5

The Role of Environmental NGOs

in International Regimes
John McCormick

S ince the 1960s, environmental issues have been moving steadily up the
political agenda. As we have learned more about the damaging effects of
human activity on the environment, opinion polls have found new levels of
public support for political action. Policies have been developed and fine-
tuned, laws and regulations have been agreed, and international treaties have
been signed. But the record of governments in addressing the causes and
consequences of threats to the environment has been mixed at best. Political
leaders talk in general terms about the urgency of environmental manage-
ment, but practical action has often fallen short of what governments have
promised and of what majority public opinion has usually demanded. And
where the demands of economic and environmental policy compete, eco-
nomic priorities usually win.
At the national level, the development of effective environmental policies
has been undermined by a lack of political will, by questions about the science
of environmental problems, by a conflict between political and economic pri-
orities, and by a failure (or unwillingness) to understand and quantify the costs
and benefits of preventive or remedial action. At the international level, the
handicaps to effective action have been even greater, for several reasons. First,
although there is an expanding global legal system in the form of international
treaties, the terms of those treaties are often weak, they typically lack mean-
ingful enforcement mechanisms, and there is no global authority that might
work to coordinate action. Second, national governments and corporations are
less motivated to act on transboundary or global issues than on national issues
because they face few legal obligations, face few direct political pressures from
voters and other constituencies outside their own borders, and find it easier to
ignore or transfer the costs of inaction to another party. Finally, because many
environmental problems are shared by multiple states, or are common to mul-
tiple states, state governments lack the motivation to act unless they can be
sure that their neighbors will take similar action.
Frustrated at the lack of political action, private citizens have stepped
into the breach by creating nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) designed
to increase the pressure for change or even to take the necessary action them-
selves. As private organizations that are neither formed by governments
nor speak on behalf of governments, NGOs have employed multiple tools
to achieve their goals, including undertaking research into environmental
problems, lobbying local and national governments, exerting pressure on
92
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 The Role of Environmental NGOs in International Regimes—93

international organizations and multinational corporations, raising and

spending the funds needed to implement practical management measures,
monitoring the actions of governments and corporations, building political
coalitions in support of public policy, and promoting public awareness of
environmental problems.
Most work at the local or national level, but the need to address inter-
national problems has led to the creation of transnational NGOs (or networks
of NGOs), formed to bring together the collective interests of national groups
and lobbies so as to influence multiple governments and publics and to draw
attention to the many environmental problems that are international, regional,
or global in nature. For some, the creation of these NGOs has helped com-
pensate for the structural weakness of states and has brought a wider range of
views to bear on the environmental debate. They have been active and effec-
tive in many other areas as well, and it is revealing that in the thirty-five years
between 1974 and 2008, NGOs or individuals associated with NGOs won
the Nobel Peace Prize sixteen times. But they also have their critics, who raise
questions about whose interests and opinions are represented by NGOs and,
therefore, about how much their work promotes democracy rather than the
more limited views of their particular constituencies. It is also not always clear
exactly how NGOs have used their influence, and certainly their powers fall
far short of those of governments and corporations.
This chapter examines the roots, the structure, the work, and the effects
of environmental NGOs. It argues that they have collectively played a critical
role in influencing the nature of international regimes and have become
important sources of pressure for international action on environmental man-
agement. As such, they have often done much of the work that we might have
expected of governments, were the environment to occupy a higher position
on political agendas. And as such, they have contributed to the development
of a global civil society within which humans have increasingly come to
appreciate that most economic and social problems—and environmental
problems in particular—are not limited by national boundaries but are part of
the common experience of humanity and must be addressed as such.1

The Rise of International Regimes

The earliest attempts to build cooperation among state governments date
back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but it has been only since
1945 that internationalism has come into its own. The key motivation has
been the desire to avoid conflict, but cooperation was also encouraged among
the protagonists in the cold war, and then by the growth of aid programs to
the newly independent states of Africa and Asia. Further cooperation has
been generated by the dynamics of international trade, by a revolution in com-
munications, and by the need to deal with problems such as terrorism, the
drug trade, the spread of disease, and the collapse of failed or failing states. As
a result, governments have found themselves drawn into greater cooperation
on issues of mutual interest.

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 94—John McCormick

That cooperation has also obliged us to rethink the way we try to under-
stand global politics. Most of us still see the world in terms of states, and
the study of international relations since the end of World War II has been
heavily influenced by realist theory, which argues that sovereign states are the
key actors in the international system. That system is anarchic in the sense
that there are no higher authorities capable of resolving conflict between
states, states are more interested in accumulating power and maintaining
security than in promoting values or ethics, and global politics is best under-
stood by studying relations among states: forming alliances, going to war,
imposing sanctions, and protecting and promoting state interests. Realism
was, for example, at the heart of the neoconservative philosophy championed
by President George W. Bush.
An alternative approach is offered by idealist theory, which emphasizes
justice rather than power and focuses on individuals, groups, and communi-
ties rather than the state. Idealism argues that values predominate over mili-
tary strength and strategic resources and that humans can place higher causes
above self-interest, can pursue ideals in the interest of improving the quality
of life, and can thus work to avoid conflict. Idealists support the development
of international organizations as a means to bridging differences among states
and avoiding destructive competition. Idealism is also based on a belief in the
notion of globalism, where institutions and ideals other than the state attract
the loyalty of humans, and on multilateralism, where states work together
rather than in isolation on shared concerns and problems.
The idealist view has been encouraged in part by increased doubts
about the health of the modern state system, which has been pummeled by
numerous forces, including globalization, the rise of international institu-
tions and law, changes in technology and communications, the power of
multinational corporations, the growth of international markets and more
complex trade regimes, new levels of personal mobility, new patterns of
migration, global culture, and the need to respond to shared or common
problems such as terrorism and illegal immigration.2 The state is also criti-
cized for four key failings:

•฀ During the cold war (1945–1990), the superpowers were apparently

unable to guarantee global peace through anything less than mutu-
ally assured nuclear destruction.
•฀ States have failed to respond effectively to demands for self-deter-
mination from national minorities or groups divided by state lines
(such as the Kurds, the Basques, and the Hutus) and have promoted
the kind of nationalism that has encouraged conflict and war rather
than cooperation and compromise.
•฀ States have failed to resolve pressing economic and social issues, so
that the rich industrialized world has become richer, while one in
every three people—according to World Bank calculations—remains
poor.

