Nature 1990a). The secondNGO to suspend funding was the WRI which in April 1991 announced that itwould cease making further financial contributions to the TFAP. The WRI alsocalled for the establishment of an independent consultative group to includerepresentation from all parties concerned with the future of tropical forests,including local communities’ and indigenous peoples’ NGOs (Winterbottom 1990:27, World Resources Institute 1991).

The possibility of establishing an independent consultative group wasinvestigated at length by the FAO. At the time of writing (July 1995) the grouphas yet to meet, indeed it is far from clear that it will do so. However, in the eventthat it does, delegates to FAO have decided that it will not be an independentpolity, as called for by the WRI, but will instead be an intergovernmental forumestablished within the FAO bureaucracy. The reason for this is that many tropicalforest countries, in particular Indonesia and Malaysia, expressed concern that thesovereignty of states over their natural resources would be compromised if anindependent consultative group were to grant voting rights to NGOs (Food andAgriculture Organisation 1992:17).

The history of TFAP illustrates that NGOs and other non-state actors—in thiscase the FAO, WRI, World Bank and UNDP—may assume an entrepreneurialrole in supplying a regime. NGOs may also assume an agenda formation role;although the initiative was not adopted in its original form, the idea of anindependent consultative group was first placed on the TFAP agenda by the WRI.Overall, NGO participation has been recognised as important and necessary by theFAO, government donors and some tropical-forest governments. The role ofNGOs was one of the themes of the Tenth World Forestry Congress which wasco-sponsored by the FAO and the Government of France in 1991. The AssistantDirector General of FAO’s Forestry Department noted at the Congress that ‘NGOshave demonstrated the contribution they can make to…forestry development,particularly in relation to TFAP’ (Murray 1991:223). Ralph Roberts, then theChairman of the Forestry Advisers Group, a semi-formal assemblage of forestryexperts which has established close relations with the TFAP, stated that theparticipation of NGOs is ‘essential’ to the TFAP process (Roberts 1991: 326).These remarks found favour with Jeffrey Sayer, then of the IUCN (InternationalUnion for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, now known as theWorld Conservation Union), who observed that NGOs’

impact extends from championing the cause of special or local interests tobeing major vehicles for the delivery of development assistance and


influential participants in the formation of forest policy at the national andinternational level. Their importance has been exemplified…by the role theyhave played both in developing the Tropical Forestry Action Plan and inexposing some of its weaknesses. (Sayer 1991:315)

4.3NGOS AND THE INTERNATIONAL TROPICAL

TIMBER ORGANISATION

NGOs have also proved significant in the International Tropical TimberOrganisation (ITTO) which was created following the negotiations, hosted by theUnited Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), of theInternational Tropical Timber Agreement, 1983 in Geneva. An IUCNintervention in the negotiations had an important effect on the content ofthe agreement. The IUCN emphasised the importance of conservation and stressedthat an international tropical timber agreement could play a role ‘in alleviating thedepletion of natural tropical forest resources’ (United Nations 1982:8). Followingthe IUCN intervention, delegates agreed that the International Tropical TimberOrganisation ‘should give due regard to ecological and other considerations for theeffective conservation and development of tropical timber resources’ (UnitedNations 1982:8). Subsequently the International Tropical Timber Agreement,1983 contained a clause to the effect that it aimed to encourage ‘sustainableutilisation and conservation of tropical forests and their genetic resources’ (UnitedNations 1983:8), making it the first UNCTAD-sponsored commodity agreementto contain a conservation clause. Eight years later the IUCN again exercisedinfluence on the ITTO when it was hired as a consultant to prepare the first draftof the ITTO’s Guidelines for the Conservation of Biodiversity in Tropical ProductionForests (ITTO 1991:3–4).

Representatives from NGOs and timber trading companies are granted observerstatus at sessions of the International Tropical Timber Council, the ITTO’s highestdecision-making organ. In addition, they may also be granted a place on individualnational delegations. For example, the WWF has served on the national delegationsof the UK, Malaysia and Denmark, while a representative from IUCN-NL hasserved on the delegation from the Netherlands. NGOs have sought, with varyingdegrees of success, to influence the ITTO’s agenda. The idea of a labelling systemto promote the international trade of sustainably produced timber was first placedon the ITTO’s agenda in 1989 by the British delegation following a proposal byFriends of the Earth (ITTO 1989). This proposal was blocked following objectionsby Malaysia and Indonesia (Colchester 1990:169). As will be seen below, the failureof the ITTO to take action on the labelling issue has led some NGOs to promotetheir own scheme outside the ITTO.


4.4NGOS AND THE UNCED FOREST NEGOTIATIONS

Certain governments from the North, in particular the group of seven developedcountries (G 7), had advocated that a global forests convention (GFC) should beopened for signature at Rio in June 1992 to complement the conventions onclimate change and biodiversity. The FAO also supported the negotiation of aGFC. Such demands were strenuously resisted by the group of 77 developingcountries (G 77) which feared that a GFC could serve as a mechanism for Northerncontrol over the South’s tropical forests. At PrepCom 2, the second preparatorycommittee meeting of the UNCED process (18 March-5 April 1991), delegatesagreed that there would be no legally binding GFC, although a non-legallybinding statement of forest principles should be completed by the end of theUNCED. This agreement represented the lowest common denominator betweenthose who wanted a convention (the North) and those who did not (the South).While the statement of forest principles agreed upon in Rio is ambiguously wordedin places, it is significant in that it represents the first global consensus betweengovernments of North and South on the forests issue,

Realising the salience of the issue to Northern governments, the G 77 pressedthroughout the UNCED forests debate for financial and technology transfers fromthe North to assist them in forest conservation. The forests issue was one whereNorth and South established little common ground with the result that the politicalspace within which NGOs could operate, especially towards the end of thenegotiations, was severely restricted (Humphreys: 1993). Nonetheless NGOsforwarded their views vigorously throughout the debate, and below it will beargued that they did achieve a modest level of influence.

The scale and scope of NGO activity during the UNCED process wasunprecedented. Although UN General Assembly Resolution 44/228 providedonly for the participation in the UNCED of relevant NGOs in consultative statuswith the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), UNCED PrepComDecision 1/1 (United Nations 1991a:22–3) allowed for any NGO to receiveaccreditation to the PrepComs following successful presentation of its credentials.Decision 1/1 was endorsed by the General Assembly at its 45th Session. At its 46thSession, the General Assembly agreed that all NGOs accredited by the end ofPrepCom 4 should be invited to participate as observers at the Rio conference(United Nations 1991b).

NGO activity on the forests issue, as with other issues, took the form of multipleformal, semi-formal and informal channels of communication. There is no singlechannel by which NGOs can influence either policy makers or each other, andthe result is a dynamic and dense interconnecting network, with the national andinternational levels inextricably intertwined. Despite the density of NGOnetworking, to a large degree it is possible to disentangle NGO activity as NGOsexhibit a higher level of openness and transparency than the political and economicelites they seek to influence. However, assessing the impact of NGOs is inevitably


a more difficult task. Below, brief attention will be paid to NGO activity on theforests issue in the USA, in the UK, within WWF and in the newly emergingNGOs and NGO networks in the South.

In the USA, a World Forest Agreement Working Group was established inSeptember 1990. This group included NGO representatives and US Senators andCongressmen. The group worked on the assumption that, although its preciseformat was unknown, negotiation of a global instrument on forests, which woulddeal with both tropical and non-tropical forests, would take place. According toGareth Porter of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute who establishedthe group, its purpose ‘was not to try to reach consensus but to clarify positionsand, in the process, stimulate NGO and Congressional staff positions on the issue’(Porter 1992). This group met on several occasions between September 1990 andOctober 1991.

At the same time another US NGO process, the Global Forest Working Group,initiated by Francis Spivy-Weber of the Audubon Society, was taking place. Atthat stage the Audubon Society was one of six members of a NGO network,Consortium for Action to Protect the Earth ’92 (CAPE ’92), with theEnvironmental Defense Fund, Friends of the Earth-US, the National WildlifeFederation, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club being theothers. CAPE ’92 had made an intervention at PrepCom 1 (6–31 August 1990)demanding a guarantee of land rights for indigenous and other local peoples(Barratt-Brown 1991). The Audubon Society initiative drew heavily, but notexclusively, from individuals in the CAPE ’92 network.

In October 1991 the World Forest Agreement Working Group, withoutSenators and Congressmen and now consisting solely of NGOs, joined forces withthe Global Forest Working Group to become the US Task Force on Global Forests(Porter 1992). According to the categorisation of NGO coordination methodspresented in Figure 3.1 in Paper 3 of this volume, the US Task Force on GlobalForests, like the two groups from which it was created, should be considered acoalition: the Task Force was created to run a campaign, namely to influence theUNCED forests debate; NGOs within the Task Force engaged in a division oflabour; and the limited life of the coalition was recognised. The Task Force soughtto influence US Government policy in the UNCED forests debate, to lobby at thePrepComs and to network with other NGOs.

Meanwhile in the UK, the secretariat of UNEP-UK, based at the InternationalInstitute for Environment and Development in London, gathered NGO views onall aspects of the UNCED process and summarised them in a single report. It shouldbe emphasised that the UNEP-UK report was not intended to be ‘a consensusdocument’ (Thomson 1992:1), either on forests or other issues, and the documentdid report different, occasionally conflicting, views. Much UNEP-UK NGOactivity took the form of seminars, consultations and conferences convened andorganised by a diverse range of NGOs and other organisations. According to thecategorisation of NGO coordination methods in Paper 3, this model is clearly a


network, with UNEP-UK acting as the coordinating secretariat, and with regularand active exchange of information enhanced by regular personal contacts.

Many NGOs based in the North favoured a GFC, provided that it containedcertain features. The case of WWF is interesting. In the two years prior to Rio,WWF held several meetings of its Forests Working Group, composed of WWFForest Conservation Officers working at the national level and chaired by theSenior Forest Conservation Officer of WWF International, to consider inter aliathe subject of a GFC. Throughout the UNCED process, WWF advocated a GFCif it contained recognition of the interests of forest-dwelling peoples, a centralisedmonitoring system for forests world wide, and an international programme fortracing and authenticating sustainably produced timber (World Wide Fund forNature 1991:3). Friends of the Earth also offered qualified support for a legallybinding instrument which addressed inter alia social equity considerations,community access to benefits from forest conservation, the role of TNCs and theroot causes of deforestation (Friends of the Earth 1991:4).

Meanwhile, NGOs in the developing South were also active in the UNCEDforests debate. Some Southern NGOs offered strong arguments against a GFC,most notably the Indian ecological NGO, the Centre for Science and Environment(CSE). Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain of the CSE opposed both a GFC and therole of UN agencies in forest conservation, which they claimed would disempowerlocal people and establish ‘a supercentralised system of global decision-making andgovernance’ (Agarwal and Narain 1991). The CSE pursued this line of argumentup to and including Rio.

Some disagreement therefore existed between NGOs from the developed Northand the developing South on the forests debate and indeed on other issues duringthe UNCED process. For example, the African branch of the Southern Networksfor Development (SONED) alleged that Northern NGOs had been ‘coopted’ byNorthern governments and TNCs (White 1991:1). Most Southern NGOsdisagreed with the support of some Northern NGOs for a GFC, while otherSouthern NGOs charged that Northern NGOs had a disproportionate influenceon environmental policy making in Southern countries as a result of their abilityto pressure international agencies such as the World Bank (Pearce 1992:40). IanRowlands considers that North-South tensions among governments were‘paralleled’ in the NGO community, despite the latter’s ‘best efforts to present aunited front’ (1992:217).

Towards the end of the UNCED process the divisions between NGOs in theforests debate sharpened, with two separate initiatives appearing. The first initiativeemerged at PrepCom 4 (2 March-3 April 1992). A group of 39 NGOs, chaired byBill Mankin of the Sierra Club and a member of the US Task Force on GlobalForests, circulated a rewording of the statement of forest principles according tofour key concepts: effective forest protection and expansion; indigenous peoplesto be accorded full control and legal authority over their traditional territories;participation by all relevant groups in decision making; and the adherence to basicecological and sustainable management practices (NGO Statement at PrepCom 4


of UNCED: 1992). The 39 NGOs that signed the Mankin paper were splitapproximately half each between NGOs from North and South. It is apparent thatalthough NGO disagreements on forests did emerge at Rio, and although a certainNorth-South dimension to this debate is discernible, it is not the case thatdisagreement was strictly polarised along North-South lines, as the Mankininitiative had succeeded in achieving a broad consensus between NGOs fromNorth and South. The second initiative emerged at Rio where a group of 25NGOs, led by Anil Agarwal of the CSE, circulated a statement opposing the futurenegotiation of a GFC (NGO Statement at UNCED: 1992). With just threeexceptions, all of the 26 NGOs that pledged support for the Agarwal initiative werefrom the developing South.2 The Mankin and Agarwal initiatives, each of whichEccleston in Paper 3 would see as a coalition, had different objectives. The formeraimed to insert clauses on environmental sustainability and guarantees for forest-dwelling peoples into the statement of forest principles. However, the latter wassolely concerned with the post-UNCED agenda, and attempted to use NGOinfluence to block any proviso for a post-Rio GFC. It is noticeable that with oneexception (namely the Environment Liaison Center International, Kenya), NGOsthat put their name to the Agarwal initiative did not support the Mankin initiative,and vice versa.

Those NGOs pressing for a GFC to be opened for signature at Rio wereunsuccessful in their efforts. Nonetheless, NGOs did achieve some successes ininserting points of principle into the UNCED statement of forest principles, andthere are indications that the NGO community achieved their greatest successesearly on in the forests debate. Here it is necessary to return to PrepCom 3 (12August-4 September 1991). Following the agreement at PrepCom 2 that theUNCED process should produce a non-legally binding statement of forestprinciples, the G 77 introduced to PrepCom 3 a draft proposal for such a document.The G 77’s draft was subsequently used by the UNCED Secretariat, along withother documents and comments, to produce a draft for subsequent negotiations byall delegates. Many of the clauses in the first UNCED Secretariat draft were notcontained in the G 77 draft proposal. It is noteworthy that these include clauses onthe importance of forests for ecological, cultural and spiritual human needs, theparticipation of local communities and indigenous peoples and the importance ofsecure land tenure for sustainable forest management. All of these clauses survivedthe remaining negotiations and appear, sometimes in a modified guise, in the finalstatement of forest principles agreed at Rio (United Nations: 1992).

Due to the frequently informal and invisible nature of the interactions betweenNGO representatives and government delegates, assessing the impact of NGOactivity is not an easy task. Nonetheless, it is argued here that the inclusion of theseclauses can be attributed to NGO pressure on Northern governments and on theirUNCED delegates. Such an assertion should be justified and is made on thefollowing grounds. Firstly, given that these clauses did not appear in the G 77 draftproposal, it is reasonable to assume that they were inserted into the first UNCEDSecretariat draft by Northern delegates. Secondly, the clauses are not ones that


Northern delegates, acting purely in their perceived national interests, would beexpected to insert. However, it is known that the issues contained in these clausesare sources of concern for NGOs. Furthermore, there is evidence that NGOslobbied both Northern governments and the UNCED PrepComs on theseconcerns, with some NGOs making statements to the PrepComs on the issues oflocal community participation, land reform and indigenous people’s rights.3 Hencethe conclusion here is that NGO pressure in the early PrepComs, either directlyor indirectly via Northern governments, did affect the language of the finalstatement of forest principles. However, it is necessary to note that NGOs are notan undifferentiated group of actors as, firstly, very real differences of opinionfrequently arise between them and, secondly, it is frequently the case that the largerNorthern-based NGOs achieve more influence than the smaller local peoples’groups from the South. The success that NGOs did achieve in the UNCED forestsdebate was largely the result of the lobbying of the larger established groups onissues that the majority of NGOs could easily agree upon, such as the participationof local communities and the need for security of land tenure.

Many NGOs following the UNCED forests debate advanced their concerns onthe rights of local communities and indigenous peoples throughout thenegotiations.4 However, the NGO community was unable to achieve anysignificant successes in the forests debate after PrepCom 3. With the forests issuemired in North-South disagreements there was no political space for theintroduction of innovative ideas from the NGO community. One of the figuresinvolved with the Mankin draft circulated at PrepCom 4 concedes that the NGOcommunity was unsuccessful at this stage in inserting any of its recommendationsinto the UNCED statement of forest principles (Juniper: 1992). Nor does it appearthat the Agarwal initiative influenced Southern governments which had made cleartheir opposition to language in the statement of forest principles on a future GFCprior to the circulation of the Agarwal paper. This is not to say that the Agarwalinitiative did not register with Southern government delegates at Rio, but it is tosay that there is no evidence of a causal relationship between the initiative and theposition taken by those delegates.

This section has argued that some of the clauses in the final UNCED statementof forest principles are the result of NGO pressure. Both the timescale and the typeof negotiations seem to be central determinants of NGO influence. With respectto timescale, the textual changes NGOs did succeed in winning were the result oftheir activities up to and including PrepCom 3. After PrepCom 3, NGO successesare progressively more difficult to detect. It appears that if NGOs are to exerciseinfluence in a negotiating process such as the UNCED forests debate, this is mostlikely to be achieved at an early stage in the negotiating process. With respect tothe type of negotiations, it appears that NGO influence becomes progressivelymore difficult where states are divided on their objectives. The opportunities forNGO influence are also reduced where definitions and priorities differ, bothbetween government delegations and between government delegations and NGOs.


Possibly the greatest contribution of the UNCED process with respect to NGOslies in the precedent it has set for the future. Not only will the links and networksdeveloped during the UNCED process continue to play an important role inmonitoring governmental and UN activity in the post-Rio era, but the NGOarrangements within the UNCED process are now being used as a precedent forpost-Rio NGO activity in the UN system. This precedent takes two forms. Thefirst involves the recognition that all NGOs that attended the UNCED may alsoapply to participate in subsequent environmental activity in the UN system. Aninteresting case concerns the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD)created after the UNCED. As the CSD is a functional commission of theECOSOC, all NGOs which already have Category I, II or Roster status with thelatter automatically are accredited to the former. In addition, the ECOSOC hasdecided that any NGO accredited to the UNCED could apply for and expect tobe granted Roster status for the work of the CSD. Other NGOs could also apply.Eventually a total of 552 NGOs applied for Roster status with the CSD, all ofwhich were approved by the ECOSOC in 1993. In July 1994 the rights ofparticipation for the UNCED NGOs were improved still further when the CSD’sRoster list was formally merged with the main ECOSOC list, thus increasing thenumber of ECOSOC NGOs by more than 50 per cent (Willetts 1996).

Secondly, the arrangements for NGO participation in the UNCED process havebeen referred to, at the time of writing, in six post-Rio UN General Assemblyresolutions establishing UN conferences.5 To date the precedent has been usedonly with respect to environmental, or environmental-related, UN conferences.It remains to be seen if the institutional arrangements for the UNCED will be usedas a precedent for non-environmental UN conferences.

4.5NGOS AND THE NEGOTIATION OF THE

INTERNATIONAL TROPICAL TIMBER AGREEMENT,1994

The negotiations for the International Tropical Timber Agreement 1994 (ITTA1994) were significant in that most of the NGOs that lobbied the negotiations,including WWF, Friends of the Earth, TRAFFIC International and the SierraClub, adopted a common policy line. This is not to suggest that NGOs attendingthe ITTO are to be seen as an homogenous group, nor that no disagreementsexisted between these NGOs. As Pearce has documented, disagreements havearisen both between and within NGOs inter alia over the question of whethersustainable management of tropical forests was possible (1991:187–8). However,at sessions of the ITTC NGO unity has been preserved, for the most part, withjoint positions agreed upon behind the scenes, and statements made to the ITTCby a prearranged spokesperson acceptable to all NGOs. Furthermore, the policyposition pursued by NGOs at the negotiations for the ITTA 1994 led to NGOseffectively forming a negotiating coalition with the producer caucus.


The negotiations were the first to take place on a forest-related issue since theUNCED. All NGOs that had at some stage registered for ITTC sessions werepermitted to attend the negotiations for the successor agreement, as were all NGOswith consultative status at the UN’s ECOSOC. The negotiations began with aPrepCom that ran parallel to the ITTC’s 13th session in November 1992.Consensus on the text of the new agreement was reached in January 1994 afterfour substantive negotiating sessions hosted by the UNCTAD.

