杏吧原创

THE more sanctimonious arms of the environmental movement have been in need of this book for a long time. In a , Christine MacDonald tells the story of how the biggest perpetrators of public relations 鈥済reenwash鈥� are often the greens themselves. At their worst, she argues, conservationists sell themselves as willing dupes and apologists for some of the most environmentally unfriendly corporations on the planet.

According to MacDonald, big money-spinning environmental groups like , (CI) and are bankrolled by super-rich benefactors, and several of their boards feature executives from donor corporations. To keep the funds rolling in, compromises are inevitable.

For example, MacDonald shows us Conservation International cosying up to soya barons in Brazil, and environmental groups providing green cover as big-name retailers like Wal-Mart buy up the products of illegal logging.

The environmental organisations say this is all in a good cause, that these are necessary compromises in the wider quest to encourage green global capitalism. They have a point. Arguably what the largest and dirtiest corporations most need is a helping hand to discover how to turn a good profit while greening their operations and wrong-footing their rivals in the battle for the public鈥檚 affection. Who better than pro-environment professionals to show them how?

MacDonald鈥檚 case, persuasively made, is that too often the environment gets little in return. Donations to environmental groups buy a green patina for corporations that dulls and diffuses the demands of consumers and advocacy groups for a real corporate clean-up. Why is it, she asks, that six of the top 10 most polluting companies, as judged by the University of Massachusetts, 鈥渁re major contributors to big conservation groups鈥�? What became, for instance, of the decade-long love affair between greens and BP, after its PR advisers rebranded British Petroleum as Beyond Petroleum?

鈥淭oo often, the environment gets little in return鈥�

Perhaps most telling is MacDonald鈥檚 account of how high-rolling environmental groups act when they are not in harness with corporations 鈥� when they are spending their largesse on conserving the world鈥檚 surviving wild lands. The , MacDonald claims, played a part in the expulsion of thousands of Pygmies from the national parks it was helping set up in Gabon, and CI encouraged the same in Liberia. Around the world, conservation has got itself a bad name among the poor.

Many environmental groups, especially those chronicled here, will cry foul. They will suspect that MacDonald, a journalist, signed up to work for CI back in 2006 with the intention of dishing the dirt. But whatever her motivations, what MacDonald discovered is a heap of collusion and muddled thinking too consequential to be ignored.

In her scathing account, however, MacDonald may have got a few people wrong. I have visited the protagonists in the war over Sumatra鈥檚 rainforests, and I don鈥檛 recognise the cynical role she attributes to WWF there. Her story would also have gained from discussion of how more radical groups like , and the fight for the environment without making Faustian compromises or buying up half the planet.

Green, Inc is not, as some will represent it, a condemnation of environmentalism as a whole, still less a malicious sideswipe from the anti-environment right. Rather, it is a call to put an end to self-serving compromise, an end to sweetheart deals with big polluters, and a return to righteous campaigning zeal. As such it will be applauded by many within the environmental groups themselves.