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 The Role of Environmental NGOs in International Regimes—95

•฀ States have failed to develop an effective response to issues that

transcend state lines and have instead encouraged people to think of
themselves as competing citizens of individual states rather than as
cooperating members of the human race.

Weaknesses in the state system since World War II—combined with

growing support for the principle of international cooperation—have contrib-
uted to a growth in the number and activities of international organizations
(IOs). As Tarrow puts it, transnational activism has been shaped “by changes
in the opportunity structure of international politics.”3 In their attempts to
address and remove the causes of interstate conflict and to address matters of
shared interest collectively, national governments have created and joined IOs
dealing with everything from defense, trade, and economic development to
humanitarian issues, education, environmental management, and consumer
safety. According to the Union of International Associations, there were just
over 200 international organizations in existence in the early twentieth cen-
tury; by 1964 the number had grown to nearly 2,000, by 1987 it had risen to
27,000, and by 2009 it stood at more than 62,000.4
IOs mainly take the form of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs),
international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), or multinational cor-
porations (profit-making organizations that function in more than one coun-
try). IGOs are made up of states or national government bodies, generally lack
autonomy in decision making, have few assets, lack the power to impose taxes
or enforce their rulings, and are normally used as forums within which states
can negotiate or cooperate with one another. The most influential IGOs are
those in the network of United Nations specialized agencies, such as the
World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the United
Nations Development Programme. Others have been created to deal with
defense issues (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO), global
trade (the World Trade Organization, or WTO), and regional economic
development (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Develop-
ment, or OECD).
For their part, INGOs normally have memberships consisting of indi-
viduals or private associations rather than states, and they are rarely in the
position to create or supervise the implementation of rules other than those
relating to their own operations or those of their members. The most impor-
tant rules are made by governments and by agreement among governments,
so INGOs function outside the rule-making process, offering expert advice,
undertaking research, and monitoring the application of these rules. Some are
made up of delegations from participating national and local NGOs (exam-
ples include the International Chamber of Commerce and the World Fed-
eration of Trade Unions), while others work to rise above national identity
and to become truly global in their memberships and interests.
IOs have been critical actors in the rise of international regimes. If
national regimes are defined as the common expectations, principles, norms,

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 96—John McCormick

laws, objectives, and organizations that bind a national government and its
citizens, then international regimes can be defined as the same factors applied
to a group of states. An international regime is a set of principles, rules,
norms, and decision-making procedures that govern the behavior of states
and drive the expectations of participants in a particular issue area (whether
it is the environment, arms control, or international trade) and that facilitate
extensive reciprocity in a given issue area.5 It might be argued that we live in
a single global regime driven by the balance of power and expectations among
the more than 190 independent states of the world, but regime theory has
also been applied to specific issue areas, such as trade (as influenced by deci-
sions taken within the auspices of the WTO), monetary relations (the Inter-
national Monetary Fund), and transportation (the International Civil
Aviation Organization).
International regimes emerge when states need to reach agreement on
common problems in a fashion that goes beyond ad hoc action but does not
extend to obliging them to relinquish sovereignty to a more permanent
decision-making system. At one end of the scale, the ad hoc multilateral
Western responses to problems such as the crises in the Balkans and the
Middle East could not be defined as regimes, while—at the other end—the
pooling of national sovereignty that has occurred during the development of
the European Union has taken its twenty-seven member states far beyond the
creation of a regime.
Environmental issues have become the subject of several different inter-
national regimes. This reflects the difficulty in compartmentalizing environ-
mental issues and divorcing them from other issues (such as international
trade) as well as the fact that the international response to environmental
problems has often demanded managing what are known as “common-pool
resources.” These are resources whose size or characteristics make it costly or
impossible to control access; they include fisheries, forests, lakes, and rivers,
and—at the global level—the atmosphere, Antarctica, deep seabed minerals,
and oceans outside territorial waters.6 It has also been suggested that the
tropical rain forests of the Amazon basin, central Africa, and Southeast
Asia—because of their role in global weather patterns—are also part of the
global commons.
The weaknesses of states have contributed to the pressures that have led
to the rise of an international environmental regime. First, there has been a
lack of scientific agreement about the causes and effects of environmental
problems, which has encouraged states—out of self-interest—to err on the
side of caution in making their policy calculations. Scientific debate, for
example, has encouraged the United States to drag its feet during negotia-
tions over addressing climate change, mainly because many American politi-
cal and corporate leaders have been concerned about the loss of comparative
economic advantage arising from the costs of the United States controlling its
emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide while China and India
have no such obligations.
Second, states have worried about the economic costs of environmental
regulation. The United States, for example, was slow to take action on acid
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 The Role of Environmental NGOs in International Regimes—97