During the negotiations the ITTO’s consumer caucus advocated that thesuccessor agreement, like the ITTA 1983, should deal solely with tropical timber.However, the producer caucus argued that the scope of the new agreement shouldbe expanded to include all timbers, with the producer/consumer distinctionreplaced by a developing/developed country distinction. Like the producers, mostNGOs also advocated an expansion of scope to cover all timbers. However,disillusioned with the ITTO’s poor record on conservation, the NGOs favoureda contraction of the mandate of the new agreement to deal only with trade andtrade-related issues. By the time the negotiations began, most NGOs did not viewthe ITTO as a feasible conservation mechanism and favoured instead otherinitiatives, such as the Forest Stewardship Council (see below). NGOs advocatedthat funding for ITTO timber processing and conservation projects should be scaleddown in line with the new trade-related mandate. The producers, however,favoured a broader scope, with increased funding from the developed countriesfor projects in the developing countries. Despite this not insubstantial difference,the producers and the NGOs had sufficient common ground between them toestablish what was in effect a coalition during the negotiations. Meanwhile, theconsumers received support for their position from the timber traders. Eventuallyafter four negotiating sessions, the producers conceded that the new agreementshould deal solely with tropical timber. This concession was part of a compromiseformula whereby the consumers agreed to establish a new ITTO account forprojects in producer countries (Humphreys 1994). The producers also successfullyinserted into the new agreement clauses on new and additional financial resourcesand the transfer of technology ‘including on concessional and preferential termsand conditions as mutually agreed’ (United Nations 1994:7).

4.6THE ROLE OF NGOS IN REGIME CREATION

Some scholars have recognised the role that NGOs may play in regime creationand change (Young 1989b:364, Willetts 1989). However, for the most part, andas Rosenau notes, ‘although the early work on regimes allowed for the participationof NGOs, subsequent inquiries slipped into treating regimes as if they consistedexclusively of states’ (1995:29). This section will argue that the role of NGOs canno longer be omitted from regime theory. Attention will turn first to power-basedexplanations of regime creation.


Power-based, or neo-Realist, explanations hold that a state’s influence in a givenissue area is a function of the economic capabilities it possesses in this issue area.Two weaknesses to this view are presented here. Firstly, states are not the onlyactors that may possess capabilities in a given area of international economicactivity; attention should also be paid to private companies and transnationalcorporations. Secondly, influence can be achieved by actors who do not possesseconomic capabilities pertinent to the given issue area. The case of the WWF isillustrative. In the UK the WWF has established a close working relationship withthe Timber Trade Federation (TTF) and its member companies. The TTF hasagreed to cooperate with the WWF with the intention of ensuring that timberimports to the UK will come from sustainable sources by the end of 1995. Thispolicy shift provides an empirical challenge to the neo-Realist view; WWF hasbeen able to influence an area of economic activity, namely the international timbertrade, despite the fact that it possesses no direct stake in this area of activity.However, companies within the TTF that do have an economic stake in the timbertrade have been prepared to modify their policies following WWF lobbying. Inshort, in the case of forest conservation, NGOs have been able to exercise influencederived solely from the strength of their moral position and from the normativeforce of their arguments. Influence has been achieved by the projection ofnormative and principled beliefs onto other actors. Such norm transmission mayplay an important role in regime creation.

It was noted earlier that the entrepreneurial role for regime creation need notbe filled solely by a hegemon, and that smaller states may also fill such a role. Thispaper has demonstrated that NGOs and other non-state actors may act as politicalentrepreneurs. It was noted above that one of the two roots to the TFAP wasprovided by a NGO, namely the WRI. A further example may be cited, namelythat of the WWF in the foundation of the Forests Stewardship Council (FSC)which was created following NGO disillusionment with the poor conservationtrack record of the ITTO. The WWF, like many other NGOs, had been preparedto offer qualified support to the ITTO in the hope that it might play a positive rolein forest conservation. In 1988, when it perceived that the ITTO was slow to acton forest conservation, the WWF signalled its disillusionment when stating that if‘the ITTO fails to actively promote tropical forest conservation…the conservationorganisations will have to seek other mechanisms to achieve this’ (World WideFund for Nature 1988:10). The WWF carried this threat into effect following theITTO’s rejection of Friends of the Earth’s proposed labelling scheme in 1989. InNovember 1992 WWF withdrew all their forest conservation officers from nationaldelegations in protest at the ITTO’s poor conservation record, although WWFforest conservation officers have continued to attend ITTC sessions as observers.

Meanwhile the WWF had shifted its support from government-backed labellingschemes to the advocacy and promotion of a global private-sector scheme. Thisinitiative originated from a meeting hosted by WWF in Washington DC in March1992. After a series of meetings and workshops, agreement was reached to founda Forests Stewardship Council (FSC). In October 1993 the Founding Assembly of


the FSC was held in Toronto, Canada. This reached agreement on an innovativeinstitutional format, namely a General Assembly, constituting the FSC’s supremeauthority, divided into two chambers. The first chamber, consisting of social,environmental and indigenous peoples’ NGOs, holds 75 per cent of voting rights.The second chamber, consisting of individuals and private companies with aneconomic stake in the timber trade, holds 25 per cent of voting rights (Elliott 1993).Participants at the Founding Assembly voted that the FSC should be legallyconstituted as an ‘independent non-profit, non-governmental, membershiporganisation’ (Jeanrenaud and Sullivan 1994:3). The principal focus of the FSC ison activity at the forest-concession level as opposed to the intergovernmental level.FSC membership is voluntary. The FSC will authorise national certifyingauthorities to issue certificates to individual forest-concession holders that adhereto the FSC’s nine principles of forest management (Forest Stewardship Council1994). As all the actors that have established relations with it are either privatecompanies or non-governmental organisations, the FSC represents an interestingexample of a pure non-governmental regime. The Founding Assembly elected aBoard of Directors composed of four environmental representatives, two socialrepresentatives and two representatives of those with an economic interest in thetimber trade, with equal representation between North and South.6

The case of the FSC illustrates that while governments may be unable to agreeamong themselves on a given issue, this does not preclude other actors fromreaching agreement on the same issue. It was noted above that governments in theITTO have been unable to agree on a labelling scheme, and that in the UNCEDforests debate there was deep disagreement between governments from the Northand the South on the forests issue. Yet despite the positions of governments in theITTO and the UNCED process, the FSC initiative has achieved a widespreadconsensus between NGOs and private sector companies in North and South. Ofcourse, the long-term effectiveness of the FSC remains to be judged. It would alsobe wrong to surmise that the FSC has achieved universal approval among NGOs.Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth decided not to take part in the initiative inprotest at the decision to allocate voting rights to companies and other actors withan economic stake in the timber trade. Other campaigners oppose labelling schemes—although not explicitly the FSC—as marketing gimmicks that provide littlegenuine environmental protection (West 1995). Notwithstanding these criticisms,the point holds that a non-governmental regime on a given issue may be possiblewhere governments disagree. Policy makers and regime theorists should besensitive to this fact.

The FSC brings together an unlikely coalition of timber traders, forestconcession holders, conservation NGOs and local community groups. The FSC isnot yet fully operational, but its activities aim in the long term to modify thebehaviour of actors with a stake in the timber trade around the norm that tradedtimber should come from well-managed sources, and should be labelled to thiseffect according to globally agreed upon criteria. If the FSC succeeds in doing thisit would qualify as a private regime. Virginia Haufler has previously defined a


private regime as ‘one in which cooperation among private actors isinstitutionalised, and in which states do not participate in formulating the principles,norms, rules or procedures which govern the regime members’ behaviour’ (Haufler1993).

With regard to how NGO activity may affect interest-based theories of regimecreation, NGO campaigns have the function of highlighting the potential benefitsof regime creation that states may have missed or underestimated. NGOs may alsoact as facilitators by clarifying the costs of regime defection. NGOs may seek todraw attention to those economic costs of deforestation that states may haveoverlooked, including non-timber forest products such as fruits and nuts. Thepromotion of environmental economics by some, but by no means all, NGOs isnothing less than an endeavour to shift the methodology by which states and otheractors calculate their costs and pay-offs. NGOs may also highlight the non-economic costs of deforestation, such as watershed management.

NGOs can thus encourage states to demand international environmentalregimes. The normatively based arguments of NGOs may induce states to movefrom pursuit of the perceived self interest (distributive bargaining) towards pursuitof the common interest (integrative bargaining). The demand for environmentalregimes may be seen as arising from a shift in state-society relations. The post-wareconomic order was determined in large part by the demand expressed by societiesin the developed world for domestic social and economic stability (Ruggie 1983).However, the demand for global and domestic ecological security now competeswith that for social and economic stability (Humphreys 1995). As Litfin argues,only rarely have states taken a lead in global environmental conservation ‘withoutpressure from social movements and other non-state actors’ (1993: 101). States, atleast in the developed world, can no longer pursue their own perceived interestswithout consideration of the possible environmental consequences of their actions.Governments may present to domestic public opinion their participation in, ordemand for, environmental regimes as proof that they are pursuing globalecological security. This shift in state-society relations is also transmitted tointernational institutions, including regimes, so that, as Keohane, Haas and Levyargue, ‘the key variable accounting for policy change [in international institutions]…is the degree of domestic environmentalist pressure in major industrialiseddemocracies, not the decision-making rules of the relevant international institution’(Keohane, Haas and Levy 1993:14). In short, social pressure is forcing both statesand international institutions to reappraise and reconceptualise their objectives.NGOs have been, and will continue to be, instrumental in this process.

Turning now to cognitive theories, NGOs may fill two roles with respect toepistemic communities. Firstly, NGOs may contribute to epistemic communityformation (Haas 1993b:188). NGOs may employ trained scientists to undertakeresearch, thus making a direct input to epistemic community formation. Individualsfrom, or employed as consultants by, NGOs have helped to establish the linkagebetween deforestation and global warming (Bunyard 1985, Bunyard 1987,Markham 1990, World Wide Fund for Nature 1990b, World Resources Institute


1992:118–19). Forests, when left undisturbed, act as a sink for carbon dioxide(CO2), one of the main greenhouse gases. However, when deforestation occurs,and in particular when forests are burnt, the forests become a source of carbondioxide. NGO campaigners have also noted that not only does deforestationcontribute to global warming, but that global warming will, in turn, pose a renewedthreat to nature conservation (Rose and Hurst 1992). In a report commissioned byFriends of the Earth, Myers estimates that ‘the share of global warming attributableto tropical deforestation could now be at least 18 to 19 percent’ (Myers 1989:44).Myers’ estimate includes both carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, such asmethane and nitrous oxide. According to Porter and Brown (1991:97), estimatesof the carbon dioxide component of the burning of tropical forests in greenhousegas emissions vary between ten and 30 per cent, while the Worldwatch Institutenotes a range of 20 to 30 per cent (Brown 1991:80). In short, NGOs havecontributed to the broad-based epistemic consensus on the relationship betweendeforestation and global warming, although there is a margin of disagreement onthe precise quantification of this relationship.

Secondly, where NGOs contribute to epistemic community formation, theirexperience in advocacy work renders them well versed in the lobbying techniquesbest fitted to communicate the community’s findings to government and otherpolicy-making elites. In this respect they can play a role that the other professionalsin an epistemic community—such as lawyers, academics and scientists, who willusually be less familiar with effective advocacy work—are not so well equipped toplay. However, it is emphasised that an epistemic community is not an NGO orany other type of interest group. As Haas notes, unlike members of an interestgroup, members of an epistemic community would withdraw from a policy debate‘[i]f confronted with anomalies that undermined their causal beliefs’ (1992:18).

4.7CONCLUSIONS

The importance of NGOs at the local, national, regional and international levelswith respect to environmental conservation is growing. The central argument ofthis paper has been that there is a need for regime theorists to pay greater heed tothe roles of NGOs in international environmental regime creation for threedifferent reasons.

Firstly, NGO lobbying can result in behavioural shifts by states in theinternational system. It has been argued above that a perceived globalenvironmental crisis has resulted in a shift in state-society relations. This has resultedin the articulation by states of a new demand in the international system, namelythe demand for domestic and global ecological security. NGOs have been centralto this shift in state-society relations which in turn has been instrumental to thedemand in recent years for international environmental regimes. This paper hasalso documented two examples of how the IUCN has influenced the developmentof an intergovernmental regime, namely the ITTO. Firstly, the IUCN intervention


during the negotiation of the ITTA 1983 represents an example of an internationalNGO making a significant impact upon an intergovernmental negotiating process.This in turn affected the qualitative nature of the ITTO as a regime. The ITTOis not purely a trading regime; it is also one with a conservation mandate. Secondly,the IUCN’s role in the drafting of the ITTO’s biodiversity guidelines is alsosignificant. Where NGOs are commissioned to draft such guidelines they can playa significant role in the shaping of the norms and principles to which states,nominally at least, adhere in international environmental regimes. It has also beennoted that, notwithstanding the differences that may arise between them, NGOsare prepared to form coalitions with government delegates at intergovernmentalnegotiations. In the negotiations for the ITTA 1994, although the producers’ andthe NGOs’ coalition failed in their overriding objective of expanding the scope ofthe agreement, it is nonetheless significant that the former were prepared toestablish a coalition with the latter. The coalition is indicative of the increasingseriousness with which NGOs’ views are now treated at internationalenvironmental negotiations. With many governments according NGOs increasingrespect, the capacity of NGOs to affect the nature of regimes that may emergefrom intergovernmental negotiations is correspondingly increased. However, it isnecessary to add a note of caution here: the case of the TFAP illustrates that somegovernmental delegations will act to constrain NGOs’ rights of participation wherethey fear such rights may conflict with the sovereignty of states over their naturalresources.

States need not necessarily be the only, or even the main, type of actorparticipating in international environmental regimes. Hence a second reason whyit is necessary for regime theorists to consider the role of NGOs is that NGOs canbe seen as central actors in effective environmental policy implementation.According to this view, regime membership should be seen as open to all actors,and regimes are best understood as jointly sponsored mechanisms ‘sustained by thejoint efforts of governmental and non-governmental actors’ (Rosenau 1995:29).Local and national NGOs have important roles to play with respect to policy designand implementation. In the case of the TFAP it has been shown that wheregovernments have been reluctant to include NGOs in the planning process,influential international NGOs such as the WRI have been prepared to assist themin order to ensure that their views are heard by government. Ultimately, however,it remains the case that if an intransigent government is not prepared to accordNGOs an input in the policy-making process, in the final analysis there is very littlethe latter can do.

Thirdly, it is necessary for regime theorists to consider non-governmental, orprivate, regimes. While governmental actors in the ITTO have proved unable toagree upon a timber labelling system, the WWF has been central to establishing anew institution, namely the FSC, that has attracted the support of NGOs andcompanies from both North and South. When the FSC is fully operational, it willqualify as an international private regime if there is evidence that it has modifiedactors’ behaviour. Such regimes may provide a seam of empirical material for future


research by regime theorists, and they may also become an important frameworkfor future environmental cooperation, especially where, as is the case with forests,North-South disagreements have so far inhibited the creation of a globalintergovernmental forests conservation regime.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author acknowledges the support of Science and Engineering ResearchCouncil quota award number 9130262X which he received at City University,London. Much of the research funded by this award has contributed to this article.The support of the UK Economic and Social Research Council under its GlobalEnvironmental Change Initiative and of the Open University is also gratefullyacknowledged. Special thanks are due to Peter Willetts for his many helpful andconstructive criticisms of an earlier draft of this paper.

NOTES

1. The five action programmes are: (1) Forestry in Land Use, namely the integration offorestry into agricultural systems leading to a more rational use of land; (2) Forest-basedIndustrial Development which aims at promoting appropriate forest-based industries;(3) Fuelwood and Energy which aims at restoring fuelwood supplied in those countriesaffected by shortages; (4) Conservation of Tropical Forest Ecosystems which aims atconserving, managing and utilising tropical plants and wild animal genetic resources,and (5) Institutions, which aims at strengthening the institutional capacity of publicforest administrations and related government agencies. See FAO, World Bank, WRIand UNDP 1987:8.

2. The three NGOs from the North to support the Agarwal paper were the Institute ofDevelopment and Environmental Management (Netherlands), the Anti RacistCentre (Norway) and the Asian Environment Society (Japan).

3. Published statements include World Rainforest Movement (1991) and CoordinatingBody for the Indigenous Peoples’ Organisations of the Amazon Basin (1991). Anunpublished statement made to PrepCom 2 was Martin Khor Kok Peng, ‘Resolvingthe Forest Crisis: North-South Dimensions and UNCED’s role’, Geneva, March1991. Two unpublished statements made to PrepCom 3 were: Mutang Urud,‘Statement to the Third Preparatory Committee meeting of UNCED on the issueof forests’ (Urud is a member of a Sarawak forest tribe); and Friends of the EarthInternational, ‘Saving the Tropical Rainforests: Is UNCED to be a Wasted LastChance?’.

4. A statement was made to PrepCom 4 by representatives from indigenous peoples,nomadic pastoralists, peasants and environmental organisations, signed by 22individuals. This is published in Colchester and Lohmann (eds.) 1993:333–6.

5. The six conferences are: the World Summit for Social Development; the InternationalConference on Population and Development; the United Nations Conference onHuman Settlements (Habitat II); the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on


Desertification; the Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of SmallIsland States; and the Conference on Straddling and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks.

6. Individuals elected to the FSC’s Board of Directors came from the following NGOsand private companies:

North, Environmental World Resources Institute, USANorth, Environmental WWF-International, SwitzerlandSouth, Environmental Grupo de Trabalho Amazonica,

BrazilSouth, Environmental Martha Nuñez, EcuadorNorth, Economic LSA Associates, USASouth, Economic Brazilian Silvicultural SocietyNorth, Social Cultural Survival, USASouth, Social Coordinating Body for the

IndigenousPeoples’ Organisations of theAmazon Basin (COICA), Colombia.

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110

5NGOs and Competing Representations ofDeforestation as an Environmental Issue

in MalaysiaBERNARD ECCLESTON

Paper 4 in this volume highlights the active role NGOs have played in pressing forthe formation of cooperative environmental regimes to conserve tropical forests.Despite the activities of NGOs and other agencies, there is currently nointergovernmental or private regime in place. This paper, using Malaysia as anexample, examines why the development of shared principles, norms and rules thatwould be enshrined in a forests regime is so difficult.

It is now widely appreciated that human interference has altered the physicalenvironment in forest areas. There is even, as I show in section 1, some agreementthat the environmental degradation of soils or water supplies, for example, isunacceptable and requires remedial action by governments. In the language ofpolicy-making literature (Haas, Keohane and Levy 1993:11), it appears that forestproblems are an issue on the agenda for change which should lead to thedevelopment of alternative policy options, followed by the selection andimplementation of preferred policy choices. A critical stage in this policy processcomes when an environmental issue is incorporated into a policy making agendabecause this tends to see a redefinition of ‘problems to make them amenable topolicy options’ (Breyman 1993:137). It is at this agenda-setting stage that differencesbetween those in the policy process become most apparent, because to move fromproblem to solution requires an evaluation of priorities.

The removal, depletion or conversion of forests is in practice related to not justone environmental problem but many, and this leads to competing representationsor frames of the overall issue (Liberatore 1995). If the issue is framed as a problemof conserving biodiversity or maintaining the traditional livelihoods of forestdwellers, priority will be given to preserving pristine forests. If the issue is framedas a problem of limiting negative externalities while expanding the production andtrade in tropical timber, the priority will be managing forest depletion. Otherpriorities would follow from frames emphasising the impact of forest loss on localand global climate change, the loss of land rights and access to culturally significantareas for indigenous peoples, or transboundary air and water pollution. Thesignificance of these differing frames at the agenda-setting stage is that they lead to

Bernard Eccleston is Social Sciences Staff Tutor, the Open University.

conflict over definitions of the environmental problem which in turn leads to majordifferences over appropriate policies.

Political scientists point to a range of methods used by policy makers to copewith differences in priorities and values when setting agendas. Privileging access topolicy networks for those who share a common definition of the problem andcommon ideas on feasible policy options is the most usual (Smith 1992:59–62).Where global environmental issues in international institutions are concerned,however, such exclusionary tactics are not as easy to apply. The persistence ofcompeting representations of forest problems is one reason why a global regime isso difficult to construct, especially as these representations are deliberately linkedin joint bargaining over possible conventions on biodiversity, climate change andforests.

