Unsustainable developments

Unsustainable developments

As well as changing their language, companies have changed their tactics - and that is where we come back to dialogue. Let's look at some specific examples. Shell has pioneered a sophisticated 'stakeholder' process, which it hopes will become a blue-print for industry to use elsewhere. Having learnt from its operations in Nigeria and the Brent Spar fiasco, the company is trying a different tract in Peru, where it has been exploring for oil in some of the most culturally and ecologically sensitive rainforest left on the globe, and yet labels it "model sustainable development".

In an unprecedented move, the company held a series of workshops in Lima, Washington and London in December 1997 and June 1998 to which some 90 interested groups or 'stakeholders' in its Peruvian Camisea project were invited. Not up for discussion was whether the project should go ahead, but how it should go ahead. Meanwhile, the whole process divided different groups on whether to take part in the Shell- initiative before Shell decided not to proceed with development on economic grounds.

We can also learn from advice that companies like Shell are receiving from security firms, such as Control Risks, based in London. In a lecture last autumn, John Bray, Head of Research at Control Risks, advised the oil industry how to counter pressure groups, recommending that:

It is no longer acceptable practice purely to operate to national environmental and social laws. Companies must operate and be seen to be operating to best practice world-wide, to a uniform set of international standards. Many local groups are linked to international pressure groups in the US and

Europe. Companies must try to undermine those links by increasing dialogue with stakeholders. The bottom line, say Control Risks, is that if you dialogue with people, then you win. If you meet a group that will not compromise, then you have a problem. One recent classic example of this is the U'wa from Colombia – who refused to back-track against oil development, and even threatened suicide if Occidental and Shell drilled on their land. It was the companies who backed down.

What is interesting about what Control Risks are saying is that by advocating companies operating to global best practice, they are putting forward the same argument that some mainstream environmental and development NGOs are. This is exactly what the companies want - a harmonisation of standards and respectability world-wide, while they carry on their own operations, largely on a business as usual scenario.