pollution in the 1980s in part because of the potential costs to auto-manufac-

turing and coal-producing states (mainly Michigan and West Virginia) and
the lack of political concern for Canada, which received many of the emis-
sions generated by power stations in upwind U.S. states. Similarly, Britain was
largely unmoved during the same period by the appeals of downwind Scan-
dinavian states to reduce its pollution emissions; it took action only when it
discovered forest damage within its own borders and was obliged to do so by
European Union law.7
Third, while states are members of international organizations and signa-
tories of international treaties, there is no authority or executive in the environ-
mental field that has significant powers of coercion over states or—like the
WTO on issues of trade—that can help settle disputes over obligations under
the terms of international treaties. Furthermore, the signature of treaties often
commits governments to adhere to principles rather than to meet specific
objectives, and they use language that is carefully crafted to provide opt-outs.
Consider, for example, the 1979 Convention on Long-Range Transboundary
Air Pollution, which committed signatories to “endeavour to limit, and as far
as possible, gradually reduce and prevent air pollution . . . [using] the best
available technology which is economically feasible” (italics added). Governments
may have obligations as signatories of international treaties and conventions,
but they are not obliged to sign, will do so only when acceptable compromises
have been reached, and during negotiations may work to ensure that the obli-
gations are as weak as possible. Signature itself is not an obligation to act; that
only comes with ratification. And even then, states may be ratifying general
principles rather than making real commitments. And even if they cannot
commit themselves to specific targets, there is usually no monitoring body
with the ability to enforce the terms of the treaty.
One of the consequences of the weakness of state responses to environ-
mental problems has been the growth—particularly since World War II—in
the number, reach, and activities of NGOs with a focus on the environment.8
Known also as interest groups or pressure groups, NGOs are legally consti-
tuted bodies made up of individuals, corporations, or other groups that come
together outside the formal structures of government in an institutionalized
and regularized manner in order to achieve social, economic, or political
change. They may try to effect change just among their own members, mobi-
lizing citizens or member organizations to act in their collective interests, but
they will often try to influence public opinion, the media, elected officials, and
bureaucrats with a view to influencing the actions of government.

The Growth of the Environmental Movement

The extent that they were identified and understood, environmental prob-
lems were approached for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
mainly as a local matter, to which national governments paid little or no atten-
tion. Driven by the findings of the scientific revolution of the nineteenth cen-
tury, by concerns about the effects on urban life of the spread of industry, and
the effects on nature of agricultural intensification, local and national NGOs
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 98—John McCormick

were created in the United States, Canada, and several European countries.
Among the first NGOs with a focus on the environment were the (now Royal)
Society for the Protection of Birds (founded in Britain in 1889) and the Sierra
Club (founded in the United States in 1892).
Their work was important, but it soon became clear that a broader per-
spective was needed if environmental problems were to be addressed effec-
tively. First, private citizens and scientists began to realize that many problems
were common to two or more countries and began communicating with each
other and sharing ideas about how best to respond. Second, these communi-
cations led to the realization that many problems could not be addressed by
individual countries acting alone, least of all if governments were not engaged.
Finally, it was clear that the science of environmental problems was not fully
understood and that only a marshaling of resources could support the research
needed to understand the causes, effects, and interrelationships of those
problems.
The Europeans were the first to begin looking outside their borders,
both to their colonies and to their immediate neighbors. The protection of
colonial wildlife was the motivation for the creation in Britain in 1903 of the
world’s first international conservation NGO, the Society for the Preservation
of the Wild Fauna of the Empire. Meetings among European nature protec-
tionists led in 1913 to the creation of the Commission for the International
Protection of Nature (CIPN). The growth in the number and reach of environ-
mental IGOs and INGOs accelerated following World War II. Some IGOs
predated the war—for example, the International Joint Commission was
created in 1909 to encourage cooperation between the United States and
Canada on the management of the Great Lakes—but postwar IGOs were
more ambitious in their scope and objectives. The UN Food and Agriculture
Organization, for example, was created in 1945 not only to deal with an
immediate food supply crisis but also to look at long-term supply, and its
founders quickly realized that a more globalized approach was needed for the
effective management of natural resources.
In 1947 the CIPN was reorganized as the International Union for the
Protection of Nature, becoming the first INGO with a global interest in
environmental problems. Renamed the International Union for the Conser-
vation of Nature (IUCN) in 1956, it became the precursor to many more
environmental INGOs, notably the World Wildlife Fund (WWF, later
renamed the World Wide Fund for Nature outside the United States), cre-
ated in 1961 to raise funds for IUCN projects. But the focus on nature and
wildlife was not enough because the threats they faced came mainly from
industry and economic development. That link was given stark illustration in
1962 with the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, which drew
attention to the use of chemicals in agriculture but also had broader lessons
to tell about threats to the environment. Public opinion was also alarmed by
the threat of fallout from nuclear testing, by a series of well-publicized
environmental disasters (including several major marine oil spills), and by
advances in scientific knowledge.

