Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Blog Post 1: NGOs Working Outside of the System

Jon Burnsky           

            NGOs have been playing larger and larger roles in leading to the solving of and awareness of international issues in the recent past. This is especially true in the case of international environmental problems with NGOs such as the WWF and Greenpeace being great examples of this success. However, one dividing question looms over these organizations: whether it is better to work with and inside the existing worldwide governmental structures or outside with the people. News reports, the class lectures, and the readings have proven that working on the outside is the better option and will yield more substantial long-lasting results.
            Time and time again, when governments from different nations convene at a summit to deal with environmental issues by writing up a new treaty they leave empty handed or with an agreement nobody will end up following. Only a few exceptions, where this type of action has worked, such as the Montreal protocol, exist. These fail because powerful and wealthy countries usually have very different interests than less developed countries, even when the problem, such as global warming, is bad for of them.
States can be pushers, draggers, intermediates, and bystanders, all according to their complicated cost-benefit analyses. However, businesses have a much simpler analysis to do: will they make or lose money? The growing global market has given each person on the planet more power to buy and sell whatever it is they please. NGOs, through information and symbolic politics, can change what will be bought in the market.
For example, Greenpeace shed light on the fact that leather being used by Nike was from cattle grazing on deforested Amazon forestland. After calling them out, Nike changed their policy, as did many other shoe companies following in their footsteps. This bypassed the system in place and made change happen. By affecting the consumers’ perception of a company, Greenpeace decreased demand for a harmful product and therefore directly aided the situation. This has been done by NGOs in areas such as lowering consumer oil consumption and greenhouse gases as well by promoting the use of energy efficient cars and appliances.
The whaling lecture and video of the Sea Shepherds tells a similar story. For a good amount of time, NGOs were able to make the people of multiple nations aware of the rampant inhumane and excessive whaling going on in the seas. Even if the methods used were leaning towards propaganda and publicity stunts as seen in the “Whale Wars” episode, they seemed to catch the public’s eye. This awareness spread and festered into action and even attempted legislation. International laws worked for a while, but fell short of fixing the problem in the end because of countries refusing to let go of their profitable industries. However, changing the consumer’s view towards purchasing whale products and making the whaling industries lose money would result in decreased whaling.
Paul Wapner writes that democratic and capitalist societies are the perfect tool for NGOs. With a great majority of the developed world, and most countries overall, being democracies of some kind, activism can heavily influence global policies. NGOs can work with the people of their home country or go abroad to relay information to other states. They essentially embody international cooperation. Wrapner writes, “…activist organizations are not simply transnational pressuregroups, but rather are political actors in their own right” (Wrapner 312). NGOs have practically just as much power to shape industry and public opinion as actual governments in the activist based democracies and economies of today.
International regimes only work when the design is acceptable to all of the major players and there is no incentive to cheat or lie about resolve. Writing up a treaty or protocol that fits these criteria is extremely difficult, as past attempts have shown. States will not give up their interests and industries for another’s without asking for compensation, which other states are reluctant to give. Bypassing the bureaucracies in place, NGOs have the unique capability to change interests at the individual level and therefore industrial and national levels. NGOs working outside of the government are the best bet for getting international environmental cooperation a part of the future.

Sources:

Wrapner, Paul. “Politics Beyond the State: Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics.”

2 comments:

  1. I believe you are correct. With the present inefficient and clumsy political systems working at a more grassroots level is far more effective. However, do you think it would be possible to alter the present political system to make it more efficient and effective? Perhaps NGOs could find people who are willing to make the necessary changes and get them to run for election and win office. Ultimately elected officials depend on votes and many win elections that have very low participation rates. It is not hard to imagine that large NGOs with salient messages could find viable candidates sympathetic to their causes. Furthermore they could potentially place candidates in many states and thus form a political consensus by influencing the election cycle and skip the lobbying all together. It would certainly be better than throwing money at candidates that have no intention of delivering on their promises.

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  2. Justin - This is the next step that would be in the groups interests. I feel that the real change needed first in the views held by voters/consumers. Their collective opinions and agendas give power to the businessmen and politicians in charge with closer ties to the problem. If a candidate could be made as passionate in the same manner, that would still have to come secondary to constituent's awareness.

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