The complexities encountered in considering the different ways in which forestenvironmental problems are framed seems likely to weaken the ability of NGOsto exert influence on policies whether at national or global levels. Where thiscomplexity leads to competing and contradictory definitions, it is much harder forNGOs to influence the development of policy if their priority concerns have beendefined away by those who control agenda setting. What is also significant is thatNGOs themselves have divided interests, which means that the unity of thoseproposing alternative priorities is broken.

With these assumptions in mind, part of my field research in Malaysia focusedon whether there were features of forest environmental problems that strengthenedor weakened NGO influence on policy makers. Generally I concluded that NGOinfluence was weakened and the reasons were similar to the problems faced byNGO forest campaigns elsewhere in the world. The main blockage to increasedinfluence derives from the conflicting ways in which forest problems are framedand the subsequent conflict over appropriate policies. To illustrate this theme I willrelate each of the following sections towards key words in a baseline statement ofthe overall problem as: the environmental consequences of over-rapid depletion of naturaltropical forest resources.

5.1MULTIPLE ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF

FOREST CONVERSION

Local and Regional Environmental Degradation

By using the term forest conversion, I want to delay until Section 3 considerationof the relative impact of different sources of land use changes. Here, I grouptogether the overall environmental impact of converting natural forests forpermanent agriculture, timber production, population resettlement, hydroelectricprojects and plantations of oil palm and rubber. My examples are drawn principallyfrom the East Malaysian state of Sarawak and to a lesser extent Sabah, because these

112 NGOS AND DEFORESTATION IN MALAYSIA

are the places where NGO campaigning has been most prominent in the pastdecade. This is mainly due to the enormous increase in natural resource exploitationin these states when compared to the more diversified economy of PeninsularMalaysia.

Adverse environmental change was noted as early as 1978 by the SarawakDepartment of Agriculture: ‘incalculable damage must result from soil erosion anddegradation, pollution of waterways and the air, siltation of waterways, damage tofish spawning grounds and down river flooding’ (Sarawak 1978:10). Similarly, aGerman scientist who works with the Sarawak Forest Department confirmed the1970s and 1980s as an era of ‘heavy and lasting damage to soil, water bodies and

FIGURE 5.1 MAP OF MALAYSIA


forest stands’ (Bruenig 1993a: 4). By 1986, the Federal Five Year Plan estimatedthat 59 per cent of Sarawak’s rivers were polluted with soil erosion and siltation asthe main problem (Malaysia 1986:285).

Since then, not only has yet more natural forest been converted, but moremechanisation has dramatically increased soil degradation. The conversion of hillforests in particular has accelerated soil run-off to add yet more river sedimentation.Independent research, often undertaken by NGOs, has attempted to assess theimpact of water pollution as it affects drinking, washing and fishing (WWF Malaysiareports quoted in Primack 1991). Other research has examined the downstreameffects of hill forest conversion which increase the pace of underground water flowsand heighten the risk of flooding (Douglas et al. 1993 and on Sabah, Murtedza andChan 1992).

The human impact of environmental degradation is felt immediately by thosein rural Sarawak who depend on natural forests and nearby water supplies for theirlivelihoods. Local studies of such communities reveal adverse implications for dietand health. Deteriorating fish stocks and declining availability of meat from forestanimals saw protein intake in some areas decline by 66 per cent (Colchester 1990:168). In turn malnutrition has increased and resistance to disease decreased,especially for those who depend on the forest for food (Hurst 1990:87; Wee Chong1995:138).

It is also becoming clearer that local adaptation to the increasing pace ofenvironmental degradation has unintended consequences that acceleratedegradation in a downward spiral. As men from rural communities have to travelfurther searching for scarcer supplies of wild game or for paid employment, womenare left to carry multiple burdens. Inevitably, productivity in subsistence farmingfalls with less labour available to clear and burn swidden sites, and fallow periodsmay be shortened which further disturbs the forest ecology and reduces yields.Dual environmental pressures appear therefore on both food collection andcultivation. There is some evidence that one local response is to increase familysize so that child labour may be used to replace the reduction in men’s time availablefor subsistence food production (Heyzer 1995:44). All this happens as water suppliescontinue to deteriorate thus increasing vulnerability to water-borne diseases which,with more malnutrition, accelerates the process of declining health standards (King1996).

To cope with declining stocks of fish and meat, there is evidence of an increasingtendency to use more mechanical methods such as fishing by electrocution andchemical poisons or using guns to kill wild game. Thus the exigencies of adaptingto environmental degradation may mean that local communities ‘speed up ratherthan reduce the rate of natural resource depletion’ (Parnwell and Morrison 1993:28).

The sheer size of forest areas in places like Sarawak and the distances involvedfor researchers assessing the impact of environmental change among widelyscattered communities, inevitably means that data are patchy. Even more significantis the fact that uncertain information is subject to major disputes over causation


when changes occur simultaneously. For example, there are widely heldperceptions of a serious decline in supplies of wild game in the forests with seriousimplications for food collection as well as loss of biodiversity. But disputes aboundabout whether this is caused by increased provision of food for logging camps,whether the noise and disturbance of mechanical methods of forest clearance isdriving animals away or whether mechanical methods used by all types of huntersis diminishing wildlife (Primack 1991:127). Therefore, those NGOs attempting toexert influence on policy makers by providing more research on localenvironmental change face a real problem: their evidence may well be interpretedin different ways according to differing frames of the forest problem. I come backto this point in Section 3 where I highlight the dispute about the relativeenvironmental impact of local shifting cultivation practices versus logging.

A related problem of uncertainty comes in trying to separate the impact of changeinduced by human as opposed to natural forces. One reading of power disruptionsand black-outs due to sedimentation at Sabah hydroelectric power stations wouldemphasise hill forest conversion for logging. Another would stress the natural rateof erosion of upriver rocks. Detailed research is limited even on current problemslet alone a previous baseline against which to judge the pace of change. Whatresearch there is on increasing stream sediment yields after forest conversion revealshugely different estimates, from a twofold to a fifty-twofold increase (Douglas etal. 1993:247). Paucity of information, uncertainty over causation andunpredictability of interpretation offer extensive opportunities for those withcompeting frames of the forest issue to find evidence that support alternativepolicies.

Similar uncertainties are found when trying to assess the transboundary impactof tropical forest conversion. That water pollution crosses national boundaries isillustrated by the visibility of muddy plumes of sediment moving offshore fromevery river mouth in the region (McDowell 1989). Transboundary air pollutionin the region is evident from the effects of forest fires; 1982–83 saw the mostdramatic instance when unusual wind and drought conditions combined withextensive forest fires to destroy over three million hectares of forest in Borneoincluding nearly a million in Sabah. Many ecologists suggest that these naturalvariations were exacerbated by the effects of forest conversion that left much moredeadwood and combustible litter than in undisturbed forests (Repetto and Gillis1988:134). Disturbed forests in the 1983 catastrophe in Sabah made up 85 per centof the area destroyed because this allowed the fires to burn with greater intensityover longer periods. Particularly dangerous, according to King’s extensive survey,were the new forest access roads that acted as wind tunnels where the presence ofdead wood produced an ideal basis for fire highways (1996).

Less dramatic than the 1983 fire, but becoming worryingly regular, are seasonalreductions in air quality across South-East Asia. Prevailing winds in Septemberhave seen the city skylines of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore blanketed as ‘asurreal shadow beneath a blotted-out sun’ (Jayasankaran 1994:66). In bothcountries the air quality index was 40 per cent higher than the hazardously


unhealthy level. Uncontrolled burning of converted forests in Indonesia has beenofficially blamed, but the increase in burning urban garbage and pollution fromtraffic adds problems of simultaneous causation.

Climate Change

Scientific uncertainties and simultaneous causation problems also bedevilassessments of the impact of forest conversion on climate change. When this has aglobal focus, North-South geopolitical disputes magnify the complexities.

The effects of forest conversion on local and regional climate change revolvepartly around reduced evapotranspiration which, by returning less incident rainfallto the atmosphere, could make tropical climates drier and warmer. In completecontrast, some scientists suggest that reducing the density of vegetation cover wouldmean more solar radiation is reflected which would then exert a cooling effect. Asyet, the evidence linking forest conversion to local climate change is ‘moreanecdotal than based on empirical information so the effect remains in doubt’(Grainger 1993:163)

Moving to global climate change we find that the contribution of science issimilarly uncertain. Models do predict that forest burning and the additional rottingof vegetation after conversion increase the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Inaddition, forest burning also produces other greenhouse gases like nitrous oxide,ozone and methane, while conversion of forests to rice paddies or cattle ranchingthereafter sees even more methane emitted. But in moving from observations aboutan increase in greenhouse gases to predictions about global warming, we passthrough a series of stages where scientific knowledge is uncertain and disputedbecause the way CO2 is ‘stored or cycled round the planet is not fully understood’(Grainger 1993: 170).

Despite uncertainty about both the mechanisms of global climate change andthe contribution tropical forest conversion makes to greenhouse gas production,various estimates have been incorporated into the international discourse.Humphreys referred in an earlier paper in this volume to the role of NGOs inestablishing the linkage between global warming and deforestation and he notedthat estimates of additional CO2 caused by burning tropical forests range from tento 30 per cent. What is remarkable is how often the higher of these two figureshas been quoted without any qualifications about measurement problems.J.G.Speth, then President of World Resources Institute (WRI), boldly asserted,for instance, that tropical forest conversion accounted for ‘one third of all CO2

produced by human activity’ (1990:16).As significant was the 1991 league table produced by WRI and UN

Environment Programme which placed countries in the South alongside the US,USSR, Japan and the EU as the world’s biggest producers of greenhouse gases. Inthe dispute that followed over incorporating scientific uncertainty into preciseleague tables, countries in the South portrayed the whole exercise as yet anotherexample of the North attempting to shift responsibility from ‘the “luxury”


emissions of the rich…[to]…the “survival” emissions of the poor’ (Hawkins 1993:235).

Although countries in the South like Malaysia deeply resented this particularrepresentation of the link between global climate change and tropical forests, theydid seize the opportunity to maintain a connection. G 77 countries, led by Malaysia,made their willingness to discuss any kind of Forests Convention contingent uponthe North acknowledging fully its own responsibility for climate change. Inaddition, they demanded resources to assist the reduction of Southern greenhousegas emissions in the future. As neither responsibility nor resources were reallocatedby the North, all efforts to conclude a Forests Convention at the United NationsConference on Environmental and Development (UNCED) failed (Humphreys1993).

For NGOs in Malaysia as well as in other tropical forest states, the way that localproblems were incorporated into geopolitical debates gave rise to serious dilemmas.To a degree, Malaysian NGOs could agree with the Sarawak Minister ofEnvironment that ‘tropical forest loss has been blamed for global climate changeout of all proportion compared to agricultural and industrial pollution fromindustrialised countries’ (Wong 1992:30). But neither did they wish to accept thegovernment’s nor Wong’s more general defence of forest policies. Equallyproblematic was how far they should criticise Northern NGOs who initiallycontributed to the process of linking global warming to tropical deforestation. Ina polity where their position is insecure, Malaysian NGOs had in the past gainedsome strength from the support given to them by Northern colleagues (EcclestonPaper 3 in this volume). When Northern NGOs appear to push localenvironmental problems of land and livelihood degradation in Malaysia into thebackground in favour of a global discourse, they illustrate that commonality withinthe global environmental movement may be more imagined than real (Hawkins1993:231).

Biodiversity Loss

As if the problems of linking two global environmental issues were not bad enoughfor Southern NGOs seeking to influence forest policies, the debates aroundUNCED in Rio brought yet another link to a biodiversity convention.

Whilst acknowledging that much remains to be known about global biodiversity,tropical forests are thought to have the world’s densest network of species, geneticand ecosystem diversity. The sheer numbers of species found for instance in oneof the planet’s few remaining dipterocarp forests in Sarawak make them ‘floristicallythe richest of all the world’s forests’ (Brookfield and Byron 1990:42). Many NGOcampaigns do focus on the threat of forest conversion to species diversity especiallyto the existence of charismatic mammals, although these are but a tiny fraction ofall plant or animal species. A real difficulty in assessing the threat to species diversityoverall is uncertainty over how many species there are; while it is speculated that


there may be as many as 30 million, thus far only 1.4 million have been recorded(Grainger 1993:149).

Genetic diversity focuses on variations within species, and apart from being akey resource for the pharmaceutical industry, wild forest plants hold the key to thedevelopment of new disease-resistant seed strains. The threat of forest conversionto the loss of ‘gene banks’ is critical to the potential of modern agriculture indeveloping new plant varieties, because current reliance on genetic uniformitymakes food production highly vulnerable to new diseases and pests. By being socrucial to the commercial prospects of mainly Northern biotechnology companies,a focus on genetic diversity again means that the basic environmental issue becomesquagmired in geopolitical disputes. In this case the disputes centre on Northernintellectual property rights versus Southern ownership rights.

The final element of the biodiversity problem concerns the threat to the diversityof ecosystems. This emphasises the interaction between diverse species and theirenvironment which is central to the provision of naturally stabilising ecologicalservices. Essentially, these are the very services that, as I mentioned earlier, arebeing most rapidly degraded in Sarawak. Forest conversion means degrading theability of the tropical ecosystem to regulate rainfall release, reduce water pollution,maintain and replenish soil fertility and stabilise atmospheric chemistry.

Translating concern over the loss of biodiversity from forest conversion intospecific policy options that NGOs can prioritise is not helped by mixed anduncertain messages coming from scientists. While species extinction, for example,is a real fear because habitat loss in tropical forests is faster than any other ecosystem,currently recorded extinction rates in such forests is surprisingly low (Swingland1993:123). Indeed, one forest scientist suggests that tropical forests are not evenecologically unique (Whitmore 1993:119). The broader background to thecontribution of science seems marked by sufficient uncertainty over measuring ormonitoring the loss of biodiversity that NGOs have few unequivocally positivepolicy options to follow.

NGO campaigns to preserve the survival of certain animals are popular withmembers especially in the North, but these are rarely extended to include the plightof that 80 per cent of the world’s insects which inhabit tropical forests and havesuch a crucial effect on forest ecosystems. Highlighting the threat to geneticdiversity by emphasising the need to keep the forest’s natural capital intacteffectively means preserving them from encroachment by local peoples as well asdevelopers. This then raises problems over traditional access rights, not to mentionwho compensates Southern countries for leaving resource potential untouched. Inthe latter case, NGO campaigns are then drawn into geopolitical debates aboutregulating the trade in plant breeding genes to prevent Northern biotechnologycompanies exploiting their control of what they term the ‘common humanheritage’. As I will show in Section 5, another problematic dimension ofbiodiversity for some NGOs is how to insert into their forest campaigns a denialof prior global or national claims on forest products, prioritising instead theownership rights of local forest peoples.


Amidst the labyrinth of environmental problems that follows forest conversion,NGOs face difficult choices over which aspects to emphasise most. Even thoughI have argued that there is less disagreement about the extent of local environmentaldegradation, choosing between policy options to resolve degradation requires someagreement on who or what is causing the degradation. It is in moving from theidentification of the environmental problem to the development of policy optionsthat we find major conflicts between NGOs and Malaysian policy makers.

5.2DISPUTING RESPONSIBILITY FOR OVER-RAPID

DEPLETION OF TROPICAL FORESTS

Deforestation and Degradation

The principal dispute about the causes of forest loss in Malaysia and South-EastAsia revolves around the share of responsibility allocated to commercial loggingcompared to subsistence farmers. Local and international policy-making networksemphasise especially the extent of forest clearance by shifting cultivators (Bruenig1993b:253), making the tropical timber industry a less significant contributor(Barbier 1993:219). Redefining forest environmental issues in this way and thenbuilding policy options around such a definition makes it exceedingly difficult forNGOs with competing priorities to influence policy making.

Shifting a major share of responsibility for tropical deforestation away fromcommercial timber production has been common to a variety of agencies such asthe United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Bank,international NGOs like WRI and national governments (Ecologist 1987:131).Part of this tendency is related to the very way deforestation is often measured asthe near-complete clearance of forest cover. Measuring deforestation in this waymeans it is much easier to monitor especially from aerial photography and remotesatellite sensing. However, unlike the removal of Northern temperate forests whichclears uniform stands of trees, selective removal of say ten particular species out ofa diverse range of 300 is common practice in tropical areas. Selective extraction,while not as devastating as wholesale clearance, does result in residual damage tounwanted trees and degrades the density and structure of the forests. While forestdegradation as opposed to deforestation is much more difficult to detect even withsatellite sensing (Brookfield and Byron 1990:46; Grainger 1993:46), both processeshave to be considered when assessing responsibility for forest depletion.

Recent studies have shown striking differences in the sources of forest land-usechanges if both deforestation and degradation are considered. Using the narrowclearance definition makes conversion to agriculture responsible for 80 per cent oftotal tropical deforestation compared to only two per cent from commercialforestry. But when degradation is added by assessing the extent of forestmodification, the proportionate shares of responsibility are just about reversed


(Barbier 1993:220–21). The significance of including degradation as well asdeforestation for South-East Asia is that not only does this make commercialforestry more culpable, but it also reduces the responsibility attributed to shiftingcultivators who make up a higher proportion of all farmers than in Brazil, forexample.

Where NGOs attempt to influence policy makers to include degradation inpolicy agendas, they are forced to confront serious data uncertainties. The extentof residual damage to trees not required by loggers has clearly increased with moremechanised extraction methods. Sarawak timber production, for example, doubledin the decade after 1981, but to extract another eight million cubic metres fromever more remote, inaccessible and species-diverse forests required roadconstruction as well as mechanical logging. However, estimates of the consequentimpact on newly opened forests, some of which come from NGOs, varysignificantly. A general figure quoted for South-East Asia as a whole suggests onetree damaged for every two cut (Walker and Smith 1993:389). The peculiarconditions in Sarawak produce much higher estimates; from five damaged whenone tree is cut (Pearce 1994:31) to 17 damaged for every tree removed (Nectoux1987:185). With such wide variations it is easy for Sarawak officials to doubt thecredence of these estimates and continue claiming that ‘selective harvesting doeslittle damage’ (Pearce 1994:31).

Other difficulties confront NGOs who stress degradation which is the indirectconsequence of logging. As well as leaving forests degraded once official loggingoperations cease, the roads constructed into previously inaccessible areas remain.This then allows other waves of forest exploitation which further degrades logged-over areas so recently damaged by mechanised timber extraction. Although thisprocess of logging deforestation feedback is common in selective extraction(Grainger 1993: 115), the fact that the official concessionaires have left the areaallows the Sarawak Government to absolve commercial logging per se ofresponsibility. Instead, encroachment into logged-over forest areas is portrayed asyet another example of illegal and unacceptable deforestation by subsistencecultivators and hunter gatherers.

Scavenging Tenants or Managing Stewards?

Conflicting portrayals of forest peoples as either scavengers or stewards of theenvironment symbolises the extent of disagreement in the forests debate. Negativeattitudes towards Sarawak forest dwellers have in essence become embedded intopolicy makers’ ideology. ‘Indigenous people practice slash and burn and vast tractsof forests have been completely obliterated [whereas] logging of selected treesallows the forests to regenerate quickly’ (Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir,quoted in Stesser 1991:53). For similar reasons Sarawak Environment MinisterJames Wong suggested that ‘their swidden lifestyle must be stamped out’ (quotedin Scott 1988:45). Such basic beliefs are not confined to Malaysia but extendthroughout South-East Asia where forest peoples are viewed as ‘backward and


irrational’ (Colchester 1992:11) and are officially condemned asprimitive cultivators who are destroying the forests (McDowell 1989:312). It ishardly surprising that global policy initiatives which integrate the interests of forestpeoples so frequently fail to develop (see Paper 4 in this volume).

From the earliest colonial days onwards, official attitudes towards traditionalfarming systems in Sarawak cumulatively filtered out references to their ecologicallybalanced and sustainable qualities. After independence these judgements werepassed from British to Malay elites, but in the process the critique escalated fromsimply being primitive and therefore inefficient to being environmentallydegrading (Cramb 1988:122; Colchester 1993:167). In 1978, for instance, agovernment workshop concluded that ‘shifting cultivation represents probably thegreatest single threat to the integrity of Sarawak’s natural resources’ (quoted in King1988: 271). Similar beliefs prevail about those who do not slash and burn but subsistby gathering forest produce and hunting wild game. The Penan in particular areidentified as requiring assimilation as settled farmers to facilitate the emergence ofa ‘modern’ economy (Heyzer 1995:42).