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 The Role of Environmental NGOs in International Regimes—99

The changing dynamics of NGO interests and methods was illustrated

by the origins of Friends of the Earth (FoE) and Greenpeace, two of the best-
known environmental NGOs in industrial countries because of their focus on
generating publicity for their causes. FoE was founded in the United States
in 1969 after a disagreement between the Sierra Club and its executive direc-
tor, David Brower, who felt that the Sierra Club had become too conservative.
He argued that the solution to environmental problems lay not in temporary
remedies but in fundamental social change and that vigorous campaigning
was needed to achieve maximum publicity.9 Similar motivations led to the
creation of Greenpeace, which was born in 1971 as the Don’t Make a Wave
Committee, a group that sailed a ship into northern Pacific waters to protest
nuclear weapons tests. It has since used a combination of public protests and
political lobbying to draw attention to issues such as deforestation in Russia,
Canada, and Brazil; the dangers of nuclear energy and toxic wastes; and the
problem of overfishing.
A new political focus was given to environmental issues by the conven-
ing in 1972 in Stockholm, Sweden, of the United Nations Conference on the
Human Environment. Attended by representatives from 113 countries and
more than 400 intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, the
Stockholm conference was the first meeting at which a combination of govern-
ments and NGOs from around the world sat down to address the global
aspects of the emerging environmental crisis.
Among the many consequences of the Stockholm conference, three in
particular stand out. First, the presence of so many national and international
NGOs drew new public and political attention to their work and encouraged
them to be more persistent in their efforts to work with one another and to
influence public policy. Second, the presence of many newly independent
African and Asian governments encouraged the industrial countries—for the
first time—to acknowledge that poorer and emerging countries had a differ-
ent set of priorities and that underdevelopment was as much a cause of envi-
ronmental problems as overdevelopment. Americans and Europeans might be
worrying about the effects of industrialization and the accelerated exploita-
tion of resources, and air and water pollution in particular, but for Africans
and Asians the major problems were deforestation and soil erosion created by
the dual pressures of poverty and population growth. The key issue, then, was
not curbing consumption or development, but making sure that it was sus-
tainable. Third, the conference resulted in the creation in 1973 of the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which gave the UN a stake in
environmental issues and offered NGOs and INGOs a new forum in which
they could attempt to influence public policy.
In contrast with the priorities and methods of NGOs in the richer coun-
tries, those in poorer countries must often focus on mobilizing grassroots
support for their objectives. Such groups are most common in rural and urban
communities in poorer countries and have been active, for example, in mobi-
lizing forest dwellers in Brazil, India, and Malaysia to block the activities
of lumber companies. The most famous of these was Chipko Andalan, the

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 100—John McCormick

movement to “hug trees” in India in 1973–1974, which encouraged local

villagers (mainly women) to band together to physically block the felling of
trees by timber companies. In Kenya, the Green Belt Movement encourages
people (again, mainly women) to find public areas and plant seedlings to form
tree belts. Founder Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004,
becoming the first African woman (and the first environmentalist) to be so
recognized. Local community mobilization has also been effective in stopping
the building of nuclear power stations, new highways, and toxic waste dumps
in industrial countries.10
Although they might at first seem all but powerless to act, NGOs
in poorer countries have been active in drawing attention to the issue of
environmental justice, the challenge of ensuring that the costs of exposure
to environmental threats are equally borne rather than allowing low-income
or disadvantaged populations to bear more of the burden. Of particular con-
cern has been the international trade in toxic and hazardous wastes. As the
production of such wastes has increased and as the cost of disposing of them
in industrialized countries has grown (thanks in part, ironically, to the success
of Northern NGOs in encouraging a tightening of environmental regulations
at home), the governments of Southern countries have been encouraged by
financial incentives to accept much of that waste, including garbage, chemical
wastes, and used electronic products. Several transnational networks have
grown in response, including Global Response (a network of activists, stu-
dents, attorneys, doctors, and educators that works to oppose development
projects that threaten public health), Health Care Without Harm (a network
of about four hundred organizations in fifty-two countries that works
to reduce the impact of the health care industry), and the International
Campaign for Responsible Technology (which promotes a sustainable high-
technology industry).11
Discussions that opened in 1982 as a ten-year review of the Stockholm
Conference involved NGOs and led to the creation in 1983 of the World
Commission on Environment and Development (known more commonly as
the Brundtland Commission after its chair, former Norwegian prime minister
Gro Harlem Brundtland). Charged with reporting on progress in achieving
the objectives of sustainable development, the commission finished its work
in October 1987 and was replaced by a new body called the Center for Our
Common Future (COCF). NGOs influenced the Brundtland Commission
through the testimony they provided, but they played a more active role in the
work of COCF. COCF’s mission was to publicize the goals of the Brundtland
Commission, which it did in part through establishing contacts with partners,
including NGOs and INGOs.
In 1989 it was announced that the United Nations Conference on Envi-
ronment and Development (UNCED, or the Earth Summit) would be held
in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. NGOs played an active role in preparatory hear-
ings, working through COCF and the Environment Liaison Centre Interna-
tional, which was a conduit for contacts between NGOs and UNEP. NGOs
also directly lobbied negotiators at the preparatory meetings for UNCED and

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 The Role of Environmental NGOs in International Regimes—101

had further influence as members of national delegations involved in those

meetings.12 More than 1,000 NGOs attended negotiations held in Geneva
and New York in preparation for the 1992 Earth Summit, and more than
1,400 NGOs were accredited to the summit itself.13 Since Rio, NGOs have
played a central role in publicizing the extent to which the goals and objec-
tives of the conference have found (or failed to find) their way into public
policy. Another opportunity to make their case came with the September
2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg,
South Africa, at which more than 3,200 NGOs were accredited. The meeting
took a critical look at UNCED, its deliberations significantly influenced by
the presence once again of so many NGOs.

