MAVE Dissertation,
Lancaster University 2001

Corporate Nature
Has the developing corporate nature of the conservation organisations helped retain an alienation from Nature?

Mick Green

Introduction
According to opinion polls, the environment still features highly in the public concerns. Over 5 million people are members of environmental groups in the UK, more than all the political parties put together, and 55% of people in one poll said that environmental policy will effect the way they vote. And yet environmental issues did not feature in the recent election, and hardly feature in the main media on any regular basis.

Meanwhile, the environmental crisis deepens – we are seeing a continual loss of species and habitats, the threats of climate change and the increasing scarcity of some natural resources. The system we have created for ourselves causes what Porrit calls ‘alienation as a way of life’. 

Why is it that despite the size of the environmental organisations, they have failed to engage the political or journalistic debates, and that degradation continues? I argue that we are alienated from our environment, and from Nature, therefore fail to see the depth of the problems on a day to day basis. There has been a failure of the environmental groups to address the root causes of that alienation – that of materialism and capitalism - and therefore the root cause of the environmental crisis. As the groups have grown I show they have become corporations in their own right, slavishly following the mantra of continued growth in order to survive. In becoming part of the capitalist system the groups are unable to address the root cause of our crisis, and can only instil a bit of greenness at the edges. A new approach is necessary if we are to overcome our alienation and address the root causes of our problems.

Causes of Crisis
Few people appear to challenge the notion that at least in terms of continued loss of habitats and species, we are in an environmental crisis. However, despite the increased awareness, and the number of people concerned enough to join an organisation purporting to do something about it, we are failing to stem these declines. There seems to be an underlying problem in addressing the root causes of the crisis and instead I will show we only really try and address the symptoms as individual issues.

Dickens has claimed that there is a generally supported view that the environmental crisis stems almost entirely from institutions and organisations promoting free-market economics. A report prepared for WWF supports this view saying
The economic, political and cultural structures that shape our world almost all promote resource consumption and transformation and recognise little value in biodiversity. Socio-economic institutions including markets, laws, political bodies and social norms favour and provide incentives for the expansion of consumption driven patterns of development.

How have we become so tied into these systems that we seem oblivious to the links between our lifestyle and the biodiversity losses that we claim concerns us?

Alienation:
Alienation – ‘estrangement; the state of being an outsider or the feeling of being isolated; a state in which a persons feelings are inhibited so that eventually both the self and the external world seem unreal’ 
In today’s world I contend we are estranged from Nature – that is we have very little contact with the ‘natural’ world – the world other than that constructed by humans, both physically and mentally. In Britain we are a very urban based society, and ‘Nature’ seems to be something that is ‘out there’, and not really connected with us, our day to day lives or our well being. For example, we are completely divorced from our food supply, and even our methods of producing the basic raw materials in agriculture are moving further and further away from any system based on natural rhythms of growth. We in Britain are obsessed by the weather, and yet unless we are flooded or are banned from hosing down our cars, the day to day weather really has little impact on us, so divorced we are from the elements. When I have to attend meetings in London, I would be very hard pressed at the end of the day to tell you much about the weather as I have not directly experienced much of it, and I see very little of the sky as I scurry between buildings. 

This alienation, I would argue, is central to our environmental crisis. We are so isolated from the natural world that we do not see the damage we are doing to it on a day to day basis. We may belong to some worthy causes, and ‘tut tut’ to ourselves when watching television programmes about declining wildlife, but we do not make the connections between our actions and lifestyles and the consequences. This is so even when we experience the results of our collective actions at first hand. Most peoples reactions to the floods of last winter were not to look at the changes in land-use or our changing climate, but to blame ‘them’ for not building big enough walls between their houses and the surrounding environment. Our ability to turn nature’s raw materials into a materialistic lifestyle may seem to be the acme of civilisation, but as Engels said
Let us not flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory takes its revenge on us

Whilst he is not known for his environmental writings, Engels friend Marx did have a lot to say about alienation, and I would argue that it is still very relevant to the current environmental debate. Especially in his early writings Marx did touch upon mans relationship with Nature. Marx claimed that humans have certain characteristics – a ‘natural being’ which we share with other species (where we eat, drink, reproduce and so on) and a ‘species being’ where, unlike other species we are conscious and creative. As a social species we need fellow humans to help develop our capabilities, and work is part of this development. We need creative work to fulfil our innate creativity.  Tied with this we also need a close association with what Marx termed ‘external nature’ – ‘nature is mans inorganic body’ – nature being continuous with and an integral part of humans, albeit not part of their organic body. Marx then argued that Capitalism caused certain aspects of human life to be consistently alienated. 

