The ‘Greening’ of multinationals and financial institutions can be seen as a sinister organised deception to subvert grassroots movements for change.






Of late, the agencies of global dominance have adopted a common strategy against those who dissent from the ‘historical inevitability’ of globalisation. It is as if they had suddenly learned the value of cooperation rather than competition. But they cooperate with each other only to face down challenges to competition itself. Their strategy is one of ostensibly bowing to their detractors by incorporating the critical rhetoric into their own programmes. In postures of perpetual penitence, the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, the transnational corporations and the G8 governments have absorbed the doctrines of equity and sustainability, reproducing them in parodic prose and loudly proclaiming their past errors.

There is nothing new in this, except that the scale of the linguistic subversion has increased exponentially with the growth of the ecological movement. Fifteen years ago, criticisms of world financial institutions were still only whispers off-stage and to call into question the wisdom of the capitalist seers was the prerogative of misguided fanatics and extremists. Nonetheless, supporters of incipient globalisation showed themselves sensitive to the faintest breath of criticism, as if shoring up their defences against future conflict. The World Bank was astonished by the anger it had caused in supporting the Polonoroeste hydroelectric project in Brazil and the colonial transmigration policy of Indonesia, whereby indigenous West Papuans were brutally dispossessed by planted settlers from Java and Sumatra. After these public relations debacles, it was the first international financial institution to concede that there might be ecological limits to economic growth, a key Green criticism of capitalist development. From then on, its officials have repeated, parrot-fashion, the environmental pieties they have learned from their harshest critics.

Quickly, other organisations with global tentacles recognised the propaganda value and the consumer benefits of espousing ‘Green’ concerns. To every objection that surfaced, they responded not with robust counter-attack but with contrite acceptance and commitment to future good practice. ‘Ecology?’ Of course we care about the local environment.’ ‘Sustainability?’ It is a crucial component of development strategy. ‘Women’s rights?’ Every development project we assist will have a ‘gender’ component. ‘Income generation?’ That’s what we’re here for, chaps. ‘Human rights?’ Nothing is closer to our liberal hearts. ‘Popular participation?’ The whole purpose of development is to empower. ‘Corporate responsibility?’ We couldn’t compete effectively without it. ‘Biodiversity?’ A speciality of the house.

The list of new corporate virtues lengthens: transparency, good governance, elimination of cronyism and nepotism. It seems the international financial ‘community’ has undergone a Damascene conversion from trickle-down economics to poverty alleviation.

REPACKAGING POVERTY
At first, it appeared that these organisations were absorbing criticism the better to confuse their adversaries. They adopted the language of their radical critics as political camouflage and passed token reforms to appease popular anger. They knew that if they wished to stay the same, they must change a little. But the eagerness of international finance and big business to agree with their opponents has a larger, more sinister purpose. It is a form of linguistic guerrilla warfare, intended to divide ‘the enemy’ by creating tensions between and among environmental and human rights organisations, reducing the anti-globalisation movement to confusion and incoherence. ‘Green capitalism’ is a Trojan Horse, dividing nations, and ‘moderate’ from ‘radical’ Greens. It conceals the true intentions of the large corporations and financial institutions and their unchanging, unmodified ideology – a faith in the market has not wavered for an instant.

This ideological and linguistic guerrilla campaign is paying dividends for the transnationals and their political bedfellows. It has been successful in confusing Green NGOs and activists, so that they repeatedly fail to agree a common strategy and work together. It has also revived, amongst vast swathes of public opinion, the idea of anti-globalisation protesters as ‘extremist’ wreckers. Supporters of globalisation, meanwhile, proceed with a clear ideological agenda. This is the continuing rehabilitation of laissez faire economics, a dogma that brought degradation and misery during the Industrial Revolution, as well as famine and destitution to colonised peoples. The re-emergence of this elegantly inhuman doctrine in an enlightened age is problematic. It cannot be shown in its true colours, but must be concealed by a campaign of mis-information. In short, the eco-friendly rhetoric of the transnationals is a form of Green spin.

In 1999, the IMF’s ‘Structural Adjustment’ programme became a ‘Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility’. Their ‘Policy Framework’ papers became ‘Poverty Reduction Strategy’ papers. Loan and debt relief are the themes, but there is no evidence that any of the IMF’s policies have changed. Instead, they have been re-branded in the spirit of the age: monetarism with a human face. In conformity with its fresh image, the IMF declares its role in the UN Conference on Financing for Development at Monterrey next year to be laying the foundations ‘for development, including progress on raising living standards for all and eliminating poverty’. The IMF describes itself as part of the global ‘workforce’ committed to helping all countries ‘take advantage of the opportunities of global markets while minimising the risks’.

