Greenpeace and the challenge of local activism

Patrick Bond* criticises the methods of Greenpeace and some of their decisions to support the South African government, and argues that they need to support local activism.

There are different world-views amongst activists regarding the COP17 conference: while others believe in influencing climate policy form inside the summit, others believe in influencing change from the outside, Amongst the world’s highest profile activists is Greenpeace international director, Kumi Naidoo. Last month, Naidoo scaled a Greenland deep-sea oil platform to present 50,000 signatures against dangerous arctic drilling. Last week, greenpeace dumped fiche tonnes of coal at MegaWatt Park in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs to protest Eskom’s Kusile power plant construction.

The arrogance of polluters

With extreme weather events worsening in recent months, there is a need to get a global, binding deal to stop greenhouse gas greenhouse gas emissions. A similar deal was signed in 1987 in Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. The deal put in place a ban on chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) emissions by 1996 and was largely upheld.

Another agreement made by global negotiators to solve the global crisis was related to HIV. The Treatment Action Campaign drove a campaign aimed at getting pharmaceutical companies and the government to make antiretroviral drugs available to South Africans. The success of the campaign let to increase access to antiretroviral therapy in the state health facilities.

It is usually the United States and European companies that block progress and impose their economic terms on the rest of the world. While these term shave created problems for the rest of the world, the responsible companies have failed to accept responsibility for their effects. The US State Department negotiator, Todd Stern, who has already publicly written off the COP17 on two occasions, put it plainly at the Copenhagen COP in 2009 when he said; : The sense of guilt or culpability or reparations- just categorically reject that” Such an attitude is why Greenpeace and others in society are passionate about the environment are so desperately needed and why much more civil society unity on strategy and messaging is vital.

Greenpeace and local activism

Two activists at the website ‘Climate Code Red’, David Spratt and John Rice, asked tough questions about the Australian climate lobby. They questioned whether the branding imperatives of large NGOs who are financially reliant on corporate supporters, drive them to market themselves as separate from other NGOs More specifically, some local environmentalists suggest that Greenpeace should devote its energies and brand to deeper organising amongst local communities. According to a local activist, Glenn Ashton, “Sure they may dump some coal in front of Eskom and climb an oil rig near Greenland but that is not edgy at all- the system is not being confronted in any really meaningful way, just at a sound bite level, capturing awareness for 15 seconds and then getting lost again in the corporate media noise”.

Desmond D’Sa of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) supports this argument. D’Sa pointed out even though Greenpeace’s stance against Eskom was commendable, they do not support local activism.

These complaints join others about Greenpeace’s climate policy messages. Some of the questionable decisions they have taken include:

• Supporting the South African government’s negotiation stand in Copenhagen and encouraging Jacob Zuma to turn up on the last day where he went on sabotage the Kyoto Protocol;
• supporting SA tourism minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk to head the UN climate body even though the minister was not active on the environmental from at home,
• supporting carbon trading even though that strategy is locked in environmental racism.

In this time of urgency, we have to find common cause amongst all the visitors to Durban. It is the fighting spirit of Greenpeace staff and those like them, willing to take huge personal risks for the sake of the planet and people, that should be encouraged.