Again in his early writings Marx asserted that the private ownership of property was the main culprit in alienating people from nature, but in later writings he pointed to industrial production and the use of raw materials of nature in the making of our material needs as the stem of the problem. In the industrial, capitalist system, despite all the benefits accruing to humans, nature becomes merely a set of inputs into the production process. Nature is not regarded as something worthwhile in itself. Human beings, Marx argued, despite being a species uniquely sensitive to aesthetic qualities, have even managed to insensitive themselves from the beauty of nature. “The dealer in minerals sees only the commercial value and not the beauty and peculiar nature of the minerals” 

Marx also claimed that the division of labour brought about by capitalist industrialisation, further alienated people from society and argues Dickens, from Nature. In his analysis of Marx, Dickens argues that it is this division of labour, and the fragmentation of knowledge that goes along with it, that has caused human societies to become alienated and cause so much damage to themselves and Nature. There is today little connection between the environments in which people live and the industrial and agricultural systems on which they depend. This division is a source of a confused and potentially disastrous relationship with Nature – a relationship where people no longer have what Dickens call their own ‘lay knowledge’ and tacit understandings to monitor, understand and control the consequences of their own actions.

Marx further argued that capitalism was impairing the very conditions necessary for its own survival. He argued that capitalism was digging its own grave by substituting machines for people, thereby profits declined as profit came entirely from the exploitation of labour power – peoples capacity to work. There is, says Dickens, a contradiction between capitalist society on the one hand and internal and external nature on the other. Internal nature is labour and the capacity of people to work. The physical and mental well being of people is undermined by the conditions in which capitalist society expects them to work. External nature is the external physical conditions needed by capital and are systematically undermined by an unsustainable accumulation of wealth. As Marx said 
All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art not only of robbing the labourer but robbing the soil
Also, by needing to encourage constant consumption, and even increasing consumption in order to continue to make a profit, it can be argued that capitalism needs a constant crisis to remain dynamic and retain the need to keep inventing new goods. As we have seen above, the increasing use of natural resources to feed that consumption directly drives biodiversity loss, and yet we put most of our attention into trying to protect pockets of Nature without addressing the root causes of the losses. We daily fail to make the connection between the demands of capital and the loss of Nature.

Thus it can be claimed that by needing a constant crisis, and by alienating humans from Nature, the capitalist system is to blame for the current environmental crisis. But are we right in extending Marx’s arguments of the relationship between people and capital into our relationship with the natural world? Although as we have seen his early writings can appear to be ecological in approach later works can be taken as less so. Even his talk of nature as mans ‘inorganic body’ has been interpreted as treating Nature as little more than his immediate means of sustenance. Marshall feels that Marxism is fundamentally man-centred and values nature only so far as it is a setting for the liberation of humanity. Both Marx and Engels have argued that there is human emancipation through the domination of nature with Engels proclaiming that we must overcome our ‘animal nature’. 