The Global NGO Network

Although the environmental movement has evolved into one of the most
influential and widespread of what are called transnational advocacy
networks,14 there is no authoritative source on its size and reach despite the
fact that the number of groups has grown at least in concert with the growth
of NGOs more generally, and probably even faster. The World Directory of
Environmental Organizations listed 2,500 environmental organizations in its
2001 edition.15 These are the bigger NGOs, however, and many are them-
selves umbrella bodies for smaller local and grassroots organizations, whose
numbers are constantly changing. The European Environmental Bureau, for
example, which acts as a conduit for contacts between NGOs and the major
bodies of the European Union, has 143 NGO members and associate mem-
bers from thirty-three countries.16 If we extrapolate from cases such as these,
and take into account national and regional umbrella bodies around the
world, the total number of environmental NGOs in the world probably runs
well into six figures.
It would be wrong to suggest that there is a homogeneous global com-
munity of environmental NGOs that is driven by complementary goals and
uses similar methods. Although they share the common goal of encouraging a
workable relationship between humans and their environment, NGOs use
many different methods, often have different priorities and objectives, and
vary substantially in size, goals, durability, stability, credibility, and ideological
orientations (see Table 5–1).17 The core division is the philosophical gap
between groups based in the wealthy industrial states of the North and those
based in the emerging and poorer states of the South. The NGOs of the North
focus on the environmental consequences of industrial development and argue
that we need to curb the free market through greater regulation of industry,
changes in the nature of consumerism, and investment in pollution control.
Meanwhile, Southern NGOs argue that many environmental problems result
from poverty, the shift of polluting industries from the North to the South,
and the demands of wealthy consumers and that we need to address inequali-
ties in the global economic system. The philosophical difference was clear to
one of the participants at UNCED in 1992: “While the North set the agenda

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 102—John McCormick

Table 5-1 Philosophies, Structures, and Methods of

Environmental NGOs
Philosophy Structure Method

Northern NGOs focusing Federations of national or Working with elected

on the environmental international groups; created officials, bureaucrats, and
consequences of industrial to facilitate communication employees of corporations
development and and cooperation among
consumerism member bodies
Southern NGOs focusing Universal membership Raising and spending
on the environmental groups money
consequences of poverty
and inequalities in the
global economic system
Conservative, pragmatic Intercontinental member- Campaigning and
groups working to achieve ship groups; interests go organizing public protests
change within established beyond a particular region,
political processes but are not necessarily global
Green organizations seeking Regionally defined Promoting media coverage
fundamental changes in the membership groups; of environmental issues
relationship among humans, interests restricted to one
and between humans and continent or region
the environment
Radical organizations that Internationally oriented Litigating and monitoring
use confrontation to draw national groups; national the implementation of
attention to the problems NGOs partly or wholly environmental law
of the environment and focused on international
argue that conventional issues
political processes are part
of the problem
NGOs representing the Exchanging information
view of socioeconomic
groups with an interest in
the environmental debate,
such as women, minorities,
and business
Undertaking research
Acquiring and managing
property
Generating grassroots
involvement

with high profile statements on the need to tackle population growth and
deforestation, without committing substantial new funds to do so, the South’s
insistence on the need for justice, relief of crippling international debt, new
financial resources for sustainable development including environmental pro-
tection, and technology transfer went unheeded.”18

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 The Role of Environmental NGOs in International Regimes—103

But even among Northern NGOs there are different styles and priori-
ties. In his review of the NGO community in the United States, for example,
Rosenbaum identifies three “ideological enclaves”: the mainstream of prag-
matic reformist organizations, the more philosophical deep ecologists, and
the radicals.19 The pragmatists consist of the largest and most politically
active and publicly visible groups, which prefer to work within established
political processes to influence public policy. In the United States, these
include members of what is sometimes informally known as the Group of
Ten, the biggest and most visible mainline NGOs, such as the National
Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, and the National Audubon Society.
(They have their counterparts in Europe in the form of the Royal Society
for the Protection of Birds in Britain, Bund für Vogelschutz in Germany,
and WWF.)
The deep ecologists include groups that emphasize the place of humans
as a part of nature, believe that all forms of life have an equal right to exist,
challenge the underlying institutional structures and social values upon which
governments are based and economies function, and argue the need for fun-
damental social change as a prerequisite for effective environmental manage-
ment. While other groups generally accept the existing sociopolitical order
and do not question the dominant values of society, ecologists reject those
values; they criticize existing political structures, consumerism, and material-
ism and propose the development of a new environmental paradigm more
compatible with the realities of environmental limits.20 In several countries,
these views have combined with grassroots movements to produce green
political parties that see themselves as the vanguard of a new society in which
humans take a holistic approach to their relationship with one another and
their environment. Those parties have been particularly influential in Ger-
many, Finland, Belgium, and France, where they have participated in govern-
ment. Supporters see green politics as a clarion call for good sense in a world
driven by consumption and acquisition, where greed threatens to undermine
the foundations of life on Earth. But critics of the greens see them as a threat
to economic development, jobs, and livelihoods and as a brake on human
progress.
The third of Rosenbaum’s enclaves—the radicals—consists of groups
that have become disenchanted with the methods and goals of mainstream
environmentalism and believe in the use of direct action as a means to bring
about urgently needed political and social change. Radicalism is apparently
difficult to sustain. Notable among such groups in the 1970s were Friends of
the Earth and Greenpeace, which had a reputation for headline-grabbing
tactics such as interfering with whaling activities and having their members tie
themselves to bridges to protest shipments of nuclear waste; since then, they
have become less confrontational and more willing to work within established
political procedures. Greenpeace still believes in using “non-violent confronta-
tion to raise the level and quality of public debate,”21 but it has been replaced
at the radical end of the spectrum by groups such as Earth First! and the Earth
Liberation Front (ELF). Earth First! was founded in the United States in