The Global Poverty Report, prepared by World Bank, IMF and regional development bank officials for the July 2001 summit at Genoa, was an improvement on earlier publications only in its opacity. In reality, it is an argument for more of the same, but the propagandist focus has shifted. Instead of merely demonstrating that ‘neo-liberal’ economic policies aid business, it purports to show that they help the poor. It concedes that ‘globalised markets and the WTO have recently been subjected to strong criticism’. However, it warns that ‘from the perspective of the poor, there are risks that justified concerns about their interests are manipulated to support a return to protectionism. This would slow world growth and would likely harm the poorest most’. The new cri de coeur of the bankers and G8 leaders is that they are the true liberators of the poor, not the NGOs and disruptive popular movements outside. The medium and long-term opportunities for the world’s huddled masses must not be sacrificed because of mere ‘transitional’ disadvantages, which might wipe out their livelihoods, destroy their communities, herd them into urban slums or turn them into economic migrants and displaced persons. As with all absolutisms, the end justifies
the means.

The UK government is as adroit a practitioner of weasel words as any. In December 2000, its Green Paper on Globalisation committed the government to ‘working with others’ to ‘manage globalisation so that poverty is systematically reduced and international development targets realised.’ The document is a miracle of compressed mendacity. Its strategy for ‘managing globalisation’ is ‘to promote economic growth that is equitable and environmentally sustainable’. Into these last ten words are packed all the contradictions of capitalist development. These contradictions, and the unsuccessful attempt to resolve them, have characterised all discussions of development ever since the Club of Rome report, through Brundtland, the report of the South Commission, the Rio Summit, the Copenhagen Social Summit, the New York Millennium Summit, the Kyoto Protocol and a lengthening list of warnings and wake-up calls of the past four decades. Underlying all these is an attempt to square the circle: to achieve ecological balance and social justice whilst leaving untouched those structures that create pollution and iniquity.

The paper states: ‘The lives of 1.2 billion people are blighted by poverty, and they are robbed of dignity in a world of growing wealth and material plenty.’ The target – reducing by half the numbers in abject poverty by 2015 – is endorsed by the World Bank, the IMF, the European Union and the 149 heads of State at the Millennium Summit in New York. There is, we are told, ‘an unprecedented international consensus around these targets’. The document acknowledges the ‘contested’ concept of globalisation. It stresses that Tony Blair’s New Labour government does not support the neo-liberal ideology of the 1980s, which was content to ‘let inequality rip’. Instead, Blair & Co. are dedicated to ‘the equitable management of globalisation’. The inherent injustice of global capitalism is not allowed to spoil New Labour’s rosy rhetoric. The paper dwells tenderly upon the ‘growing interdependence and interconnectedness’ of the modern world, announcing triumphantly that ‘Integration’ of the world economy has ‘accelerated since the Cold War’.

In another pamphlet, Britain’s Department for International Development (DfID) appears to make every concession to those who have complained that market monoculture leads to the meltdown of diversity. Poor people, it acknowledges, are especially dependent upon the diversity of natural resources . However the report concludes that ‘poverty often forces people to give priority to immediate needs and use resources unsustainably’. In other words, it’s the poor that get the blame.

The DfID report makes no mention of the transformation of the magical universe of forests into timber by the logging giants, nor of the violation of sacred rivers by creating monstrous dams. Instead, it urges that people be given ‘incentives for good management’. So, those who have looked after their forests and fields for thousands of years are to be told what to do by urban ‘experts’.

Significantly, the regenerated market ideology finds most overt expression in those ‘humanitarian’ agencies that offer aid, know-how and support to the poor. Even their definition of poverty is suspect. The UNDP defines the wealth of nations solely in terms of income and economic growth, as opposed to quality of life issues like sense of community or ecological balance. In this spirit, the UNDP in 2001 expressed its support for GM foodstuffs as an ‘answer’ to malnutrition. This in spite of the fact that most hungry people live in countries where there is a surplus of food. The failure of the market to answer hunger is used as an excuse for the introduction of technologies that will enhance the wealth and power of biotech companies and their shareholders, whilst locking peasant farmers into a new dependency culture. None of these considerations influenced John Prescott, Blair’s deputy, when he addressed an OECD-sponsored meeting on biotechnology earlier this year. He told delegates that the world would eventually support GM crops as their ‘tremendous benefits’ were ‘widely agreed’.

Global capitalism’s champions are systematically manipulating language to further their ends. In this, they resemble the more conventional totalitarians of the 20th century. However their approach is subtler, because it is less obviously oppressive. Banks, transnational corporations and their clients in politics and the media adopt the vocabulary of their critics, winning many of them over in the process. They promote an illusory commitment to reform – and a parallel illusion that only they can deliver reform. The use of Green rhetoric by the wielders of power is part of a systematic denial of political and economic choice to the majority of the world’s people. It plays upon the hopes and fears of the poor and cynically exploits the idealism of youth.




Jeremy Seabrook’s new book, Children of Other Worlds is published by Pluto Press.