I do not think there is a problem here. Marx was writing at the same time as Darwin, and indeed wrote in praise of Darwin’s views. On the publication of The Origin of species he wrote 
This is a book which contains the basis in Natural History for our views
later adding the book was
Very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history
although there is later evidence he lost some of his initial enthusiasm . Apart from Darwin, there were little or no ecological works at the time Marx was writing. Ecology as a science had not begun, and biology was still essentially reductionist and mechanical. Marx did note some of the problems that science presented and he argued that Science had ‘transformed itself into an adjunct of capital’. He argued that the key innovations were not in the sciences, but in the transformation of science itself into capital. This strongly influences the form of the sciences that were created. A science which analyses by taking things apart and recombining those parts in different ways is attractive to capital and can be invested in. This is in contrast to a biology which emphasises wholeness, causal powers and qualities rather than quantities.
It is perhaps therefore unlikely that we should find direct ecological references within Marx’s writings. I do not, however, think this should stop us from taking some of Marx’s ideas and updating them in the light of modern knowledge. The concept of alienation is one that recurs in modern ecological writing, and it is Marx that appears to have given it its first tight definition, even though we use it more loosely in discussing the contemporary human condition. Although I am not claiming that Marx’s arguments are directly ecological, I feel his discussions on the root causes of the alienation of man are directly relevant to the root causes of the environmental crisis and our alienation from nature. 

If the drive of consumption to feed the demands of capital is a central cause of our environmental crisis and alienation, both between humans and between humans and Nature is a problem in overcoming that crisis, then why does it not appear as a central theme in environmental campaigning? To answer this we will have to look closer at the nature of our campaigning groups.

Rise of the Environmental Groups
Although the rise of environmental awareness, and with it environmental campaigning groups, is often referred to as a modern phenomenon, it is worth remembering that the UK environmental movement (in its broadest sense) is around 200 years old. The RSPCA originated in 1824, and the RSPB, formed out of two small groups in 1891, had 26,000 members by the beginning of the 20th century. It is estimated that in Victorian England the combined membership of several hundred environmental organisations was around 100,000 people. 

Szerszynski has identified a series of phases in the development of environmental groups in Britain. The first phase he calls the era of Natural history and animal Welfare. This era, which he places between 1830 and 1890 saw the rise of the Natural History movement along with a romantic view of the countryside. The Victorian obsession with travel and self-improvement, enabled by the growing affluence and free time of the period, led to Natural History study, and especially collecting, becoming a popular, and for the Victorians, morally acceptable, pastime. This was an era where people were increasingly concentrating in urban environments as a result of industrialisation and the rise of capital, and the time when Marx was developing his ideas. However the growth of transport such as the railways also enabled people to get back out into the countryside and experience nature at first hand. The popularity of collecting though, alongside the rise of hunting as a sport led to declines in many species. It was out of this context that conservation concerns and practices started to develop. By cataloguing our wildlife through collections, the decline of species was recorded, and out of game management practices grew wildlife conservation management. 

The second phase of development is identified as running from around the 1870’s to the Second World War, and is termed the age of Preservation. This era gave birth to organisations such as the Natural Trust, and has it’s roots in the notion of Nature as the ‘unspoilt’ which had begun to have purchase on British culture in the 18th century. The notion of Nature as a refuge from the social and cultural dislocations caused by industrialisation was deepened and transformed during the 19th century. Nature, Szerszynski claims, came to stand for a rejection of faith in social progress by human endeavour, and for many a rejection of Victorian convention itself. The beginnings, perhaps, of a wider recognition of alienation.

The notion of Nature as landscape, to be appreciated visually, also grew out of the 18th century, This grew during the 19thcentury and moved from a fashion for the picturesque cultivated scene to one of the sublime, ‘wild’ landscape. This romanticist conception of Nature went hand in hand with a growing sense of alienation from both the increasingly crowded and noisy cities and from the increasingly enclosed agricultural landscape, though the growing environmental movement did not appear to make this explicit connection. During the early 20th Century we saw the development of mass-tourism and what Szerszynski calls ‘a democratisation of landscape aesthetics’, allowing more people to experience different landscapes.  A desire to preserve our ‘green and pleasant land’ led to the formation of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, and lobbying for an integrated planning system. This set the scene for the development of the power of the environmental groups until the arrival of the more radical groups in the 1970s. 