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 104—John McCormick

1980 and argues that mainstream environmental groups have become too soft
and corporate and that extreme methods are needed to deal with urgent prob-
lems. Variously termed ecotage or monkey wrenching,22 those methods include
hammering metal spikes into trees to discourage lumber companies from cut-
ting them down. ELF was founded in Britain in 1992 and has been implicated
in acts of arson, property destruction, and economic sabotage and was declared
a terrorist organization in the United States in 2001.
Within these broad philosophical groupings, NGOs also vary in the way
they are structured. The Belgian-based Union of International Associations
has developed a structural typology that focuses on INGOs in particular, and
it divides them into five major groups:
Federations of International and National Organizations. These are bodies
set up to facilitate communication and cooperation among their member
bodies. They can be global networks of national offices of the same NGO,
such as WWF, Friends of the Earth, or Greenpeace, which—respectively—
have national offices in ninety-two, seventy-seven, and thirty-nine countries,
but the national offices are autonomous and have their own funding and
strategic priorities. Cooperation is promoted by international secretariats in
Amsterdam and, for WWF, Switzerland. Federations also take the form of
umbrella bodies, bringing together different organizations that act either as
conduits for contacts between those NGOs and an IGO (for example, the
Environment Liaison Centre International, with NGO members in 104
countries, provides a point of contact between NGOs and UNEP),23 or as a
channel for contacts among NGOs, as is the case with the NGO members of
the African NGOs Environment Network.
Universal Membership Organizations. These are bodies that have a wide-
spread, geographically balanced membership, the prime example of which is
the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Tracing its
origins back to 1947, IUCN is headquartered in Switzerland and is an
unusual hybrid of governmental and nongovernmental members. Its mem-
bership in 2009 consisted of eighty-six governments (the United States, for
example, is a state member), 120 government agencies (including the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, the Indian Ministry of Environment and
Forests, the Kenyan Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife, the Russian Ministry
of Natural Resources, and so on), and 902 national and international NGOs.24
This arrangement not only brings together equivalent organizations from dif-
ferent states but also allows national NGOs to take part in the work of an
organization that includes their own governments and government agencies.
IUCN provides governments and NGOs with information, acts as a
clearinghouse for the exchange of ideas, and carries out its own environmen-
tal management projects, notably the creation of national parks and other
protected areas and the gathering of information on the status of threatened
species and ecosystems. It has also been active in the drafting of interna-
tional treaties, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. It is one of the

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 The Role of Environmental NGOs in International Regimes—105

more conservative INGOs, shying away from controversy and—unlike the

FoE or Greenpeace—doing little to draw media attention to itself. This is
because it is not a campaigning organization so much as a meeting place for
government bodies and NGOs, less engaged in changing policy and public
opinion than in facilitating the exchange of ideas and information.
Intercontinental Membership Organizations. These are bodies whose
interests go beyond a particular region but not to the point where they
become universal membership groups. Among these are environmental
INGOs with more focused interests, such as BirdLife International and
Wetlands International. BirdLife International is a network of partner orga-
nizations in 105 countries that works collectively to gather and share infor-
mation and to build strong national bodies working to protect birds and
their natural habitats. It has a global secretariat in Britain and regional
offices in Kenya, Ecuador, Japan, Belgium, Fiji, and Jordan.25 Wetlands
International is a federation headquartered in the Netherlands that brings
together government agencies and NGOs in thirty-two countries, promotes
research and information exchange, and has played an active role in the
development and application of the 1971 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands
of International Importance.26
Regionally Defined Membership Organizations. These are bodies whose
interests are restricted to a particular continent or region, such as the African
Wildlife Foundation (Kenya), the Caribbean Conservation Association (Bar-
bados), and the European Environmental Bureau (Belgium). As noted earlier,
the latter facilitates contacts between groups in the member states of the
European Union (EU) and the main policymaking bodies of the EU.
Internationally Oriented National Organizations and National NGOs That
Are Partly or Wholly Focused on International Issues. The former include (in the
United States) the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council,
and the latter include environmental think tanks such as the World Resources
Institute and the Worldwatch Institute. The Sierra Club is mainly active on
the domestic political front in the United States but also campaigns on issues
such as human rights and the environment, environmentally compatible trade
policies, global warming, and population growth control. The World
Resources Institute, meanwhile, focuses on policy research, publishing, and,
among other things, the well-respected annual World Resources series.
In addition, it is important to appreciate that NGOs also have different
interests and priorities as well as different constituencies. At one end of the
scale are the single-issue groups, which pursue a specific, focused objective,
such as clean water, opposition to toxic waste storage sites, or even the welfare
of a single species of wildlife (as is the case with the U.S.-based Mountain
Lion Foundation and Bat Conservation International). At the other end of
the scale are environmental organizations that take a broader view of the place
of humans in their environment, quality-of-life issues, and the damaging
consequences of human activities. Many of these groups grew out of the
expansion of environmental consciousness during the 1960s and address

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 106—John McCormick

issues as broad as nuclear power, acid pollution, toxic waste disposal, chemi-
cals in the environment, oil spills, and climate change.
A phenomenon that emerged in large part since the mid-1970s has been
the creation of groups with an interest in promoting sustainable development.
This is a term that replaced conservation in the dictionary of environmental-
ism, and it means development that takes place within the carrying capacity
of the natural environment. The sustainable development lobby focuses on
managing resources for continued use. For example, it supports the manage-
ment of forests and fisheries with a view to preventing clear-cutting and
overfishing, arguing that sustainable use will allow them to be a constant
source of resources. Although the term is usually applied to African, Asian,
and Latin American states, it has been a central factor in environmentalism
in industrial states for decades.

