From the early sixties through perhaps the early eighties, environmentalists in the United States focused their anti-corporate ire on industries on native soil. Pressure on government brought about laws we know as the Toxics Substances Control Act (TOSCA), Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), Right-to-Know (SARA Title III), Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and others. After a lot of litigation and public pressure, most industries got the message and many jumped on the environmental bandwagon to clean up their acts.
So what's an environmental group to do when it no longer has a local fight? The answer is: follow the trend of industries — go transnational. Go after the industries with sales and operations in foreign countries where environmental laws and enforcement are less stringent. One early example of such transnational focus was and is on U.S. industries that sell chemicals abroad for various purposes, often in agriculture. The disconcerting thing is that residues of agricultural chemicals banned in the states come back on imported fruits and vegetables. Never mind the effect the chemicals have on people in those countries.
Interest in international, global and foreign environmental issues grew as environmental organizations matured and won battles at home. One of the better-known environmental groups with international focus is Greenpeace. Among others are Friends of the Earth, World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International. Recently a new group has evolved to dog industries — Corporate Watch, an outgrowth of IGC, the Institute for Global Communications. IGC also brings us PeaceNet, EcoNet, ConflictNet, LaborNet and WomensNet. Nothing subtle here.
Corporate Watch (CW) is going after transnational industries which means its targets can be anywhere, and it looks like the action isn't going to be pretty. CW's Web site indicates that it is setting its sights on, to use CW's words, corporate crime, corporate rule, corporate sleaze and corporate welfare. Key environmental issues of focus (as of 3/1/97) are pesticides, biotechnology, energy, toxics and the chemical industry, dams, fisheries, forests and the timber industry, atmosphere, climate change and ozone depletion.
By February 1997 CW had given two Greenwash Awards. One, to WMX Technologies, was for doing more (to paraphrase CW) to obstruct strict environmental regulations than to strengthen them. CW built its Greenwash case on the opinions of Greenpeace.
CW's second Greenwash Award went to Imperial Chemical Industries PLC (ICI)/Zeneca for an advertisement for its chemical, paraquat, in a Malaysian newspaper in April 1993. The title of the ad read "Paraquat and Nature working in Perfect Harmony." Paraquat is a highly toxic herbicide whose negative effects have been the subject of research for many years. CW says that it is banned or restricted in ten countries, but sold in over 130.
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