The sheer longevity of negative attitudes is one source of their strength to theeconocentric ideology of elites. An additional element is the incorporation intopolicy networks of professional expertise to legitimise beliefs about traditionalfarming systems. The research of foresters, forest scientists, ecologists andanthropologists is drawn together to make such beliefs appear credible especiallyto international audiences. Professor Bruenig, for example, who is Chair of WorldForestry at Hamburg, has played an important role in coordinating the networkbetween Asia and Europe, as well as being a long-time consultant with the SarawakForest Department. Opposing international regimes that take a more positive viewof forest peoples means using rival expertise in ‘scientific politicking to delay regimecreation’ (List and Rittberger 1992:104).

More positive studies of the Penan as foragers (Brosius 1991) have been linkedto more general academic judgements of gatherers as ‘intelligent guardians capableof being the most important asset for future sustainable and profitable use of tropicalforests’ (Swingland 1993:122). Such alternatives develop in part from NGOresearch that challenges dominant representations. The Penan’s ‘precise knowledgeof the location of resources (sago and rattan), their communal ownership andconservation strategies’ (WWF(M) 1989:39) offer a sharp rejoinder to those whodeny the Penan have the intellectual apparatus to be able to manage a complexforest ecosystem. Equally, NGOs can challenge the view that shifting cultivatorsonly ever slash and burn virgin forest by showing that, from as early as 1848,alternative preferences existed for returning to old plots which need less effort toclear than virgin forest.

Overall, the aim of this rival knowledge network is to show thatnegative attitudes to shifting cultivation are less rooted in empirical reality thandogma (Cramb 1988:139). As important are opportunities to exploitinconsistencies in statements by Sarawak’s political leaders. When Chief MinisterTaib claimed, for example, that ‘shifting cultivation is on the decline, it is almost


finished now’ (quoted in Pearce 1994:32), NGOs could quite publicly ask howtherefore can it remain such a grave environmental threat?

There is no doubt that Malaysian NGOs have continued to participate in thechallenge to dominant views about who and what is responsible for forestenvironmental problems. But there is little evidence that they have dented thepower of privileged expertise which continues to blame indigenous farmers andgatherers. Some NGOs like Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM) have withdrawn and/or been excluded from Sarawak forest policy networks, preferring to use globalnetworks to exert indirect influence (Ngidang 1993; Paper 3 in this volume).Others such as WWF(M) or the Malayan Nature Society (MNS) try to cope withcompeting values by targeting local officials working in the forests who are moreapproachable than their political masters. As a result, different NGO strategies arein play, as they are over the vexed question of whether sustainable forestry ispossible at all, and if so, how sustainable policies can be implemented.

5.3COMPETING CONCEPTIONS OF SUSTAINABLE

FOREST DEPLETION

There is much debate over the general issue of sustainable development (Blowers1993). When applied to tropical forests, the term sustainable is applied variously andamorphously to timber yield management (sustainable profits), timber production(sustainable output), sustainable forestry employment and sustainable forests as awhole ecosystem. For each of these four dimensions there is scientific uncertaintyover whether sustainability is technically feasible. Consequently, those involved inthe tropical forests debate are divided over which dimension of sustainability tostress, providing yet another reason that delays the formation of a global forestsregime.

Within Malaysia NGOs are divided over the ultimate objective of theircampaigns about commercial logging. Environmental Protection Society Malaysia(EPSM) does not oppose logging per se, only ecologically unsound logging (Singh1993). Others like SAM oppose all logging, because they believe ecologically soundlogging is impossible (Chee 1993). Such differences reflect the wider question ofwhether any human-made capital can provide substitute services for those lost indepleting a forest’s natural capital. EPSM would argue that some substitution ispossible, whereas SAM would say it is not, because logging involves an irreversiblereduction in the unique stock of nature’s wealth. When sustainability is framed asbequeathing an undiminished stock of natural assets to the next generation, anydepletion of tropical forests is to be opposed (Pearce 1992:61).

Features of tropical forests deemed non-substitutable are those ecological servicespreventing soil degradation, managing water systems and regulating climate. For asensitive tropical ecosystem to function effectively, species diversity is critical,whereas for a commercial system to work effectively only certain commerciallyvalued species are needed. When some ecologically essential tree species are


redefined as weeds from an industrial materials viewpoint (Shiva 1987:36), thiscrystallises the disagreement over sustainable logging.

At this very basic level NGOs are divided within the North and the South overtheir incompatible frames of forests as an integrated ecosystem or forestry as anindustry. SAM and their allies among Northern NGOs whose campaigns emphasisesustainable forests press for an end to commercial logging and trade in tropicaltimber (Pearce 1990:187–8). In the process, they follow the judgements of thoselike Talbot, a World Bank environmental officer, who argue that ‘no commerciallogging of tropical forests has proven to be sustainable from the standpoint of theforest ecosystem’ (quoted in Colchester 1990:168).

Others involved in forest policy making deny that commercial and ecologicalobjectives are incompatible, emphasising instead natural forest regeneration andreforestation. Sarawak Environment Minister Wong claims natural forests are soresilient that selective cutting and silviculture means that five years after an area islogged it is indistinguishable from primary forest (The Star, Malaysia, 5 Sept. 1987).In other words, effective management plus local confidence that hill dipterocarpforests regenerate quickly (Pearce 1994:30) ‘ensures that the forest is maintained asa vital commercial resource’ (Wong 1992:25).

Such confidence, however, does not sit easily with other views about uncertainscientific knowledge of regeneration processes (Grainger 1993: 87), or thatreforestation is virtually impossible in the moist tropics (Ecologist 1987:133).Neither do sanguine expectations of forest regeneration in Sarawak accord withexperience elsewhere. Budowski from the Costa Rican Forest Institute, forinstance, argued, ‘it is time to dispel the myth that tropical rainforests can besuccessfully managed because there is a lack of evidence or good case studies’, aview echoed by Martin, a forest researcher in West Africa (both quoted in Shiva1993:78). Duncan Poore has done more research than most in developingsustainability criteria especially for the International Timber Trade Organisation(ITTO), and his progress reports reveal two things. First, up to 1989 less than one-eighth of one per cent of tropical moist forest was sustainably managed (1989:252). Second, ‘it is not possible to demonstrate conclusively that any tropical forestanywhere has been successfully managed for the sustainable production of timber’(quoted in Grainger 1993:90 italics added).

The absence of successful forest management which Poore identified relates toprofitability. This observation has led some external funders to conclude that ‘wecould not make commercial sense of forest management, unless it involvedreplacing felled indigenous species with fast growing species; principally eucalyptus’(quoted in Middleton 1993:78; similar views from Goodland at the World Bankquoted in Colchester 1990:169). Where reafforestation by exotic plantationsreplaces reforestation with indigenous trees, the outcome may be commerciallyviable, but ‘it makes no positive contribution to the local economy or ecology’(Shiva 1993:79). Others argue more forcefully that Eucalyptus especially is ‘inimicalto other forms of life’ (Pearce 1990:197) and has adverse hydrological effects


because it consumes huge volumes of water relative to indigenous species (Carrere1993:4).

In progressively redefining sustainability to mean establishing monocultureplantations, some NGOs and forest scientists stop at stage one. They reject thefeasibility of anything that cannot preserve intact the forest’s biodiverse naturalcapital. Others accept the technical feasibility of sustainable yield management, butdoubt whether even this more limited objective can reconcile commercial profitswith environmental protection. Those who are left cling to the belief that it is onlypoor implementation of local management systems that prevents sustainablemanagement of timber yields.

Policy makers in Malaysia, NGOs like MNS or WWF(M) and global agencieslike ITTO are among those who link currently unsustainable forest practices todefective policy implementation. In 1989–90 a special ITTO mission (whichincluded Poore) reviewed forest management in Sarawak. Despite the controversysurrounding its terms of reference (Primack 1991), forest officials apparentlyaccepted some of its conclusions (Vatikiotis 1993). According to Bruenig,reasonably adequate scientific knowledge and practical experience led the ITTOmission to report ‘high professional standards, but that implementation in the hillforests of Sarawak fell short of targets’ (1993b: 256–7). Other research confirmsproblems of illegal logging and weak enforcement of legislation (WWF(M) 1989;Wong 1992: 7–11; Pearce 1994; Heyzer 1995), The essential problem identifiedby WWF(M) was how to encourage loggers to limit external costs when cuttinginaccessible forests with low stocking densities. Then, the problem was to getloggers to improve external benefits by restoring or replanting after timber hadbeen harvested.

Measures needed to force loggers to consider externalities have also beenidentified in more general research using decison-making models of concessionlogging. This suggests that negative externalities may be limited by improving therate at which those who refuse to comply with regulations can expect to bedetected. Similarly, positive externalities can be incorporated into the decisions ofloggers if they are promised contract renewal following satisfactory performance(Walker and Smith 1993). NGOs could play an important role in monitoringperformance and WWF(M) has offered its services. But both privatesupplementation and strengthening official implementation capacity needs thepolitical will of federal and state leaders if the horizons of loggers are to be widenedtowards external costs and benefits. It is on this question of political will that doubtsare raised by those who still retain the belief that sustainable forest managementcan be made effective.

First, given uncertain knowledge about forest regeneration processes, there areworries about forest officials being able to meet an ecological challenge which may‘extend beyond what many foresters regard as their responsibility’ (Hurst 1990:63).Secondly, the need to improve existing practices is apparently not a priority forpoliticians in Sarawak who already label timber as manufactured from sustainableresources (Pearce 1994:28). Therefore, even those with a narrower definition of


sustainable logging diverge from the government over the need for independentcertification. This question of who monitors the certifiers is currently delayingagreement to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) regime that Humphreysdescribed in Paper 4 in this volume. In addition, there are broader issues of ensuringthat all sources of timber are included and not just tropical ones. Thus the formationof a global forests regime is delayed by differences over the vexed question ofsustainability and pressures to treat all forests equally.

5.4SOUTH-NORTH CONFLICTS OVER TROPICAL

FOREST DEPLETION

Global environmental politics are marked by North-South competition overresponsibility for causing and correcting environmental degradation. Tropicalforest campaigns mirror this tendency as Southern tropical timber producersconfront Northern consumers, and Northern states stress the role of Southernforests in climate change and biodiversity conservation.

As I explained in Section 3, many measures of deforestation focus quite narrowlyon areas that are completely cleared and, as clearance is most characteristic ofNorthern forests, Southern states can claim they have caused only a smallproportion of global deforestation. In addition, the South can pointedly ask whythe North does not prioritise their own forest management and protect their ownbiodiversity (Speth 1990:19).

A related dimension to this debate was noted in Paper 4 when Humphreysreferred to the unsuccessful efforts of the South to press for the mandate of theInternational Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA) to be expanded to include alltimbers. At these negotiations the Malaysian government played a significant partin attempting to widen the mandate; in the UNCED debates they also sought toforce the North to recognise its own forest responsibilities. Both these arenasallowed Malaysia to divert attention away from her own forest problems especiallyin Sarawak which had been at the centre of global NGO campaigns. ‘Why’, askedSarawak Forests Director Chai, ‘should we be the focus of global attention whenour forests are but one per cent of the world’s total and when sixty per cent of ourcountry is under forest cover?’ (New Straits Times, Malaysia, 22 Oct. 1993). Inasking later how many Northern countries could claim that level of cover, EnergyMinister Lim had in mind the 5,000 years of forest destruction in the North leadingin the UK to current forest cover of less than ten per cent (Business Times, Malaysia,21 May 1993).

Particular reference is made in public presentations by Sarawak officials of narrowdeforestation measures which allow them to claim that, unlike in the North, noclear felling is practised in Malaysia (Stesser 1991:58). Equally, when confrontingcharges of defective policy implementation, Sarawak officials can point to muchworse outcomes after a millennium of government forest protection in the UK.As far as trade is concerned, Malaysian representatives constantly remind audiences


that less than one-sixth of traded timber comes from tropical sources and that ifglobal forests have to be safeguarded, the North should be subject to more scrutiny(Hurrell 1992:406, notes similar reactions in Brazil). These arguments wereinfluential in PrepCom sessions for UNCED at Rio. Eventually, Southern statesmeeting in Kuala Lumpur in April 1992 agreed to make cooperation over any kindof international convention conditional on including all forests (Shiva 1993:81). Inaddition to problems over linkages with conventions for climate change andbiodiversity, the attempt to include all forests in a convention led to stalemate oncreating a new regime.

NGOs in Malaysia face some dilemmas in widening campaigns to includeNorthern forests. Yes, they resent ill-informed campaigns about tropical forests byNorthern NGOs who campaign too little about their own forests. But, siding moreopenly with their own government can delay still further global action to slow thespeed of forest depletion in Malaysia. In turn, Malaysian NGOs then have to facegovernment claims at global fora that Malaysia’s forest problems are relativelyunimportant compared to the North.

A second strand to Malaysia’s geopolitical role was to insist on the principle ofnational sovereignty over forest policies rather than any notion of the forests as acommon global resource. For NGOs, this raises a major problem of confrontingcompeting frames of property rights over forest resources.

5.5COMPETING CLAIMS TO OWNERSHIP AND

CONTROL OF FOREST RESOURCES

With all environmental problems, those attempting to reverse degradation have toconvince people who currently gain to make sacrifices. In urging slower rates offorest depletion, NGOs face so many powerful interests who gain so much thattheir campaigns become enmeshed in political conflict over who should controltropical forest resources. Overall, this conflict is about competing claims toownership and control at global, national and local levels.

Global Claims

The past decade has seen increasing Northern pressure to make the depletion oftropical forests a global issue, ostensibly to halt the loss of biodiversity and toconserve sinks of CO2. By linking these three environmental issues, the Northattempted to include in the UNCED agenda for a Global Forests Convention thenotion that Southern states should take on resource stewardship responsibilities forpresent and future generations. This was seen by Southern governments and NGOsas a means to allow the North to claim management rights over Southern property.

Notwithstanding claims on tropical forests as part of the global commons,Southern NGOs already felt that Northern control over marketed forest productswas partly to blame for high rates of depletion. In the buyers’ market for tropical


hardwood, the power of Northern consumers accedes to the undervaluation oftraded timber where neither the external costs of logging, nor foregone externalbenefits, are fully reflected in prices (Barbier 1993:218). The Japanese constructionindustry is quite content to use tropical hardwoods as cheap and dispensableconcrete moulding, while ignoring the impact of selective logging on the abilityof forest dwellers to gather non-marketed subsistence foodstuffs. Conceding yetmore control over industrial raw materials from the forest’s genetic diversity wouldallow Northern biotechnology companies to continue collecting resources for themanufacture of drugs which are then resold at high prices to those in the Southwho can afford them. Similarly, conceding the role of tropical forests as a carbonsink is seen as something which would induce more delay in reducing Northernuse of fossil fuels.

What particularly concerns NGOs about globalising forest problems is that theinterests of local peoples would be ignored. NGOs already have sufficient problemsreclaiming local rights from Southern governments without the added burden ofreclaiming them from international bodies (Shiva 1993:76). Past experience withother Northern forest initiatives like debt-for-nature swaps or special reserves forplants and people shows how often these ignore local access rights (Hawkins 1993:227; Hecht and Cockburn 1990:228; Peluso 1993:47). It is not surprising, then,to find similar centralised global schemes rejected by Southern NGOs, as noted inPaper 4 in this volume.

National Claims

In the event, the Malaysian Government played a pivotal role in removing thenotion of stewardship from the UNCED forests agenda by reasserting the sovereignright of states to exploit their own resources (Humphreys 1993: 49). Sovereigntycould be asserted because, while forests may function as commons for the globalecology, property rights over their use are divisible and states can exclude othersfrom ownership (Hurrell 1992:401).

For the Federal Government, the forests in Sarawak represent one 01 the lastremaining sources of unexploited potential for exports, as well as an internal sourceof materials for timber processing in Peninsular Malaysia. In exerting nationalownership rights over forest exploitation, Malaysia (like other governments in Asia)follows colonial precedents to allow state governments to control local access rightsand erode communal property rights (Colchester 1992:8). Such policies, as I arguedin Section 3, continue to be legitimised by beliefs that traditional communalproperty rights perpetuate practices such as shifting cultivation which are said tocause forest destruction (Shiva 1987:24).

The reassertion of national control over forests does signal the importance of theFederal Malaysian Government as the site to target NGO campaigns. In NGOexperience it is not a propitious one. For the Federal Government to slow forestexploitation, economic sacrifices are required not least in reducing the ability ofSarawak to service Peninsular Malaysia as a dependent supplier of cheap raw


materials (Wee Chong 1995:80). Then, if NGOs campaign on the prior claims offorest peoples, they find the Federal Government as dismissive of local rights as theSarawak Government. Neither are campaigns stressing local environmentaldegradation likely to provoke any immediate response from a government socommitted to an econocentric ideology. This involves following Japan’s experienceto stress that economic growth is needed first to generate the ability to clean upthe environment later (Teranishi 1992). It is also doubtful whether the federalpoliticians have the political will to exercise more control over Sarawak policies,because they are reluctant to offend a state government which is part of the BarisanNasional (BN) coalition that rules Malaysia. Indeed the Federal Government claimsthat, constitutionally, it does not have the authority to override the jurisdiction oflocal states in matters of land and forests (Aitken and Leigh 1986:173).

Evidence of such jurisdiction problems can be seen in the difficulties the FederalGovernment has in encouraging the Sarawak Government to effect the loggingreductions the ITTO mission requested. Despite apparently being able to force thisITTO investigation on a reluctant state government (Colchester 1993:171 andPearce 1994:32), federal forest officials concede to Sarawak’s non-compliance. Themission recommended a longer regeneration period of over 40 years between log-harvesting cycles but, ‘If Sarawak tells us that twenty four years is sufficient, wetake their word for it’ (Pearce 1994:31). Federal authorities do have strong, ifindirect, control over Sarawak’s forest policies through their ability to controlforeign trade. A federal ban on log exports, for example, would sharply reducetimber production in Sarawak. Such indirect controls have yet to be used forSarawak although a ban was imposed on Sabah in 1992 when, coincidentally, thatstate government was in conflict with the BN leadership (Wee Chong 1995:23).As far as the depletion of Sarawak forests is concerned, NGOs find federal politiciansunwilling to make economic and political sacrifices for what they consider to beinsignificant gains.

Local State Claims

For leaders of the Sarawak Government, control over forest resources is not simplya matter of being custodian of the state’s public interest. Such control is a significantsource of personal power and wealth. In fact, the forest authority is so valued thatit has been a jealously guarded part of the Chief Minister’s portfolio since timberproduction began to expand rapidly in 1985. As well as overseeing the distributionof long-term titles to forest property, the Chief Minister also allocates short-termproperty rights in the form of logging concessions.

The important place of timber in Sarawak’s economy is reflected in its 32 percent share of her exports (Tsuruoka 1994:70) and the fact that, from the later 1980s,the sector contributed nearly one-half of government revenue (Wee Chong 1995:22). Coming under local jurisdiction means that forestry is a much more significantsource of revenue than petroleum, where federal control means that the royaltiesSarawak eventually receives are less than a quarter of timber revenues. In theory,


this more independent source of revenue can be used to promote local economicgrowth which, with about ten per cent employment in the timber sector, is seenas providing compensation for curtailing local land rights and provides an existence‘preferable to traditional livelihood by subsistence farming’ (Bruenig 1993b:265).

What surprises many is that public revenues from timber are so small. Exportroyalties, for example, are less than half the rates imposed in Sabah or Indonesia(Repetto and Gillis 1988:147). Lower duties and royalties mean a smaller rentcapture for public revenues and higher returns for private rentiers and loggers.Together with lax policing of harvesting regulations and reforestation rules, thismeans less external costs to internalise and higher profits for the logging industry.

The opportunity to earn high profits explains the scramble to seek concessionproperty rights that are given free under the Chief Minister’s remit. Notsurprisingly, in the vagaries of Sarawak politics, the ability to dispense rights toextract timber is used to build political support networks across ethnic divisions.Concessions are initially allocated to Malay bumiputera companies, andconcessionaires in turn lease to Chinese contractors rights to provide basic logginginfrastructure for local subcontractors who fell and transport the timber.