Environmental Groups and International Regimes

The environmental debate has been impacted significantly in recent
decades by the work and contributions of a large and varied community of
NGOs that has lobbied governments and intergovernmental organizations
and has influenced negotiations on international environmental agreements.
As suggested in this chapter, these NGOs have goals, philosophies, styles,
structures, and methods that are often very different from one another. In
some respects, this has been their strength, enabling them to develop a variety
of methods to deal with a variety of problems at a variety of levels. It has also
been a weakness, however, because the fragmentation of the environmental
NGO community has prevented it from presenting a united front to policy-
makers and has thus impeded its policy impact.27
At the national level, NGOs have government institutions and bodies of
law that they can monitor, influence, lobby, and attempt to change. They can
appeal to elected officials; use their members and funds to exert influence on
the electoral process; and work through the media, elected officials, the courts,
and the bureaucracy to influence the policy process. They can also take direct
action by owning and managing land and natural resources such as forests,
wetlands, and areas of ecological importance. They exist within a civil society,
an organized society over which a state rules and in which citizens participate.
But the same cannot be said for NGOs working at the international level,
where they face at least three major handicaps.
First, there is no central authority to which NGOs can appeal, other
than the United Nations and its specialized agencies, which lack the powers
and authority needed to play a significant role in resolving disputes. The
United Nations Environment Programme comes closest to being an interna-
tional environmental authority, but it suffers from several critical handicaps:
it is a junior member of the UN system, it has no executive powers, it has
little scope for carrying out its own projects, and it was intended from the
outset to be an agent of cross-cutting policy coordination, working through
the other UN specialized agencies.28 UNEP has achieved the most when it

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 The Role of Environmental NGOs in International Regimes—107

has been a facilitator, bringing together governments and institutions with

shared interests and encouraging them to negotiate and reach agreement on
those interests. It cannot compel governments to act against their will.
Second, there is no body of voters or of public opinion at the inter-
national level to which NGOs can appeal. At the national level, NGOs can
make a political case that can influence the way in which elected leaders craft
their arguments and the way in which voters decide to cast their ballots. The
rise of environmental NGOs has also merged into the rise of green political
parties and has also influenced the platforms of mainstream parties. At the
international level it is more difficult for NGOs to make an impact on polit-
ical platforms, in part because they must deal with the reality of divided
national priorities and in part because it is more difficult to influence either
public opinion or voter choices across state borders.
Finally, international treaties and organizations are the result of agree-
ments among states, and citizens of those states can influence such compacts
only indirectly through their own national governments. It is true that NGOs
have worked around this handicap and have played an active role in, for
example, the development of international treaties and the discussions at
international conferences such as Stockholm, Rio de Janeiro, and Johannes-
burg. However, there is no formal provision in international treaties for public
review and comment, nor is there a formal mechanism by which citizens or
NGOs can bring suit before international tribunals such as the International
Court of Justice against IGOs or states failing to meet their obligations.29
NGOs have nevertheless been able to exploit their strengths in several
ways to overcome the handicaps inherent in exerting influence over an inter-
national regime:

•฀ They have acted as information brokers, becoming the source of much of

the research upon which policy decisions are taken. Reports to the Stockholm,
Rio, and Johannesburg conferences as well as the intergovernmental discussion
leading up to many of the most important international environmental
treaties have been heavily influenced by research generated by NGOs and by
NGO influence over media coverage of these events.
•฀ They have been whistle-blowers, helping IGOs keep track of progress
(or the lack thereof ) in the implementation of international treaties in
signatory states. Indeed, it is arguable that without NGO pressure there
would be little obligation upon states to agree to substantial goals, and there
would be little transparency in the process of agreeing and implementing
international treaties.
•฀ They have promoted democracy (albeit in limited form) in the work of
IGOs and the deliberations preceding agreement of international treaties by
ensuring that the views of their members have been taken into consideration.
•฀ They have played a valuable role as opponents of national government
policy, drawing attention to the failures of domestic policies and exerting
international pressure to change those policies.

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 108—John McCormick

•฀ They have provided models for new government programs, using their
resources and links with other NGOs to develop and offer solutions to
environmental problems. In many instances, NGOs have themselves carried
out the work of government by undertaking necessary research, raising funds,
and carrying out practical environmental management projects.
•฀ They have built international coalitions that have occasionally bypassed
states and helped make up for some of the weaknesses of IGOs.

But have they always been a positive force? At least until the 1990s, their
work was generally welcomed, in part because their impact was relatively
limited and so posed no threat to governments. But as their role and influence
grew, questions began to be asked about their authority to lobby. Did they in
fact represent a legitimate and discernible constituency, or were they only the
representatives of narrower interests and more limited philosophies? Who did
they claim to be working for: a public concerned about environmental prob-
lems, or a smaller group of activists with a narrower agenda? The methods
and goals of NGOs have always been questioned by those who stand to be
most negatively impacted by NGO activities, hence industry and environ-
mental NGOs have long had a conflictual relationship, as have repressive
governments and human rights groups. But there is a broader issue of
accountability, which has drawn more political attention in recent years as a
debate has emerged over how best to balance the rights and responsibilities of
NGOs, and how to certify and manage groups while not impinging upon
their right to express themselves.30
There are also questions about exactly when and how NGOs have been
able to exert influence. It has long been taken for granted that they have had
an important role in influencing the outcomes of policies and lawmaking, but
there have been relatively few structured analyses of that influence. Betsill and
Corell have developed an analytical framework in which they differentiate
between three levels of influence:31

•฀ Low influence, where NGOs actively participate in international

environmental negotiations but have almost no observable effect on the
negotiation process or outcome. An example is offered by the limited input of
NGOs into the United Nations Forum on Forests, founded in 2000 to
promote sustainable forestry on the basis of principles agreed at Rio.
•฀ Moderate influence, where NGOs have observable effects on the negotiating
process but not on the final outcome. An example is offered by the Kyoto
Protocol to the international convention on climate change, where NGOs
influenced the negotiating agenda, but the final protocol did not reflect any
of their positions.
•฀ High influence, where NGO activities impact both the negotiating process
and the outcome. An example is offered by their participation in the nego-
tiations in 1993–1994 over the UN Convention to Combat Desertification,

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 The Role of Environmental NGOs in International Regimes—109

in which NGOs—most of them representing grassroots interests—played

a key role and saw their views reflected in the outcome.