Personal wealth for the Chief Minister and his associates is enhanced becausewhen concessions are given, a financial interest in logging is retained throughinvolvement with these same bumiputera companies. The extent of this involvementwas revealed in the 1987 election campaigns which were the outcome of politicaldisputes between Taib and his uncle, who was his predecessor as Chief Minister.As each side exposed the other’s timber interests, it emerged that companiesassociated with them and their respective families held concessions to over half thetotal area available for logging in Sarawak (Scott 1988:45; Hurst 1990:104; King1993:241).

Given this extensive association with the timber industry, official support isforthcoming to assert individual over communal property rights and promotefurther restrictions on forest access rights. To maximise the exploitation of timberresources and to minimise costs, traditional rights to cultivate and gather forestproducts have to be superseded. The additional transaction costs involved indistinguishing compensation claims in complex tenurial systems inhibit loggers justas it does government officials promoting forest conversion for agriculturaldevelopment (King 1986:31).

Having influential allies in government to minimise such transactions’ costs is asvaluable to loggers as it is unavailing to NGOs. Interpenetration between vestedeconomic and political interests grossly limits the political space NGOs mightoccupy. Conventional models of democracy which separate such interests aremisleading here. Interpenetration also removes from already marginalised forestpeoples responsive political representatives to whom they could protest the erosionof their customary rights of access.


Local Community Claims

These politically marginalised communities are the very ones who aremost exposed to the effects of local environmental degradation, as I outlined inSection 1. A key economic difficulty for such peoples across Asia is the impact offorest degradation on diminishing supplies of food and materials available from theforests. Because such livelihood sources do not enter commodity markets, theirloss is not reflected in the full social cost of logging and is in any case deemedunimportant as it benefits only small minorities (Repetto and Gillis 1988:12).Declining subsistence supplies in the forests are in turn compounded by the erosionof customary access rights to the forests.

Some customary rights to cultivate the forest were recognised in the 1958Sarawak Land Code, though not as ownership rights but on a 99-year lease fromthe state (Colchester 1993:168). As this code applied only to land cleared forcultivation prior to 1958 gatherers like the Penan have no customary land becauseup to 1958 most of them did not farm (Primack 1991:127). Even codifiedcustomary rights may be withdrawn in changes which legalise beliefs that shiftingcultivation wastes forest resources. Lengthy fallowing periods, for example, havebeen taken as a reason to extinguish customary rights on the grounds that land isnot under continuous cultivation, so is deemed ‘abandoned’ (Hasegawa 1993:65–6). In announcing a new policy on this in 1994, Chief Minister Taib explained‘such idle native lands will be developed to ensure a sufficient supply of logs’(quoted in Pearce 1994:31).

Giving priority to industry over local subsistence needs accords with wider policyobjectives to modernise what are said to be primitive ways. Indigenous culturalpractices are thereby marginalised by denying the role of local knowledge for forestmanagement within a wider context of denying the place of local cultural traditions.Even the very term indigenous is disputed. According to a member of Malaysia’sITTO delegation, ‘unlike the Brazilian Indians we are all indigenous as bumiputeraMalays’ (Roslan 1993). Officially, Dayak indigenous people in Sarawak did havea special constitutional position, but after 1971 they were submerged within thegeneral preferences accorded to Malays, as opposed to Indian or Chinese ethnicgroups (Wee Chong 1995:6).

Adding cultural to political and economic marginalisation gives the campaignsof those NGOs who stress the impact of forest depletion on local communitiesboth human rights and environmental dimensions. Such an integrated focus issufficient to make more scientifically conservationist NGOs like the InternationalUnion for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in the North, or MNS in Malaysiafight shy of the political conflict this brings. Campaigns about the plight ofSarawak’s most forest-dependent minority, the Penan, highlights such divisionsbetween NGOs. For the government, gatherers like the Penan are prime targetsfor resettlement into modern lifestyles. In any case, there are only 9,000 Penanamong 700,000 Dayaks. Confirming the limited scale of the problem, MNSidentify just 300 Penan who are fully nomadic, and even they are said to have


sufficient forest access for their nomadic lifestyle (MNS President quoted in Woonand Lim 1990:13). For SAM, however, the particular restrictions used to controlthe traditional lifestyle of the Penan for the sake of the timber industry symbolisehow Dayaks in Sarawak are disempowered (Ngidang 1993).

These contrasting attitudes from just two of Malaysia’s NGOs underline thecomplexity bestowed by competing frames of tropical forest depletion as anenvironmental issue. Where the campaigning of SAM echoes Northern NGOconcerns over the interests of local communities in global forest initiatives, theymeet recalcitrant policy makers. NGOs like MNS take a narrower conservationfocus which, they argue, allows them to retain some access to the policy process.But they also have to tailor their campaigns to take account of the way those incontrol of policy use forest resources to build economic and political power. It isunderstandable, therefore, why so many NGOs find the context of thisenvironmental problem one that weakens, rather than strengthens, their influenceon policy makers.

5.6CONCLUSION

The difficulties encountered by Malaysian NGOs in influencing, or even gettingaccess to, the forest policy agenda, offers some pointers to the absence of a globalforests regime.

I have stressed at various points the way environmental problems associated withforest depletion are linked to global initiatives on climate change and biodiversity.This may have the advantage of establishing the interdependence between local,transboundary and global environmental degradation. But issue linkages can delaythe resolution of problems as ‘parties are loath to make concessions on one issueout of concern that this may affect negotiating posture on others’ (Young 1989:356). Being nested alongside two other issues embracing North-South geopoliticaldisputes seems to be one reason why global forest initiatives have so far failed.

A second general problem relates to the view that the formation of globalenvironmental regimes is enhanced by the emergence of an epistemic communitygenerating consensual understanding. Indeed it has been argued that for ‘acid rainprecipitation and deforestation…consensus exists and members of the epistemiccommunity have been mobilised in national and international fora’ (Haas 1992:52).My earlier discussion of scientific uncertainty on climate change, the functioningof forest ecosystems or forest sustainability suggests this view is absurdly optimistic.Rather, I would see epistemic dissensus as another reason for the absence of a forestsregime.

There is consensus within elite policy-making networks in Malaysia andIndonesia about the blame to be attributed to traditional farming methods indestroying tropical forests (Dauvergne 1994:499). It is also apparent that thesenetworks recruit scientific expertise whose views often coincide with theassumptions of agencies in the North such as the World Bank or WRI. But,


Malaysian and Indonesian experience also shows the extent of entrenched politicaland economic interests that lie behind elite networks that label the victims of forestdepletion as perpetrators. Such powerful gatekeepers deny political space to NGOsand others who campaign on behalf of the powerless, thereby maintaining theirrewards from exploiting the forests. In addition, vested interests at national levelcan use their power to delay the emergence of a global regime which would meansubstantial personal economic sacrifices for long term environmental benefits. Paper6 of this volume shows how the speedy formation of a regime to combatdesertification was facilitated because it did not require big sacrifices from powerfulinterests. The contrast with tropical forests is marked. The structure of powerfulwinners and powerless losers in current patterns of resource exploitation would bechallenged by a global forests regime.

Occasionally, as in Brazil, overseas NGOs are able to exert indirect pressure toalter the pattern of forest exploitation using leverage on foreign donors at times ofdebt or loan renegotiation (Hurrell 1992:416). Malaysian NGOs have no suchopportunities as rapid economic growth has reduced dependence on multilateraldonors. This independence gives the government the capacity to organise what isin effect a veto coalition within the South to prevent a global forests regime. AsNorthern interests are equally intransigent over related issues of debt redemptionand compensating resource transfers, global initiatives on tropical forests arethwarted.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research for this paper was funded mainly by the UK Economic and SocialResearch Council under its Global Environmental Change Initiative, and partlyby the Open University. I am grateful to both institutions for their support.

This paper is based partly on a series of personal interviews conducted between1993 and 1995 with NGOs and academic researchers in Asia and the UK. I amgrateful for the cooperation of the following NGOs. EPSM, MNS and WWFMalaysia in Kuala Lumpur; SAM and TWN in Penang. Roslan, Woon and Limat FRIM and Yong at ISIS Malaysia also helped me to get closer to the views ofpolicy makers.

Unfortunately no government officials responded to my interview requests. Theonly reply I ever received was from Professor Bruenig at the Forest DepartmentSarawak who said that in view of ‘the recent limelight, people here feel that visitsand interviews are becoming too much of a burden’ (Fax communication 21 June1994). Therefore, for official views I have had to rely on secondary sources andpress coverage of the statements of government representatives.

In Japan, a number of NGOs campaign on Malaysian forests at a distance andmy thanks are due to FoE Japan, WWF Japan, JATAN and the Sarawak CampaignCommittee. UK interviews given to me and my colleague Annie Taylor by thefollowing people were mvaluable: Marcus Colchester at WRM, Simon Counsell


FoE UK, Francis Sullivan WWF UK, James Lochhead EICMAS and TiggerHadraku and Angie Zelter, Coordinators of the UK Forests Network.

None of these people or their organisations are responsible for the way I haveinterpreted their ideas and suggestions.

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6Does the Definition of the Issue Matter?

NGO Influence and the InternationalConvention to Combat Desertification in

AfricaSUSAN CARR and ROGER MPANDE

Environmental issues are inherently complex, involving many uncertainties. Thereis thus far greater ambiguity associated with their definition than is generallyacknowledged, especially by natural scientists (Grove-White and Szerszynski1992). To a striking extent, such definitions are malleable and culturally shaped(Douglas 1975, Wynne 1982). Indeed, it has been suggested that part of the reasonthat particular issues gain prominence on the environmental agenda may be becauseof their resonance with deeper tensions in society as a whole, over and aboveconcerns about their more obvious environmentally harmful effects (Grove-White1992). This line of thought has been taken further by Conca and Lipschutz (1993),who suggest that the ‘global environment’, apart from being a complexgeobiophysical system, is also ‘ultimately, a social construction, through whichindividuals and groups derive and define competing notions of authority,legitimacy, and sovereignity’.

Desertification is an example of an environmental problem that involves morecomplexity and uncertainties than most. Although desertification is now firmly onthe global environmental agenda, there is still considerable debate and a surprisinglack of clarity about the extent and nature of the problem. Explanations of its causesrange from local mismanagement of land exacerbated by unreliable rainfall, toglobal imbalances in trade and global climate change. Cultural and ideologicalinfluences have played an important part in shaping these explanations (Adams1990).

Often the way in which certain groups promote particular explanations anddefinitions of an issue to further their interests, whether unintentionally ordeliberately, goes unnoticed, so taken for granted is their authority and so unquestioned their expertise. But in intergovernmental negotiations, the normalwithin-country acceptance of the views of established sources of authority andexpertise no longer automatically applies. The existence of competing definitionsbecomes more obvious because cultural differences throw them into relief.

Susan Carr is in the Faculty of Technology, the Open University, and RogerMpande, formerly of Zimbabwe Environmental Research Organisation, is now ofCommutech, Harare.

Governments and other actors have to negotiate openly within a different politicalstructure to try and reimpose their own definitions, so that underlying motives forpromoting one definition rather than another may become more apparent.

This paper summarises the differing definitions and explanations of the problemof desertification, examines the extent to which competing definitions wereexploited to further particular interests in the negotiations for the InternationalConvention to Combat Desertification, and discusses the effect this had on theopportunities for NGOs to influence the negotiations. The main emphasis of thepaper is on Africa, because the convention, although international, gives priorityto action in Africa, and African governments and African NGOs played aprominent part in the debate.

In the discussion, interest-based regime theory is used to explore why, despitethe uncertainties surrounding the desertification issue and in marked contrast tothe forestry issue, international agreement on the text of a Convention to CombatDesertification was relatively easily achieved.

6.1DEFINING THE PROBLEM OF DESERTIFICATION

Expressed simply, desertification is land degradation in dry areas (Grainger 1990).In the Convention to Combat Desertification, it is defined more fully as ‘landdegradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from variousfactors, including climatic variations and human activities’ (UN General Assembly1994). The convention goes on to define land degradation as ‘reduction or loss…of the biological or economic productivity and complexity’ of such land.

Taken at face value these definitions appear relatively straightforward, but anyattempt to unpack their meaning reveals how open to interpretation they are. Notonly is there an absence of reliable data on which to base an assessment of the extentof the problem, and different ways of defining such parameters and indicators ashave been studied, but there are also differing perceptions of the nature of theproblem, and even a questioning by some people of whether or not a problemactually exists, at least of the type and on the scale that is claimed.

Explanations of the causes of desertification range from the local to the global.They include natural, social, political and economic factors, and have beenreviewed by Adams (1990), Grainger (1990), Mortimore (1993) and Toulmin(1993), amongst others. In particular, the review by Adams (1990) highlights theway in which differing perceptions and cultural influences have shaped the debate,and how perceptions have changed over time. It is on the review by Adams thatthe rest of this section is largely based.

When the term desertification was first used, by Aubréville in 1949, it was in aslightly different context from that in which it is generally used today. It referredto the conversion of tropical and sub-tropical forests into savannas, involving severesoil erosion, changes in soil properties and invasion by dryland plant species(Aubréville 1949, quoted in Adams 1990). Since then, perceptions of the problem,


its causes and effects, have evolved and become steadily more complex, althoughnot more certain.

Explanations concerning the local mismanagement of land originate from theperiod of European colonisation. For example, in the early decades of British andFrench colonial rule in West Africa there was concern that the southern limit ofthe Sahara Desert was moving inexorably forward. Shifting cultivation, burning,grazing and browsing, leading to removal of the natural vegetation cover, wereinitially seen as the main contributory causes, with variable rainfall as a subsidiaryfactor (Stebbings 1935, quoted in Adams 1990). When subsequent research foundno evidence of either desert encroachment or a permanent reduction in rainfall(Jones 1938, quoted in Adams 1990), the emphasis shifted to a more generalconcern about soil erosion, a concern fuelled by stories of the American Dust Bowl.The main causes of soil erosion, at least in East Africa, were seen as continuouscropping without replacing nutrients, overgrazing, and increases in populationforcing more intensive use of land that was marginal for agricultural production.

With the severe drought in the Sahel region during the early 1970s, and againduring the 1980s, the issue of desertification was brought into international focus.The same concerns as before were voiced, this time at the international level: thatthere was a steadily deteriorating situation caused by local mismanagement(overgrazing, overcropping), exacerbated by a decline in rainfall and rapid increasesin population. These explanations were revised, extended and challenged in thelight of contemporary perceptions and evidence.

Old meteorological data and other evidence were examined for signs of trendsand patterns. While the evidence that the Sahara Desert had been more extensivein prehistoric times was undeniable, there was no clear evidence of progressivedesiccation over the past 100 years. Instead, the records showed the variability ofannual rainfall, with intermittent periods of exceptionally wet years (especiallybetween 1875 and 1895, and again in the 1950s) and of drought. Since the earlyEuropean colonists arrived at the end of an exceptionally wet period, this is likelyto have heightened their perception of a progressively deteriorating situation.Similarly, the relatively wet years of the 1950s may have made the impact of thedrought in the late 1960s and early 1970s all the more marked. Some studies foundevidence of weak oscillations between wet and dry periods, but the evidence wascontradictory, and an attempt to predict the end of the Sahelian drought of the1980s on the basis of previous patterns was unsuccessful.

The use of aggregate data, in the form of annual rainfall records, to check forpatterns was in any case criticised as meaningless in the context of the impact ofdrought on people. It could conceal a lack of rain at a period critical to plant growth,which might result in crop failure and famine even though the year overall waswet. Explanations for the variations in rainfall included making links with globalclimate models and their component factors, such as worldwide sea temperaturesand currents, with implications for corresponding links with increases inatmospheric carbon dioxide and the issue of global warming.

DOES THE DEFINITION OF THE ISSUE MATTER? 139

Other explanations of rainfall variation focused on more local causes. Forexample, it was suggested that the loss of vegetation in degraded dry areas increasesthe reflectance, or albedo, of the ground surface, so that the ground is less warm,less warm moist air rises, and fewer rain clouds form. But the evidence wasinconclusive; for example, it was claimed that in some places the albedo of thenatural desert vegetation was greater than that of bare ground. In addition, it wasdifficult to separate out the effects of vegetation on albedo from its effects on otherfactors such as soil moisture that would also affect soil temperature, convectioncurrents and rainfall.

Previous perceptions of mismanagement were challenged. For example, theconcept of overgrazing was questioned on the basis that judgements about theland’s carrying capacity for stock are subjective. Carrying capacity has to be judgedin relation to management objectives. A high stock density, although it may resultin poor productivity per animal, can give greater productivity per unit area. It wassuggested that administrators have tended to have an inbuilt bias against nomadicherding, since nomads cannot easily be controlled and taxed. In practice,indigenous pastoral systems may be well adapted to uncertain rainfall and drylandconditions. For example, herds often include browsing animals such as camels aswell as grazers such as sheep and cattle, to take advantage of whatever vegetationis available, and in dry conditions herds are moved to where vegetation is moreplentiful.

Not all forms of so-called overgrazing are serious; some are easily reversed onceconditions become more favourable. In some instances development solutions mayhave aggravated rather than ameliorated the problem of land degradation. Forexample the installation of bore wells encourages cattle to congregate in largenumbers in their vicinity and disturbs traditional patterns of herd migration.Fencing the land and replacing natural vegetation with sown pasture can lead to aless resilient system, more susceptible to drought conditions.

More political definitions of the problem blame the inequities involved in landtenure, international trade and Third World debt. Where powerful groups holdmuch of the better land, the options for people in more marginal areas aspopulations grow are restricted. They may be forced to practise continuouscropping instead of leaving some ground fallow for a period to allow it to recover.When export demands encourage farmers to devote more of their land to cashcrops rather than to maintain a diverse cropping system, the farmers become morevulnerable to bad seasons and to crashes in commodity prices.

Thus the doubts and debate that continue to surround the nature of thedesertification problem, its causes and possible policy responses, allow plenty ofpolitical space for negotiation.


6.2THE LEAD-UP TO THE CONVENTION

The severe drought and resulting loss of life in the Sahel in the 1970s promptedinternational action to address the desertification problem, which was seen as oneof the most pressing environmental issues at that time. At a United NationsConference on Desertification held in Nairobi in 1977, a Plan of Action to CombatDesertification was adopted, and responsibility for its coordination assigned to thenewly established United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). UNEP’srole was to stimulate regional and national action, assist in project design, suggeststrategies for project finance, and promote research and training.

The plan required national governments to establish or designate a governmentauthority to combat desertification, assess desertification problems in their country,establish national priorities for action, prepare a national action plan, submitproposals for international support, and implement the national plan. However, areview of progress six years later showed that anti-desertification plans had beencompleted by only two of the more than 100 countries affected. Over the samesix-year period, the amount that had been spent on combating desertification wasestimated at about $US 7 billion, much of it being accounted for by infrastructureprojects rather than desertification control. The special account established by theUN to receive voluntary donations to help finance anti-desertification projects hadreceived less than $US 50,000. This compared with the $US 90 billion that UNEPhad estimated in 1980 would be required to finance the implementation of thePlan of Action to Combat Desertification over 20 years.

The Plan of Action was widely perceived to have had at the most only limitedsuccess. If anything, the problem of land degradation seemed to have become moreserious. A review in 1990 identified the main shortcomings of the plan as a lack offocus, over-ambitious goals and lack of attention to socioeconomic factors (UNEP1991). Other factors blamed were poor cooperation within the UN system,inadequate funding by governments and donors, and the low priority given to anti-desertification measures within affected countries. The rural poor mostimmediately affected had little political clout, rural projects were difficult toidentify, plan and implement and their impact was less visible than majorinfrastructural projects such as dams and roads. Governments faced more immediateshort-term problems.

The proposal for an International Convention to Combat Desertification camefrom the African states in the final run-up to the 1992 United Nations Conferenceon Environment and Development (UNCED, otherwise known as the EarthSummit). At the time, Southern Africa was experiencing the worst drought onrecord, involving not only South Africa and Zimbabwe, but also large parts ofBotswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland and Zambia. There was growingresentment among developing countries at the perceived Northern bias of the EarthSummit’s preparatory discussions, where attention centred on the conventions onclimate change and biodiversity and the proposal for a Forests Convention. African


countries in particular protested at the lack of attention given to the environmentalissues of most relevance to developing countries, such as desertification, which wasrepeatedly sidelined to make way for the heated debates about forests. In responseto these protestations, the chairman of the working group that addressed both forestand land resource issues, Bo Kjellén of Sweden, agreed to give priority to adiscussion of desertification at the last preparatory, or PrepCom, session. Duringthis session, the African countries worked out a proposal for the inclusion of achapter on desertification in UNCED’s Agenda 21, and subsequently, during thefinal UNCED negotiations, pressed hard for a Desertification Convention, in thehope that it would bring with it additional donor funding.

This proposal was resisted at first by some countries, which argued thatdesertification could not be considered a ‘global’ environmental issue with causesoriginating outside the affected countries. But finally it was agreed that Agenda 21should include a recommendation to the UN General Assembly to initiateinternational negotiations for a Convention on Desertification, with particularattention being given to Africa. Cynics saw this agreement as a trade-off betweenNorth and South, an agreement on desertification for one on forests (Panos 1994),but if so it was not a straightforward trade-off. Although the USA and the ECagreed to a Desertification Convention, there was no reciprocal agreement fromthe South on a global forests’ convention. At one point the EC did appear to offersupport for a Desertification Convention provided that the African states couldpersuade Malaysia to drop its opposition to a Forests Convention, but this offer ofsupport was subsequently withdrawn. In the end it was the USA that gave way onthe desertification proposal first, apparently in response to all the environmentalcriticism it had received for failing to support the Biodiversity Convention and forholding out against clear dates and targets for stabilising greenhouse gas emissionsin the climate change convention (Johnson 1993:110–11). The compromise waswidely seen as a gift to the Africans, who had otherwise received little from theUNCED process (Chasek 1994:179).

The fact that the Plan of Action to Combat Desertification was perceived tohave failed, that the Desertification Convention was the first internationalagreement to be negotiated after the Earth Summit, and that it was proposed bythe developing rather than the industrialised countries, all contributed significantlyto the distinctive character of the convention. For example, the criticism of thePlan of Action for not giving sufficient attention to socioeconomic factors meantthat they were considered legitimate topics for debate in the negotiations for theconvention. Scientific and technical fixes were not as central to the debate as theymight otherwise have been. The attention to socioeconomic considerations wasreinforced by the principles agreed at the Earth Summit in the Rio Declaration,for example the emphasis on community participation and on eradicating poverty.Because it was a convention proposed by developing countries, questions of theinequalities between North and South, and the argument that environmentalprotection should not be at the cost of development, were prominent in the debate.


These influences were apparent in the guidelines set out for the Secretariat ofthe Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Desertification (INCD) in UNResolution 47/188. They helped ensure that the debates were open andcomprehensive, not dominated by scientific and technical matters. The emphasiswas not just on targeting local people and local action, but on involving local peoplefully in decisions, respecting indigenous knowledge, and recognising the role ofwomen. This local focus did not preclude discussions of broader socioeconomicissues. Questions of poverty, land tenure, international trade and Third World debtwere all considered legitimate topics for debate, although some of the developedcountries tried to exclude them.

The person recommended by the UN General Assembly to chair thenegotiations was Bo Kjellén, who had chaired the UNCED PrepCom sessionwhere desertification had been discussed. Interviewed before the convention’snegotiations began, he said that the desertification issue ‘is very much an exampleof the clear link between development and environment and it is an issue wherethe very notion of poverty is at the centre’ (CCF 1993). Thus the debate was asmuch about development problems as it was about environmental ones, to thepoint where some delegates questioned whether it was a legitimate topic for anenvironmental convention at all.

6.3NEGOTIATING THE CONVENTION

UN Resolution 47/188, passed by the General Assembly in December 1992, seta tight schedule for the negotiations and a deadline for governments to reachagreement on the adoption of a convention within 18 months, by June 1994.Responsibility for administering the negotiations was delegated to a speciallyappointed Secretariat, answerable directly to the General Assembly, not to theUNEP. This was a reflection of the growing disillusion of developing countrieswith UNEP, because they perceived it to be increasingly biased towards Northernenvironmental concerns. Stripping UNEP of a leading role in environmentalnegotiations and giving overall control to the UN General Assembly theoreticallygives greater power to the developing countries, because they are in the majority,and places greater emphasis on development (Porter and Brown 1991:50–51).

A preliminary session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee washeld in New York in January 1993 to discuss the organisation of the negotiations.Delegates to that meeting elected Bo Kjellén as Chair, adopted the rules ofprocedure, established two working groups, and set the dates and venues for thefive substantive negotiating sessions (the first from 24 May to 3 June 1993 in Paris,the second from 13 to 24 September 1993 in Geneva, the third from 17 to 28January 1994 in New York, the fourth from 21 to 31 March 1994 in Geneva andthe fifth from 6 to 18 June in Paris).

A panel of experts was established to assist the Secretariat on technical, legal andother matters. It was multidisciplinary, including not only scientific and technical


experts but social scientists as well. There were 15 on the panel, representing allregions of the world. The panel was scheduled to meet roughly six weeks beforeeach negotiating session. In addition, inter-agency meetings were planned to followeach meeting of the panel of experts.

In previous multilateral environmental negotiations, the scope and magnitudeof the problem, its primary causes, and the type of international action required toaddress the problem have been defined before the main negotiations, within aseparate conference, within a committee of a UN agency or organisation, or withina special working group (IISD 1993, Chasek 1994). But in this case, for the firsttime, the information-sharing and issue-definition phase formed part of the firstfull negotiating session. While the panel of experts, the inter-agency working groupand various national governments made suggestions to the Secretariat aboutpossible formats for the convention before the negotiations began, they did notlimit the scope of the initial debate.

The first phase of the negotiations, identifying and defining the problem, andthe second, exchanging statements of initial positions, took up most of the firstsession and part of the second. The scientific, technical, economic and socialdimensions of the problem were all discussed, under seven headings: desertification,drought and the global environment; causes, extent and physical consequences;social and economic dimensions; pattern of existing assistance programmes,including those of NGOs; experience of existing programmes in developingcountries; experiences of developed countries; and possible new strategies topromote sustainable development. Some delegations emphasised national and locallevel approaches to combating desertification such as capacity building. Othersemphasised the need to deal with the international dimensions of the problem suchas trade, commodity prices and debt. Several governments emphasised theimportance of cooperation with NGOs.

Although some delegations emphasised the degree of scientific and technicaluncertainty surrounding the natural and socioeconomic causes and consequencesof desertification, and the difficulties of arriving at adequate definitions, eventuallythere was consensus that enough was known to provide a basis for the convention’snegotiations.

By the end of the first session, consensus was also reached on a number of otherissues. There was general agreement on the need to reinforce local participationand action, involve NGOs, encourage the full participation of women, andrecognise the contribution of indigenous technology and practices. The idea ofnational and sub-regional action programmes was also strongly supported, as wasthe need for improved research and development, data collection and analysis,exchange of information, and transfer and adaptation of technology.

The main sticking point at this stage concerned the priority to be given todrafting a regional annex for Africa, relative to annexes for other regions. Somecountries, notably Brazil and Mexico, argued that it would be difficult to persuadetheir governments to accept the convention unless annexes for regions other thanAfrica were drawn up at the same time, rather than being considered after the main


text of the convention had been adopted. There was also some controversyconcerning the extent of international commitments. African countries and someother developing countries argued that the international commitments should bestrong, whereas other countries argued that the commitments should come mainlyfrom the countries affected.

The second session was mainly devoted to a thorough reading of the‘Compilation of Government Views, Statements and Drafting Proposals’, preparedby the Secretariat, to identify areas of convergence and divergence.

The debate on definitions was brought to a close by agreeing to adopt thedefinitions to which most governments had already agreed at the Earth Summit.This was not without significance in that, whereas UNEP’s 1991 definition hadstressed the role of human activities in causing desertification, the Earth Summitdefinition explicitly acknowledged the part played by climate, allowing thepossibility of introducing arguments about climate change and thus shifting someof the responsibility to industrialised countries, as well as strengthening argumentsabout the truly global nature of the problem. It put developing countries in astronger position to demand assistance from other countries, as predicted byToulmin (1993).

The debate about the global nature of the problem continued during the secondsession. The OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)opposed references to desertification as a global problem. The EC wanted theconvention to focus on specific desertification problems and to avoid generalreferences concerning the eradication of poverty. The G 77 argued thatdesertification and drought should be considered a global problem in the broadestsense possible, acknowledging the wider social and economic causes. Eventually acompromise statement was agreed that was sufficiently ambiguous to encompassboth positions. Instead of referring to it as a global problem, or saying‘desertification and/or drought affects all continents and is thus a problem of globaldimensions’ as in the first draft, the text said ‘Recalling that Agenda 21, Chapter12, …recognizes desertification and/or drought as a problem of global dimension,in that it affects one-sixth of the world’s population and one quarter of the totalland area of the world and requires a broad response’. In later sessions this waswatered down, so that the final text reads ‘Acknowledging that desertification anddrought are problems of global dimension in that they affect all regions of the worldand that joint action of the international community is needed’.

The third phase of the negotiations, negotiating and reaching consensus on themain body of the text (inserting and deleting brackets around contested words andphrases) continued throughout the third, fourth and fifth sessions. Unresolved issuesat the end of the third session included the scope of the convention (whether ornot it should cover international economic factors such as foreign debt, tradepolicies and poverty) and obligations and commitments (whether or not to includeEuropean Mediterranean countries among those affected, and rapidly developingcountries such as Malaysia among the donors). The debate continued about thetiming of completion of regional annexes other than that for Africa. There was also


debate about the need for establishing new international institutions to helpimplement the convention, resisted by developed countries on the grounds of cost.

Apart from these contested areas, the negotiations were generally seen ascooperative and positive by delegates. Eventually, at the end of the fifth session,after three successive all-night negotiating sessions to resolve remaining difficulties,an agreed text (including regional annexes for Africa, Latin America and theCaribbean, Asia and the northern Mediterranean) was adopted within a few hoursof the original schedule.

The final text of the convention includes only the weakest of commitments onthe part of donor countries to provide extra funding for combating desertification,and emphasises instead the need for better coordination and more effective use ofexisting funds. Developing countries have made a commitment to adopt moreparticipative approaches, but there is no indication of how this is to be achieved.No clear targets or measures of progress on combating desertification have beenagreed. Contentious issues such as terms of trade, and the links betweenindustrialisation, global warming and drought, although mentioned in the text’spreamble, have not been tackled head on because it was argued that they are alreadythe subject of other international negotiations. The text is thus general enough toallow everyone to sign up to it and vague enough to allow plenty of room forinterpretation in its implementation.

6.4NGOS’ ROLE DURING THE NEGOTIATIONS

In agreeing to the proposal for a Desertification Convention, UN Resolution 47/188 specifically invited all relevant NGOs, especially those from developingcountries, to contribute to the negotiations. NGOs wishing to participate couldbecome accredited to the INCD simply by sending the Secretariat basicinformation about their organisation: a summary of the NGO’s purpose, evidencethat their programmes and activities related to desertification, copies of annualreports, proof of their legal registration as a non-profit organisation, a list of theirgoverning body members with their nationality, and a description of theirmembership (if any), its number and distribution.

At the negotiating sessions, NGOs were provided with their own meeting roomand access to computing, printing and photocopying facilities. The procedural rulesfor NGO involvement in the negotiations were similar to those for the EarthSummit, that is to say, NGO representatives were allowed to deliver statements atplenary sessions, and individual NGOs were allowed to make brief statements inthe meetings of the two working groups with the permission of the chair. NGOswere also able to air their concerns and promote their views through a range ofinformal briefings and other meetings with government delegations and UNofficials, and through daily editions of the NGO newsletter ECO. NGOs wereallowed to send a representative to the meetings of the inter-agency group, whichthey did from the second session onwards.


More than 100 representatives from 48 NGOs attended the first session, held inNairobi. Between the first and fifth sessions, the number of NGOs accredited withthe Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee almost doubled, increasing from173 to 300. Many of those actively taking part were from Africa, and they includedlocal grassroots NGOs who had never attended an international negotiating sessionbefore, let alone had the opportunity to play an advocacy role in such a forum.

Initially Kenyan NGOs took the lead in coordinating NGO activity, notsurprisingly, since the first session was held in Nairobi and Nairobi-based NGOssuch as KENGO (Kenya Energy and Environment Organisations) and ELCI(Environment Liaison Centre International) are accustomed to working atgovernment and UN agency level. KENGO and ELCI helped arrangeaccommodation and transport for NGO participants and set up a series ofpreliminary meetings in advance of the first session to begin to develop a jointNGO position. First KENGO held a meeting of Kenyan NGOs to feed into thepreparations of Kenya’s official delegation, then they organised a three-dayworkshop for NGOs from all over Africa. Immediately afterwards, ELCI organiseda two-day meeting with NGOs from both within and outside Africa, whichresulted in a joint NGO statement on combating desertification that was deliveredat a plenary meeting during the first session. This statement addressed the issues ofbiodiversity, climate change, the inequitable distribution of resources, and theimpact of international trade, external debt and colonialism. It argued thatprogrammes to combat desertification should be community-led, recognise therole of women and involve the use of appropriate technologies based on a mix ofindigenous knowledge and modern science.

Despite this promising start at developing a coordinated position, the firstnegotiating session resulted in heated discussions between African and non-AfricanNGOs. Some representatives of African NGOs felt that NGOs from Asia, LatinAmerica and Europe should be excluded from their meetings. When the officialnegotiations stalled over the priority to be given to the drafting of the differentregional instruments, the NGOs divided on this issue along regional lines, withnon-African NGOs supporting the position of their own countries. This rift onprocedural matters reduced the opportunities for lobbying on more substantiveissues and NGOs left the first session feeling that they had made little headway.

To provide an opportunity for NGOs to share their experiences andagree concrete proposals before the second session of the negotiations, the INCDSecretariat, with funds from the Dutch Government, set up an NGO meeting inBamako in Mali, which over 100 representatives from Asia, USA, Europe, Australiaand Africa attended. Technical presentations by invited experts helped to brief theNGOs on the problems of drought and desertification, and case studies of NGOinvolvement in measures to combat desertification in different parts of the worldwere presented. The issues raised were then discussed in workshops and plenarysessions, which resulted in a set of proposals which formed the basis of subsequentNGO input to the negotiations. However, little attention was given toorganisational matters such as developing a coordinated lobbying strategy or work


plan, so that in these respects NGOs attended the second session as ill-prepared asat the first.

During the second session the NGOs began to make their presence felt amongthe official delegates, especially by means of their daily newsletter, ECO. But thelack of coordination remained a source of frustration among some NGOs. Eventhough the session was held in Geneva, few Northern NGOs attended and itbecame clear they did not consider the convention a priority, which wasdisheartening for those who did take part.

After the second session the International Development and Research Centre(IDRC) in Canada decided to help NGOs to articulate their points of view moreclearly. They organised regional workshops on various themes relating to thenegotiations, such as traditional knowledge systems and structural adjustmentprogrammes. These workshops allowed NGOs to share their experiences andposition themselves on each of the issues.

The third session marked a turning point for NGOs in that they became muchbetter organised. On the basis of their experience gained during the first twosessions and with increased awareness of their shared goals, NGOs were able toagree a programme of action for lobbying delegates. Each NGO was assignedspecific tasks to undertake. NGOs met with delegations from various countries andwith intergovernmental organisations to put across their views. They attended theregional meetings of the African delegates and the G 77. Meetings with theChairman and Executive Secretary helped clarify the procedures for NGOparticipation and gave NGOs the confidence to contribute to the negotiatingsessions. On several occasions statements made by NGOs were fully endorsed byofficial delegations. To keep up the momentum between sessions, NGOs agreedto establish four working groups, one to address each of the major issues on theagenda for the following session.

At the fourth session, NGOs felt they were able to make a real contribution tothe negotiations. This view was supported by the praise they received for theirefforts from several of the official delegations. Their suggestion that nationaldesertification trust funds should be established and managed by representativesfrom government, donors, researchers and the community, as a way of channellingdonor funds to where they were most needed, was picked up by delegates anddeveloped further. During this session, the NGOs began to look ahead to theimplementation of the convention and to plan among themselves the creation ofan NGO desertification network. A task force was formed to work on ideas forthis network for discussion during the fifth session.

At the fifth session, NGOs concentrated on lobbying delegates to guard againstwatering down of the convention in the final stages. Proposals for the NGOdesertification network were discussed further by the NGOs, in preparation for ameeting to establish the network to be held later in the year once the conventionhad been adopted.

Overall, NGOs generally felt very positive about the negotiating process andthe extent to which they had been able to influence decision making. More than


any previous international treaty, the text reflected a recognition by governmentsof the importance of involving local communities in designing and implementingenvironmental action programmes, and of the role that NGOs can play in achievingthat involvement. It included more than 30 references to the contribution of NGOsand community-based organisations. NGOs were particularly pleased that theiridea for the establishment of national desertification trust funds was mentioned inthe final text.

Despite these achievements, there was some disappointment among theSecretariat that the NGOs did not achieve more, given that the whole ethos of theconvention and the way the issue was defined were made for NGO involvement.The larger international development and environmental NGOs were conspicuousby their absence, and the participation of Northern NGOs was limited. Themajority of the NGOs that did attend lacked advocacy experience and it was notuntil about the third session that NGOs became sufficiently well coordinated tomake an impression.

Although the broad definition of the issue made it possible for NGOs to raise awide range of concerns, including, for example, the question of reforms to landtenure, in some ways the vagueness and lack of focus made it difficult to make theirvoice heard and establish a recognisable NGO position. For the most part, NGOswere supporting the developing countries’ position and were raising points that atleast some national delegates were also raising. While some developing countrieswere not too enthusiastic about increased community participation and NGOinvolvement in the implementation of the convention, the task of convincing themwas made relatively easy by the support of other delegates for the NGOs’ role.Sensitive topics raised by NGOs were not allowed to be dismissed. For instance,when the Kenyan NGO KENGO, speaking on behalf of all the NGOs, raised theissue of land tenure reform, the Kenyan delegation responded with a warning thatthe convention should not interfere with national government policies. But at asubsequent briefing session, the convention’s executive secretary let NGOs knowthat arguments about national sovereignty, used to prevent debate about issuesfundamental to the convention, demonstrated a country’s lack of commitment tothe negotiating process and would be recorded as such. Thus in many ways theNGOs were pushing against an open door.

In many respects the more important influence was not that of the NGOs onthe negotiations, but the reverse—the influence of the negotiations on the NGOs.Especially for grassroots African NGOs, the negotiating process provided themwith a valuable opportunity to learn from each other’s experiences, to establishfriendships and networks, and generally to build up their capacity for bothcoordinated and individual action. The establishment of an NGO desertificationnetwork, called RIOD (Réseau International des ONG sur la Desertification), isone tangible outcome of this increased cooperation. With global, regional,subregional and national focal points to help disseminate information, RIODshould help ensure that the interaction and momentum achieved by NGOs duringthe negotiations are maintained.


6.5NGOS’ ROLE OVER THE LONGER TERM

While a detached assessment suggests that NGO influence on the negotiations wasless than it might have been, partly because of the absence of the larger and moreexperienced international NGOs, this assessment fails to take account of NGOinfluence over the longer term. It can be argued that NGOs are at least partlyresponsible for the shift in thinking that distinguishes the Convention to CombatDesertification from the earlier international response, the Plan of Action toCombat Desertification.

The whole philosophy underpinning the convention, for example, its emphasison the need to adopt a more decentralised participatory approach and to build onindigenous knowledge, is one that international development NGOs, amongstothers, have been promoting strongly to donor agencies and agricultural researchorganisations since at least the mid-1980s. It is a philosophy that has been wellarticulated in an influential series of books and other publications by RobertChambers, amongst others (see for example, Chambers 1983, Chambers et al. 1989,Farrington 1988).

The international NGOs have been able to reinforce this message by publicisingthe achievements of NGOs and community-based organisations working in thefield at the grassroots. As a result, there has been increasing recognition bydevelopment banks and agencies of the strengths of NGOs compared withgovernment organisations: for example, their willingness to work closely with localcommunities under difficult conditions, and the rapport and trust they are able toestablish with the people they serve.