Betsill and Corell conclude that several critical factors affect the influ-
ence that NGOs bring to bear on negotiations, including the extent to which
they are coordinated, the rules of access to the negotiations (NGO influence
is obviously greater if steps are taken to facilitate their participation), the
political stakes involved in the outcome (NGO influence is lowest when the
political stakes are lowest), the extent to which competition is posed by other
NGOs with different agendas, and the extent to which NGOs are able to
form alliances with key states involved in the negotiations.32
In the absence of an international body of environmental law backed up
by a global governmental authority with responsibility for—and powers of-
enforcing that law, much of the responsibility for promoting environmental
concern at the international level since World War II has fallen to—or been
adopted by—an increasingly complex network of nongovernmental organiza-
tions. These organizations operate at several different levels, use many differ-
ent methods, and have multiple objectives and underlying principles. As well
as identifying problems, proposing solutions, and monitoring the responses of
states and the international community, environmental NGOs have contrib-
uted to the promotion of international regimes and a global civil society
within which states and their citizens have redefined their relationships to
one another and have helped us better understand the nature of global society.
Although the dynamics of NGO participation are not yet fully understood,
their role in the development of an international environmental regime has
been undeniable.

Notes
1. For a review of the debate over global civil society, see Ronnie D. Lipschutz, Civil
Societies and Social Movements: Domestic, Transnational, Global (Aldershot, UK:
Ashgate, 2006).
2. See discussion, for example, in Susan Strange, The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion
of Power in the World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); and
Kenichi Ohmae, The Next Global Stage: Challenges and Opportunities in Our Borderless
World (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Wharton School Publishing, 2005).
3. Sidney Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2006), 3.
4. Union of International Associations Web site, www.uia.org.
5. Andreas Hasenclever, Peter Mayer, and Volker Rittberger, Theories of International
Regimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
6. For a discussion of this concept, see Susan J. Buck, The Global Commons: An Introduc-
tion (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1998).
7. John McCormick, Acid Earth: The Politics of Acid Pollution, 3rd ed. (London: Earth-
scan, 1997).
8. For more details on the emergence of the international environmental movement, see
John McCormick, The Global Environmental Movement, 2nd ed. (New York: John
Wiley, 1995).
9. Ibid., 170–172.

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 110—John McCormick

10. For more details on citizen action movements, see Michael Edwards and John
Gaventa, eds., Global Citizen Action (London: Earthscan, 2001).
11. For details, see David Naguib Pellow, Resisting Global Toxics: Transnational Move-
ments for Environmental Justice (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007), particularly chap. 3.
12. For more details on the role of NGOs in UNCED, see Matthias Finger, “Environ-
mental NGOs in the UNCED Process,” in Environmental NGOs in World Politics, ed.
Thomas Princen and Matthias Finger (London: Routledge, 1994).
13. Princen and Finger, eds., Environmental NGOs in World Politics, 4; Michele M. Betsill
and Elisabeth Corell, “Introduction,” in NGO Diplomacy: The Influence of Nongovern-
mental Organizations in International Environmental Negotiations, ed. Michele M.
Betsill and Elisabeth Corell (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008), 1.
14. See discussion in Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders:
Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1998), chap. 4.
15. Ted Trzyna, ed., World Directory of Environmental Organizations, 6th ed. (London:
Earthscan, 2001); see also National Wildlife Federation, Conservation Directory 2003:
The Guide to Worldwide Environmental Organizations (Washington, D.C.: Island
Press, 2003).
16. See European Environmental Bureau Web site, www.eeb.org.
17. For further discussion, see Princen and Finger, eds., Environmental NGOs in World
Politics, 6–9.
18. Andrew Simms, “If Not, Then When? Non-Governmental Organizations and the
Earth Summit Process,” Environmental Politics 2, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 94–100.
19. Walter A. Rosenbaum, Environmental Politics and Policy, 7th ed. (Washington, D.C.:
CQ Press, 2008), 40–46.
20. Riley E. Dunlap and Kent D. Van Liere, “The ‘New Environmental Paradigm’:
A Proposed Measuring Instrument and Preliminary Results,” in Journal of Environ-
mental Education 9, no. 4 (Summer 1978): 10–19.
21. See Greenpeace Web site, www.greenpeace.org/international.
22. This term was inspired by Edward Abbey’s book, The Monkey Wrench Gang
(Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1975).
23. See Environment Liaison Center International Web site, www.elci.org.
24. See the IUCN Web site, www.iucn.org.
25. See the BirdLife Web site, www.birdlife.org.
26. See the Wetlands International Web site, www.wetlands.org.
27. Lynton K. Caldwell, Between Two Worlds: Science, the Environmental Movement, and
Policy Choice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 89–97.
28. McCormick, The Global Environmental Movement, chap. 6.
29. Hilary French, “The Role of Non-State Actors,” in Greening International Institu-
tions, ed. Jacob Werksman (London: Earthscan, 1996).
30. See Lisa Jordan and Peter Van Tuijl, eds., NGO Accountability: Politics, Principles and
Innovations (London: Earthscan, 2006).
31. Betsill and Corell, eds., NGO Diplomacy, particularly concluding chapter.
32. Ibid.

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