The panel of experts appointed to advise the Secretariat for the Conventionincluded people who were identified closely with this philosophy. For example,the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), aninternational NGO based in the UK, was represented on the panel. IIED alsoprovided advice and prepared discussion papers for the UK and the EC, as the basisfor developing a shared understanding of the issues and establishing commonpositions.

What remains to be seen is whether or not anything changes on the ground asa result of the convention. It is easy to underestimate the scale of organisationalchange required in many countries before the participation of local communitiesand farmers in decision making can come into effect. Grassroots NGOs such asthose in Africa are now well placed to play an active part in the implementationof the convention. The worry is that far too much will be expected of them. Theirresources may be so stretched that they will be unable to meet agreed objectivesand thus risk a backlash against the involvement of NGOs. Donors still have tofind mechanisms to handle large numbers of small initiatives rather than a few largeones, and may prefer to channel funds through apex NGOs that are not well attunedto grassroots needs. Resistance on the part of some governments to allowing NGOsa greater role still has to be overcome.


6.6DISCUSSION

In overall terms, the drafting of the Desertification Convention followed theformula agreed in UN General Assembly Resolution 44/228 that establishedUNCED: that developing countries would reorient their economic developmentpolicies to be more environmentally sound and that industrialised countries wouldfacilitate this process by assisting with the transfer of technology and financialassistance (Chasek 1994:67). As described in IISD (1994), African countries cameto the negotiating table with great expectations, hoping that they would receiveadditional resources. Non-African developing countries came with varyingagendas: to ensure that their country’s desertification problems would be recognisedand assistance offered, that agreements reached at the Earth Summit would behonoured, and that they would not be obliged to assist African states. The OECDcountries came with the intention of resisting demands for additional resources onthe grounds that existing resources could be used more efficiently. The G 77representing the developing countries splintered into regional groups (Asia, Africaand Latin America) over the question of regional annexes and the priority to begiven to Africa. Further splits in the position of the developing countries appearedover the question of whether or not rapidly developing countries such as Malaysiaand Brazil should be included with developed countries among the donors. Thesesplits served to weaken the developing countries’ bargaining position over thequestion of additional financial resources.

The principal way in which definitions were manipulated to serve particularinterests reflected this central concern about financial resources. This explains theprotracted debate, begun at UNCED, about whether or not the problem shouldbe defined as global. Various opinions appear in the literature about thecharacteristics of an environmental problem that warrant its description as global.Thus Porter and Brown (1991) base their definition on the scope of theenvironmental consequences and the geographic scope of the actors involved: ‘Ifthe consequences are global, or if the actors in the issue transcend a single region,we consider it global’. Potter and Taylor, in the introductory paper to this volume,use a similar definition. On the basis of this definition, desertification would beconsidered a global problem. Keohane et al. (1993), while not referring to problemsas global, distinguish between two classes of environmental problems that confrontthe international community. The first are those where direct harm is transmittedfrom one country to another, either affecting the country directly (a trans-boundaryproblem) or affecting a common resource (a commons problem). The second arethose in which direct harm is only felt within national borders but which requireinternational resources to help resolve them. On this basis, desertification wouldfall into the second category. Since opinions vary about the use of the term global,and it could justifiably be argued that indirect as well as direct causes and harmshould be considered, there was plenty of scope for manipulation of this definition


so as to promote particular interests during the negotiations for the DesertificationConvention.

Implications concerning financial resources also underlay the debate aboutwhether or not the convention should address possible indirect causes ofdesertification, such as international economic relations and climate change.Eventually the OECD managed to suppress this debate by arguing that these issueswere already covered by other international negotiations. The rapidly developingcountries were able to absolve themselves from making financial commitments bygetting agreement to a definition of donor countries as equivalent to developedcountries, rather than to ‘parties in a position to provide assistance’.

Given the uncertainty surrounding the issue of desertification, there wasrelatively little political manipulation of definitions. Apart from the issue of financialsupport, generally speaking there were no strong national economic interests to besafeguarded, so there was relatively little to be gained from promoting particulardefinitions of the problem at the international level. The incorporation of the issuedefinition stage into the main negotiations during the first week provided theopportunity for a wide range of opinions to be aired, but that done, the proposalto leave definitions to the working group on scientific and technical matters, andsubsequently to base key definitions on those used in previous internationalagreements, seems to have met little resistance. The regional annexes helped toaccommodate differences in the way the problem was perceived.

International agreement on a Desertification Convention was reached barelytwo years after the Earth Summit, even though the first proposal for a conventionwas only made at the final PrepCom meeting before the Summit. By contrast, thereis as yet no agreement to begin negotiations on a Global Forests’ Convention, eventhough such a convention was first proposed two years before the Earth Summitand the proposal was vigorously promoted by developed countries throughout theEarth Summit negotiations. Examination of the literature on general theories ofregime formation, as well as that on more specific factors that encourageinternational cooperation, can help to account for the relative ease with which aDesertification Convention was agreed.

General theories on regime formation fall into three categories, those that arepower-based, those that are interest-based and those based on cognitive factors, assummarised in Paper 4 in this volume. In the case of the DesertificationConvention, straightforward power-based theories do not seem to apply, since itwas the African states, which on any measure of power would normally beconsidered weak, that overcame the resistance of the USA and, to a lesser extent,the European Union to their proposal for a Convention. Even drawing thedefinition of power-based factors more widely, as Paper 4 does for tropical forests,to include the power that derives from the possession of environmental goodsdemanded by international society, a commitment to control land degradation onthe part of African states confers little bargaining power. Although the biodiversityof dryland areas might have been used in this way as a bargaining device, it did notfeature prominently in the negotiations either for the proposal for a convention or


for the convention itself. The attempted trade-off between forests anddesertification might be interpreted as involving power-related factors, in whichcase the lack of power of African states over Malaysia and India might help explainwhy the attempt failed.

Interest-based theories seem to have greater explanatory potential, although stillleaving certain questions unanswered. African states certainly saw it as in theirinterests to negotiate a Desertification Convention, since they hoped it would bringwith it a commitment from developed countries to provide them with additionalfunds. Unlike a commitment to protect forests, a commitment to combatdesertification could not be construed by developing countries as a constraint todevelopment and a threat to a sovereign natural resource. However, interest-basedtheories do not fully explain why the developed countries, especially those littleaffected by desertification, agreed to cooperate, except insofar as they may havegiven way in the face of accusations of a strong bias in favour of Northern interestsin the overall balance of the outcomes of UNCED. This concession could beinterpreted as being relatively harmless to Northern interests and worth making toease relations with developing countries concerning other environmental issues.

Although cognitive theories, ascribing international cooperation to the influenceof authoritative knowledge, help to explain the successful negotiation of someinternational environmental agreements (as described in Paper 4 earlier in thisvolume), they do not seem to apply to the Desertification Convention, which hasbeen agreed despite a remarkable lack of scientific consensus.

Apart from these general theories about regime formation, other more specificfactors have been suggested as promoting or hindering international cooperationin the management of environmental problems. These are examined below to seeif they add to an understanding of why a Desertification Convention was relativelyeasy to agree.

Several of the factors relate to the interest-based theories already mentioned, butthey help account in more detail for the bargaining process. For example, sincemost international agreements depend on the parties involved reaching a consensus,rather than on a majority vote, a successful outcome depends on the negotiationof a ‘win-win’ situation, where all parties feel they have something to gain. Young(1989) refers to this as integrative bargaining, as opposed to distributive bargainingwhere each party attempts to get the best deal regardless of the cost to others.

Agreement is thus less easy to achieve where there are clearly identifiable losers,for example, where proposals threaten significant economic interests or sovereignrights over natural resources. This helps explain why opposition at UNCED to theproposal for a global forests’ convention was fierce, whereas opposition to aDesertification Convention was relatively easily overcome. It also helps explainwhy the reform of land tenure was one of the more contentious issues raised duringthe negotiations for the Desertification Convention.

Young (1989) suggests that international agreement is more easily achieved whenthe problem involves several different issues. These provide opportunities for thenegotiating parties to trade off concessions on one issue against those on another.


While this appears to have been a factor at UNCED in the initial agreement tocommence negotiations for a Desertification Convention, it was possibly lesssignificant during the actual negotiating process. The main potential trade-off, thatbetween a commitment to combat desertification on the part of the developingcountries and a commitment to provide additional financial resources on the partof donor countries, was biased against developing countries since desertificationwas not one of the donor countries’ main environmental concerns.

Young (1989) also suggests that international agreement is more easily achievedwhen the issue involves uncertainty about potential impacts, both of the problemitself and of alternative solutions. For example, in the case of acid rain it is relativelyeasy to identify the victims and villains. When there is little overlap between thetwo there is little incentive to reach agreement about managing the problem. Inthe case of radioactive fall-out from nuclear accidents, it is not clear in advancewho might be affected so that it is in everyone’s interest to negotiate to prevent anaccident. In the case of desertification, affected countries are readily identifiable sothere is no obvious incentive for unaffected countries to enter an agreement, unlessthe boundary of the problem and its impacts is drawn more widely to include thepotential of poverty and famine to lead to international destabilisation.

It is more important that the negotiating parties feel that their concerns havebeen treated fairly and that the commitments proposed are equitable than that costsand benefits are allocated as efficiently as possible (Young 1989). In the negotiationsfor the Desertification Convention, the concession that an annex for each regionshould be drafted simultaneously, rather than an annex for Africa being agreed firstand annexes for other regions being agreed after the convention had been adopted,probably helped fulfil this condition.

Several authors suggest that international cooperation is more readily achievedif there is perceived to be a crisis, rather than a ‘creeping’ problem (Young 1989,Keohane et al. 1993, Litfin 1993). This is especially so if the impact is highly visible(Litfin 1993). While land degradation is a creeping problem, when redefined as‘desertification’ it tends to be perceived as a crisis, especially in times of droughtand famine. The widespread drought in Africa in the lead-up to UNCED almostcertainly contributed to international agreement to negotiate a DesertificationConvention. The lack of a similar crisis over the period of the actual negotiationsmay have meant that fewer concessions were made by donor countries than mightotherwise have been the case. Conversely, Chasek (1994) has shown that crisesarising over the negotiating period tend to slow negotiations down, presumablybecause they allow some parties to attempt to strike a tougher bargain than initiallyenvisaged.

Agreement is more likely if there is a specific deadline, especially one that islikely to attract politically embarrassing media coverage if it is missed (Chasek 1994,Mintzer and Leonard 1994). This appears to have been an important factor inforcing the USA and EC to agree to the proposals for a Desertification Conventionin the final stages of the Earth Summit. It also forced agreement on severalcontentious issues, especially those relating to finance, in the last few days of the


negotiations for the Desertification Convention, even though the deadline in thiscase was not so publicly visible.

Several authors consider that pressure from non-state actors, particularlyenvironmental groups and transnational alliances of scientists, in conjunction withthe media and the public, are of key importance in prompting governments tocooperate on environmental issues (for example, Keohane et al. 1993, Litfin 1993).However, in the case of the Desertification Convention it was the affected statesthemselves that took the initiative.

One further factor in achieving international agreement is the existence of aneffective leader and mediator (Young 1989, Chasek 1994). This role may be takenby a state, a non-governmental organisation or an individual. The leader needs tobe skilled at brokering the overlapping interests of different parties and at inventingnew institutional arrangements. Bo Kjellén certainly seems to have played a keyrole in overcoming barriers to agreement on the Desertification Convention,setting up informal consultations whenever the negotiations stalled, especially overthe issue of the priority to be given to different regional annexes (Chasek 1994:193).

In several respects the way the issue was defined provided NGOs with moreopportunities to influence the outcome than at previous international negotiations.For example, because the lead was taken by the developing countries, there wasfar greater emphasis on cross-cutting issues such as trade and poverty than therehad been in the conventions negotiated before UNCED. From the outset therewas a recognition that the full involvement of local people would be essential tosustainable action to combat desertification. The practical experience of NGOs inworking with local people was acknowledged and NGO representatives wereinvited to participate in the initial information-sharing session.

But NGOs failed to take full advantage of the opportunities offered because mostof those present lacked lobbying experience and were not well coordinated in thecritical early stages. Haufler (1993) suggests that the relation between states andnon-state actors in international negotiations tends to be of two forms. In the first,the state is dominant, using NGOs to provide ideas about practices and norms andto help in some aspects of implementation. In the second, the roles are reversed,or states and non-state actors play a relatively equal role in devising andimplementing a regime.

The NGO role in the Desertification Convention falls firmly into the firstcategory. In part this is because that is the role that governments andintergovernmental organisations prefer NGOs to play (Finger 1994:186), and inpart because of the lack of involvement of the large international NGOs based inthe North. Finger (1994) suggests that the implicit UNCED model for NGOinvolvement is a lobbying rather than a consultative one. This favours well-organised groups with experienced lobbyists and substantial resources such as theWorld Resources Institute (WRI), the International Union for the Conservationof Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and the World Wide Fund for Nature(WWF), which played little or no active role in the negotiations for theDesertification Convention. It may be that the virtually open-door policy that


operated for NGO participation at the Desertification Convention’s negotiationsserved the purposes of the official delegates well, since it provided a range ofperspectives to draw on but reduced the likelihood of coordinated lobbying byNGOs on any substantive issues other than the need for the greater involvementof NGOs.

As Finger (1994) has observed in the case of UNCED, and Rahman andRoncerel (1994:240) in the case of the Climate Change Convention, the maininfluence was that of the negotiating process on the NGOs rather than the otherway round. NGOs that had previously operated in isolation at the local level wereforced to forge alliances and acquire lobbying skills. If they can build on thisexperience, and if they can enlist the support of Northern NGOs and Northernpublics, they should be able to use the convention to make progress on some oftheir main objectives. Working out ways to define the issue in terms that engagethe attention and support of people in the North, and through them thecommitment of politicians, will be critical to their success.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The support of the UK Economic and Social Research Council under its GlobalEnvironmental Change Initiative and of the Open University is gratefullyacknowledged.

The information included in this paper about the negotiations for theDesertification Convention is derived from three main sources: attendance at thenegotiations and ancilliary meetings, discussions with people involved, anddocumentation associated with the negotiations. One of us (Roger Mpande)attended most of the negotiating sessions, representing ZERO, as well as the mainmeetings of Southern NGOs, and drafted the official NGO submission forSouthern Africa. The other (Susan Carr) attended the meeting of Northern NGOsheld after the adoption of the Convention. We are particularly grateful for helpfuldiscussions about the negotiations with the following people: Sylvia Jampies (UNNGO Liaison Officer), Heinz Greijn (Environment Liaison Centre International,Kenya, which is now designated as RIOD’s global focal point), Camilla Toulmin(International Institute for Environment and Development and member ofthe INCD Expert Panel), Bukar Hassan (Federal Environmental ProtectionAgency, Nigeria, and member of Nigeria’s official delegation to the INCD), andEnoch Okpara (NGO participant from the Nigerian Environmental Study/ActionTeam, which is now designated as RIOD’s regional focal point for West Africa).Documentation referred to includes the Earth Negotiations Bulletin and the NGOnewsletters (ECO) published during the negotiations, the first to ninth Circular onDesertification published by ELCI, and draft and final versions of the Convention.


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Index

accountability, 28, 39, 44, 46, 54acid rain, 154Adams, W.M., 136, 137, 138adat law, 16Agarwal, Anil, 94;

and proposals on UNCED forestsdebate, 94, 95

agency and structure, 3agenda setting, 2, 26, 30, 45, 57–57, 109–

17, 136, 141, 142, 143–58;see also policy process

agro-ecological potential, 45albedo, 139alliances (NGOs), 6, 29;

longer term NGO collaboration style,70;see also coalitions;networking;networks

American Dust Bowl, 138Amnesty International, 10, 11, 41appropriate technologies, 146Asahan River, 16, 17, 18ASEAN:

alliance of timber producing states in, 78Asia, 9, 145, 146, 147, 151Asian Development Bank, 12, 18Asian NGO Coalition (ANGOC)Asia-Pacific Peoples Environmental

Network (APPEN), 20, as NGOinformation bridging organisation, 70

Assam, 10assistance programmes, 144Aubréville, A., 138Audobon Society, 93Australia, 147

Austrian timber labelling scheme, 71–7, 75authoritarian political context, 4, 9autonomous organisation(s), 54, 56

Bakun Dam:and exclusion of NGOs from decision-making, 79

Bangalore, 29Bapedal, Indonesia, 19bargaining, distributive, 86, 101, 153bargaining, integrative, 86, 101, 153bargaining power, 151, 152, 153Barisan Nasional, 127Batak people, 16Belcher, M., 12biological diversity (biodiversity), 14, 59,

141, 142, 146, 152Bogor, 12Boro river, dredging, 53 (map)Botswana, 5, 35–62;

closed policy network, 57;Department of Water Affairs, 49, 50;diamonds, 49;drought, 141;EC beef quota, 49, 50;fencing, 45, 47–48;New Agricultural Policy, 45, 47–48;paternalistic developmentalism, 47, 55;Tribal Grazing Land Policy, 48;welfare provision, 47

Brazil, 85;and desertification convention, 144,151;and global NGO rainforest dissensus, 69;harassment of NGOs, 74;

159

local and US NGO joint campaigning,67, 76, 131

Bretton Woods institutions, 38Brown, J.W., 86, 102, 143, 151, 158Bruenig, E.F., 121, 123Bulawayo, 45, 46, 50–6, 52 (map), 54bumiputera, 129business enterprise/capitalist enterprise, 2,

15

campaigning, issue-based, 41‘Campfire’ programme/projects, 44, 49, 55,

56, 57;‘Campfire’ Co-ordinating Group(CCG), 48, 55, 57, 57

Canada, 16capacity building, 144carrying capacity of land, 139cash crops, 140cattlepost system, 46, 57Central Investment Co-ordinating Board,

Indonesia, 16Centre for Science and Environment

(CSE), 94, 94Chambers, R., 149, 156Chasek, P.S., 142, 143, 150, 154, 154, 156Chile, 28Chipko movement, 2Christiansen, L., 41civil rights, 39, 44civil society, 2, 37, 43;

weak in Botswana, 40, 44, 47Clark, J., 41class, 7Climate Action Network (CAN):

as information NGO bridgingorganisation, 70;financial support for Southern NGOs,74

climate change, 136, 141, 145, 146, 151,155, 156, 158;see also global warming;and deforestation, 101–9;and greenhouse gas emissions, 142

coalitions, 6;instrumental NGO collaboration style,70;

see also alliances, networking;networks

collaboration, 5, 41, 42, 43, 47, 49, 57, 58colonialism, 138, 146commercial farmland, 45commercial ranching, 46commodity prices, 140, 144commons problem, 126–4, 151communal areas, 49communal institutions, 46communal lands, 45, 46–9, 47–48, 54communal tenure, 45, 46communities, forest/indigenous, 14, 16,

21, 29, 70, 130community-based resource management,

44, 45, 48–2, 57, 57community-led programmes, 146comparative advantage (of NGO activities),

42comparative politics/comparative analysis,

vii, 7complementary activities, 42, 43, 47, 49, 52,

55, 58complementing the state, 41Conca, K., 136, 156confrontation, 5, 42, 44, 47, 50, 52, 55, 58consciousness-raising, 5, 42, 44conservationists, 56Consortium for Action to Protect the Earth

’92 (CAPE ’92), 93constraints and opportunities, 3continuous democracies, 39Convention on Biological Diversity

(CBD), 91, 142Convention on Climate Change, 91Convention to Combat Desertification

(CCD), 6, 59, 136–66;regional annexes to, 144, 145, 151, 152,154, 154;see also International NegotiatingCommittee on Desertification

cooption, 44;risk of, 41, 58

‘creeping’ problem, 154CS First Boston Corporation, 19cultural influences, 136, 137–6


Cs, four (collaboration, complementaryactivities, confrontation, consciousness-raising), 42

De Beers, 50debt, 140, 142, 144, 145, 146debt-for-nature swaps: facilitated by North-

South NGO networks, 66;and North-South NGO divisions, 69

deforestation, 14;costs of, 100–8;and demand for fuelwood, 21;and global warming, 101–9;see also forest conversion;tropical forests

democracy, 35–62;alternative models of, 37;definition of, 4–5;features of, 37–40;liberal democratic model of, 37;multi-party, 37;one party model of, 38;socialist, 37

democratic political context, 4, 9, 28, 29democratisation, 5, 7, 38, 57desert encroachment, 138desertification, 59, 136–66;

see also land degradation;soil erosion

desertification trust funds, 148developmentalism, 57Dharwad District, India, 24, 25‘Diamonds are for Death’ campaign, 50dipterocarp forests, 117, 122direct advocacy, 41Donnelly, J., 87donors, 56, 80–7, 148, 149, 150;

donor community, 38;and Tropical Forestry ActionProgramme, 89, 90

Dowding, K., 41drought, 138, 139, 140, 141, 144, 145, 145,

147, 154, 158drought alleviation, 43dual grazing rights, 46

Earth First!:

1992 Malaysian campaign, 76‘Earth Summit’ see United Nations

Conference on Environment andDevelopment

Eccleston, B., 55–9;categorisation of NGO coordinationmethods, 93

Eckholm, E., 21ECO (NGO newsletter), 146, 147, 156econocentric ideology, 127Economic and Social Research Council

(ESRC), 6economic liberalisation, 38Edwards, M., 41entryism, 41, 42Environmental and Energy Study Institute,

92Environmental Defense Fund, 93environmental goods, 152environmental impact, 46Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA),

43, 57, 59Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)

Regulations, Indonesia, 18Environmental Protection Society Malaysia

(EPSM), 121environmental politics literature, 7environmental problem, 2, 109–17;

definition of, 2Environment Liaison Center International

(ELCI), 94, 146, 156epistemic communities, 86–3, 101–9eucalyptus plantations, 25, 123Europe, 138, 145, 146, 147, 152European Community (EC), 49, 152European Rainforest Movement (ERM),

19;and Austrian labelling scheme, 71

fencing, 139–7;Botswana, 45, 47–48, 54

FEVORD-K (Federation of VoluntaryOrganisations for Rural Development,Karnataka), 24, 28, 29

Finger, M., 155, 156flood recession agriculture, 49

INDEX 161

Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO),22, 88–6, 91;role in creation of Tropical ForestryAction Programme, 88

food security, 43forest access rights, 118, 127forest conversion, affecting livelihoods in

Sarawak, 122, 130;biodiversity loss, 114, 117–4, 130;climate change, 115–3, 130;competing frames of, 111–18, 119–6;deforestation and degradation, 109–17;fire, 115;incorporating into policy agendas, 109–17;water management in Sabah, 114;see also deforestation;tropical forests

Forestry Advisers Group, 90Forest Stewardship Council, 97, 99–7, 102–

11;Founding Assembly of, 99;institutional arrangements of, 99

Fowler, A., 42Friends of the Earth (FoE), 19, 102;

and Forest Stewardship Council, 100;and WALHI, 29;as international NGO, 29, 71;position on negotiation of InternationalTropical Timber Agreement, 1994, 97;position on UNCED forests debate, 93,94;timber labelling proposal to the ITTO,91, 99

Gambia, The, 39gap-filling, 43, 55General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

(GATT), 4Gennino, A., 12Gleditsch, N., 9global capitalism, 5, 29Global Coalition for Africa, 38Global Forest Working Group, 93global civil society, 6;

cemented by NGO collaboration, 64–9;

cemented by North-South NGOcollaboration, 65;interlinked national civil societies, 68;see also ‘world civic politics’

global climate models, 139global environmental agenda, 136Global Environmental Change Initiative

(UK), 6Global Environmental Change Programme

at the Open University (GECOU), 6global environmental issue/problem, 2,

141, 145, 151Global Forests Convention, 6;

arguments against, 94–94;proposals for, 91–8, 141, 142, 152, 153

global politics, 30global warming, 101–9, 139, 145;

see also climate changeGOLKAR, 10good governance, 38Grainger, A., 137, 156grassroots level, 42, 89Green Fridge, 42Green Globe Yearbooks, 9Greenpeace, 41, 42, 49, 50, 50, 56, 100;

and Forest Stewardship Council, 100;Greenpeace (Austria), 71

Grindle, M., 2Group of 7 developed countries (G7), 4, 91Group of 77 developing countries (G77), 4,

145, 151;UNCED forests debate draft proposal,91, 92, 94, 95, 125

Gunby, D., 52

Haas, E.B., 86Haas, P.M., 85, 86–3, 101, 102Hanoi, 13Harihar Polyfibres Ltd, 25Haufler, V., 100, 154, 156human rights, 38, 76, 130Huntington, S., 7

IDS (India Development Service), 25IGOs (intergovernmental organization), 2;

as site for NGO collaboration, 64;constrained by nation states, 67


implementation see policy processIndia, 2, 5, 10–11, 152;

democracy in, 10;Eight Five Year Plan, 26;government, 20;National Forest Policy, 22;Seventh Five Year Plan, 22;Supreme Court of, 25

indigenous: knowledge, 59, 142, 144, 146,149;pastoral systems, 139;seed research, 43;technology, 144, 146

Indonesia, 5, 10–11, 12, 14–20;activation of NGO partners in the US,76;divisions civilian/military politicians, 79;exports—timber and rattan, 15;government, 10, 14, 15;harassment of NGOs, 74;Indonesia Legal Aid Association, 18, 19;logging concessions/concessionaires, 15;Ministry of Forestry, 14, 15;Ministry of Industries, 18;Ministry of Population and theEnvironment, 18;pulp and paper industry, 15;significance of externally funded forestprojects, 63;state-business nexus, 28;students, 19

Indonesian Secretariat for the Developmentof Human Resources in Rural Areas(INDHRRA), 12

influence:definition of, 2

insider group, 41institutional innovations, 43interest group research, 3interest groups/’demand groups’, 28intergenerational equity, 4Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee

on Desertification (INCD);accreditation, 145;Panel of Experts, 143, 144, 150, 156;

participation of Northern NGOs, 147, 148,155;procedures for NGO participation, 147;

proposal for desertification trust funds,148;Secretariat, 142, 143, 144, 145, 145,147, 148, 150;see also Convention to CombatDesertification

International Campaign for EcologicalJustice in Indonesia, 19

international conventions and protocols, 6international destabilisation, 154International Development and Research

Centre (IDRC), 147International Institute for Environment and

Development (IIED), 93, 150, 156international interests, 58international organisations, 55international trade, 136, 140, 142, 144, 145,

145, 146, 154;in tropical timber, 87, 91, 98, 99, 100

International Tropical Timber Agreement,1983, 90, 97, 102

International Tropical Timber Agreement,1994, 6, 97–5;North-South disputes over wideningmandate of, 97–5, 125

International Tropical Timber Organisation(ITTO), 4, 6, 90–7, 97–5;mission to Sarawak, 123, 128;NGOs on national delegations to, 91

International Union for the Conservationof Nature and Natural Resources(IUCN), 50, 90–7, 102–10, 155, 130;drafting of the ITTO’s biodiversityguidelines, 91, 102;intervention in the negotiations for theInternational Tropical TimberAgreement,, 90, 102;national delegations to the ITTO, 91

interpenetration of economic and politicalinterests, 129, 131

Irian Jaya, 12irrigation, 49issue:

definition of, 2issue linkage, 116, 130, 141, 142, 145, 152,

153–2issue-specific hegemony, 85, 87

INDEX 163

Jakarta, 12, 15Japan, 15;

as model for environment policy, 126;tropical timber in construction, 127

Java, 12Joint Forest and Planning and Management

(JFPM), Karnataka, 22–28

Kalimanton, 12Karnataka, 11, 20–28;

Forestry Department, 12, 24–28Karnataka Pulpwood Ltd, 25Kashmir, 10Kaunda, K., 38Kelompok Studi Pengembangan Prakarsa

Masyarakat (KSPPM), 16, 19, 29Kenya, 40, 146, 149, 156Kenya Energy and Environment

Organisations (KENGO), 146, 149Keohane, R.O., 85, 88, 101, 151, 154, 154,

156kgotla meetings, 40, 44, 50, 54Kittiko Hachchiko (Pluck and Plont), 25Kjellén, B., 141, 142, 143, 154Klandermans, P.B.:

and NSMs in Europe, 72–8;on adversity solidifying NGO networks,79

Knoke, D.:NSM networks in US civil rightscampaigns, 73

Kochanek, S., 28Korea, 16KRAPP (Indonesian Pesticides Action

Network), 12Krasner, S.D., 85Kripa A.P., 30

Labat Anderson, 19Lake Toba, 16land conservation, 46land degradation, 46, 137, 139, 141, 152,

154;see also desertification;soil erosion

land tenure, 47, 48–2, 52, 59, 140, 142, 148,149, 153;

private, 45, 49;communal, 45, 46

Latin America, 145, 146, 151legitimacy, 41Lesotho, 141Levy, M.A., 101liberal democratic consensus, 39Lipschutz, R.D., 136, 156Litfin, K., 85, 101lobbying, 42, 95, 9lobbying strategies, 102, 146, 147, 148, 154,

155

Macandrews, C., 29Malayan Nature Society (MNS), 121, 123,

130–8;protecting scientific mission, 70;and risks of global collaboration, 80

Malaysia, 6, 145;and desertification convention, 142,151, 152;divisions between federal and local stategovernments, 79;harassment of NGOs, 74;opposition to forests convention, 142;significance of internally funding forestprojects, 63, 80–7

Mali, 147Mankin, B.:

and proposals on UNCED forestsdebate, 94, 94, 95

Matebeleland, 50, 54Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project

(MZWP), 46, 50–6, 55, 56, 57–57, 58 Matebeleland Zambezi Water Trust

(MZWT), 52, 58Maun, 50 (map), 50Mauritius, 39Medan, 19media, 52, 76;

independent, 40, 50Mediterranean countries, 145, 145Mexico, 144mismanagement, perceptions of, 138, 139Mobil Oil, 44mobilisation, 38, 42modernisation theories, 7


Molutsi, P., 40Mortimore, M., 137, 156Moyo, S., 41Mozambique, 141Mpande, R., 52multi-party elections, 37, 38, 39, 44, 54multi-party democracy, 37;

Botswana as example of, 39multi-partyism, 39, 54multi-party system, 55Myers, N., 14, 102Mysore Relief and Development Agency

(MYRADA), 11

Narain, S., 94National Wildlife Federation, 93Natural Resources Defense Council, 93Ndebele, 52;

political leaders, 52neo-liberal economics, 57network analysis, viinetworking, 92;

random NGO collaboration style, 70;see also allicances;coalitions;networks

networks, 6, 96;more active NGO collaboration style,70;see also alliances;coalitions;networking

New Agricultural Policy, Botswana, 45, 47–48;1990 consultative conference, 48

NGOs:apex, 150;definition of, vii–2, 11;desertification network, 48, 148, 149;grass roots, 146, 149, 150;Northern, 5, 42, 94, 147, 148, 155;Southern, 2, 5, 94

nomadic herding, 139non-governmental organisations see NGOsnon-governmental regimes, 100, 102–11North Sumatra, 12, 16–20, 29North-South uneven development, 5

Nyerere, Julius, 38

Okavango (Delta), 46, 49, 50 (map), 50, 56Okavango Wild Life Society (OWLS), 49one-party states, 37;

Zimbabwe virtual example of, 39onion-skin strategy, 42–5opposing the state, 41opposition, 41, 52opposition party, 39, 44Orapa, 53 (map)Organization for Economic Cooperation

and Development (OECD), 145, 150,151;Development Assistance Committee, 38

Osherenko, G., 86overgrazing, 46, 138, 139Overseas Devlopment Administrative

(UK), 26

pancasila, 28participation, 142, 144, 147, 148, 150, 155;

people’s, 38;political, 38, 39, 40, 43, 48, 55

passive resistance, 41Payne, R., 9Pearce, F., 97Penan, 121, 130–8perceptions, 137, 138, 139Pesticides Action Network (PAN):

as NGO collaboration site, 66Philippines, 28Plan of Action to Combat Desertification,

140–8, 142, 149, 158pluralism, 10, 28, 38plurality, 40policy analysis, 2policy network approach, 41policy process, 2, 26, 109–17;

26, 27, 45, 48, 57–57, 109, 123, 155;policy choices, 2, 26, 45, 57–57;stages, 45, 57–57;see also agenda-setting implementation

policy-making processes, 41, 86policy-making system, 56political conditionality, 38, 76political parties, 137, 28

INDEX 165

political rights, 39political space, 56politico-administrative elite, 40, 54, 57Poore, D., 122Porter, G., 86, 92–9, 102, 143, 151, 158Potter, D., 41, 151poverty, 142, 143, 145, 154, 154power centres: alternative, 40;

diversity of, 39, 43;internal plurality of, 44, 54

private enterprise, favourable environmentfor, 39

privatisation, 46, 46, 57productivity, 46Pt Inti Indorayon Utama Ltd, 16Punjab, 10

radioactive fall-out, 154Rahman, A., 155, 158Rainforest Action Network, 19Raja Garuda Mars Group, 16rangeland, 47Rasheed, S., 38 reforming the state, 41regime theory, vii, 84–87, 98–9, 137;

cognitive theories, 86–3, 101–9, 152;interest-based theories, 86, 100–8, 152,153;power-based theories, 85–2, 98, 152,153

regime formation, 152, 155regimes, issue-dense and issue-specific, 87regional workshops: for NGOs, 149, 156Réseau International des ONG sur la

Desertification (RIOD), 149, 156;see also networks;NGOs desertification network

resources, over-exploitation of, 46Roberts, R., 90Roncerel, A., 155, 158Rose, C., 41, 42Rosenau, J.N., 98Rowlands, I., 94Ruggie, J.G., 84–85rule of law, 39

Sabah:

1992 log export ban, 128Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM), 71, 74, 121,

122, 130;and the risks of global collaboration, 80;

critic of Austrian labelling scheme, 71–7;Sarawak campaigns leadership resented,77

Salim, E., 18Samaj Parivarthana Samudaya (SPS), 25Sarawak:

1958 Land Code, 130;dependency on Penisula Malaysia, 127;disputing indigenous Dayak status, 130;economic role of timber, 128–6;global visibility for NGO campaigns, 78;ITTO mission to, 123, 128;

power of political elites, 78–4satyagraha, 6Sayer, J., 90scaling up, 42scientific community: working with

NGOs, 65scientific uncertainty: and epistemiccommunities, 130–9;over biodiversity loss, 117–4;over declining forest food supplies, 114;over desertification, 136, 137–7;over forest regeneration, 122;over Sabah water problems, 114;over selective cutting damage, 120

Scudder, T., 50security of tenure, 46settlers, 45shifting cultivation, 138, 114;

disputes about links to deforestation,120–8

Sierra Club, 93, 97Sirsi, 11, 27SKEPHI (NGO Network for Forest

Conservation, Indonesia), 12, 16, 19, 28,29;support from global friends, 77, 80

SKREPP (NGO Network againstPollution), 12

Snidal, D., 85social forestry, 22social movement/environmental

movement, 2, 64, 72–8


soil erosion, 138;see also desertification;land degradation

South Africa, 40, 49, 50, 141South East Asia, 57Southern Networks for Development

(SONED), 94Southern Okavango Integrated Water

Development Project (SOIWDP), 45,46, 49–4, 50 (map), 55, 56, 57

Spandana Semaja Seva Samudaya, 11Spivy-Weber, F., 93state, 4, 5, 21;

capacity of, 55, 56–57, 57;centralised, 40;nation-state, 2, 2, 4, 30

Stoneman, C., 39structural adjustment, 38, 57, 147structural theories, 7structure, 3;

of power, 5Suharto, President of Indonesia, 15Sukanto Tanoto, 16Sumatra see North Sumatrasustainable development, 144, 154Sverdrup, B., 9Swaziland, 141

Taib, M., 121, 129, 130Tanjung, O., 12Tanzania, 39target institution or organisation, 2, 42, 58Taylor, A., 151theories of democratisation, viitheories of international relations, viithird world debt, 66, 69, 127, 131, 140, 142,

144, 145, 146Thomas, J., 2Timber Trade Federation (UK):

and WWF’s 1995 target, 98Toulmin, C., 137, 145, 156, 158tourism, 49traditional knowledge systems, 142, 144,

146, 149TRAFFIC International, 97transboundary problems, 151transition theories, 7

transmigration scheme, 14transnational business organisations, 4transnational power, 7transparency, 39Tropical Forestry Action Plan see Tropical

Forestry Action ProgrammeTropical Forestry Action Programme

(TFAP), 6, 87, 88–6;Bellagio meeting 1987, 88;Consultative Group debate, 89–6

tropical forests, 86, 89, 91, 92, 97, 138, 152;see also deforestation;forest conversion

Tshomorelo Okavango Conservation Trust(TOCT), 46, 49, 50, 50, 55

Tunga Ahadra River, 20, 25

United Kingdom government, 41United Nations:

Commission on SustainableDevelopment, 96;Economic and Social Council(ECOSOC), 92, 96, 97;General Assembly, 92, 96, 137, 141,142, 143, 150, 158;General Assembly Resolution 47/188,142, 143, 145;General Assembly Resolution 44/228,92, 150

United Nations Conference onDesertification, 140

United Nations Conference onEnvironment and Development(UNCED), 43, 57, 87, 141, 142, 145,145, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 154, 155,156;Agenda 19, 141, 145;arrangements for NGO participation in,92;forest negotiations of, 91–96, 116, 124–3;NGO networking, 62, 74–75, 79, 92–96;North-South NGO divisions, 77, 93–94;Preparatory Committee Decision 1/1of, 92;

INDEX 167

Rio Declaration on Environment andDevelopment, 142

United Nations Conference on Trade andDevelopment (UNCTAD), 90, 91, 97

United Nations Development Programme(UNDP), 88, 119

United Nations Environment Programme(UNEP), 93, 116, 140, 141, 143, 145, 158

US Task Force on Global Forests, 93, 94United States of America, 141, 154;

Congressional Committees, 2;State Department, 10, 11

Uttara Karnada District, Karnataka, 11

veto coalition, 86;countered by NGO collaboration, 69

Vietnam, 13village development committee (VDC),

Botswana, 40Village Forest Committees, Karnataka, 23–

28

WALHI (Indonesian Forum for theEnvironment), 12, 16, 18, 19, 28, 29;and Friends of the Earth, 29;and international campaigns, 71, 80

Wapner, P., 29water development projects, large-scale, 57water, sustainable management of, 46Webb, M.C., 85Western Ghats, 21wetlands, 49white commercial interests, 44wildlife, 49, 50, 59, 114Wahana Informasi Masyarakat (WIM), 12women, role of, 142, 144, 146;

in JFPM (Karnataka), 24, 28Wong, J., 116, 122World Bank, 2, 4, 29, 88, 90, 94, 119, 131;

‘greening’ of and NGO collaboration,67;target in Brazilian rainforest campaigns,76;and Tropical Forestry ActionProgramme, 88, 90

‘world civic politics’, 29, 81;see also global civil society

World Conservation Union seeInternational Union for the Conservationof Nature and Natural Resource

World Forest Agreement Working Group,92, 93

World Forestry Congress;Eighth Congress (1978), 21;Tenth Congress (1991), 90

World Rainforest Movement (WRM), 19,89;as example of NGO alliance, 70;criticisms of TFAP, 89

World Resources Institute (WRI), 90, 102,155;role in creation of TFAP, 88, 99;criticism of Indonesian NationalForestry Action Programme, 89;criticisms of TFAP, 89;calls for establishment of TFAPConsultative Group, 89;on tropical deforestation andgreenhouse gases, 116;suspends funding of TFAP activities, 89

World Trade Organisation, 4, 87World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), 56,

97, 102, 155;and Forest Stewardship Council, 99;national delegations to the ITTO, 91;position on UNCED forests debate, 93–94;promoting better collaboration within,79;suspends funding of TFAP activities, 89;WWF (Malaysia), 70–6, 121, 123;1995 target, 98

Worldwatch Institute, 9, 102

Young, O.R., 86, 153, 154, 154, 158

Zaire, 85Zambezi, 45, 46, 50–6, 52 (map), 55, 56, 58;

valley, 44Zambezi Society, 44Zambia, 141ZANU(PF), 39, 49, 52ZAPU: dissidents, 39, 52


ZERO (Zimbabwe EnvironmentalResearch Organisation), 52, 52, 136, 155

Zimbabwe, 5, 35–62;alternative report to UNCED, 44;community-based resourcemanagement, 48–2;drought, 141;Land Tenure Commission, 48–2;liberation movement, 40;National Conservation Strategy, 43;1995 election, 49

Zimbabwe Trust, 56

INDEX 169