The third phase in development Szerszynski terms ‘science’ and runs from the early 1900’s until 1970. This era saw the emergence of scientific ecology and the formation of both the British Ecological Society and the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves in 1913. A move was apparent from the Naturalists interest in rare species, to a greater value being placed on habitats and communities. Although still based in the Natural History tradition, and a ‘hands–on’ outdoor approach to Nature, the ecologists distinguished themselves from preservationists, for whom intervention in Nature was always to be discouraged. The ecologists wanted to manage Nature in order to maintain habitats and species deemed to be of ‘scientific’ interest, and often adopted a utilitarian approach to conservation. This was especially apparent in the development of the conservation movement in the United States, and led to further developments of environmental groups in the 1960’s and 70’s. The scientific era was probably at its peak post war, and led to the Huxley committee and eventually to the 1949 National parks and Access to the Countryside Act. This enshrined in legislation the split between landscape and Wildlife conservation, and is still the basis of our approach, and legislation in the UK today. This approach, as I have argued elsewhere, has helped maintain an alienation from Nature. Nature is to be protected in separate Nature Reserves, or in ‘Sites of Special Scientific Interest’, giving the impression it is not something of everyday interest or importance. It is an elitist construct, for those who are allowed to visit reserves, or who are ‘scientific’ enough to understand the ‘importance’ of a site. It keeps Nature away from our everyday lives and decision making.

Szerszynski’s fourth phase, taking us through the 1960’s and 70’s is termed ‘activism’, and sees the emergence of a new type of group. This is the era of the development of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. These new groups, Szerszynski claims, brought the dramatic, moralising political praxis of the 1960’s to bear on issues of nature conservation, and in doing so transformed its meaning.
While the established groups such as RSPB’s main angle was, and in many ways still is, the protection of specific examples of nature, the approach of the new groups was more systemic. The 'old' approach, protecting sites from human encroachment (while managing them to suit our vision of Nature) tended to define Nature as something that did not include the human. As we have seen, Nature is something out there that is protected on special reserves. The new groups saw the destruction of Nature as being symptomatic of deeper problems with the modern industrial culture which needed to be addressed at source. The development of this more holistic thinking should have lessened the problems of alienation. 
Friends of the Earth was founded in the USA by David Bowers in 1969. Bowers had been working as Director of the USAs leading conservation organisation, the Sierra Club, but became disillusioned.  He felt that the Club had been taken over by the utilitarian conservationists, what today is described as the ‘wise use’ movement, which held that habitats were to be managed for mans benefit. Bowers thought that the Club had been seduced away from its original intentions of preserving wild Nature by the argument that rational science-based principles should be applied to weighing up the pros and cons of an argument before taking a position. He set out the view that “thinking objectively is the greatest threat to Nature in America”. For him there had to be scope for an intuitive response to the issues stemming from a subjective bond between people and wild places. 
The emergence of the new groups, with their more up front campaigning style, helped project environmental issues before a wider public. While the older groups had generally worked at lobbying within the system, the new groups took actions out onto the streets. They also, as shown above, widened the agenda – ‘environmental’ issues no longer meant pretty birds and cosy countryside – they encompassed the whole gamut of experiences in day to day life and, I feel,  should have begun to chip away at the problems of alienation. The rise of the new groups, coupled with growth of interest in the existing organisations led to a boom time in the membership and into our fifth phase of group development – the age of professionalism. 

By the end of the 1970’s environmental groups of all shades of green had seen a growth in membership. This continued into the 1980’s and the environment suddenly emerged as a popular and political force in the UK. The actual causes of this are not certain. It co-incided with the coming to power of a materialist and market driven Conservative government which seemingly has little interest in environmental matters. At the same time more environmental standards were being driven from the European Community and a scientific consensus, albeit rather loose, had begun to emerge on issues such as acid rain, ozone depletion and climate change. Within the environmental groups also at this time emerged a new generation of leaders, such as Jonathon Porrit at FoE, who were ‘media-friendly’ and expert at putting the message across.  Whatever the reasons the environmental groups had succeeded in their first task – to persuade the public there was an environmental crisis serious enough to need action. This period of growth culminated in Mrs Thatcher’s much vaunted (though ultimately useless) ‘green speech’ in 1988.  The growth of the ‘voluntary’ groups, and their incredible rise in income meant that they were able to establish their presence more directly. This growth did not last, with a downturn in the groups fortunes in the 1990s, leading to the organisations having to implement that other business method – redundancies. Although the groups have had to retract somewhat, they are still much larger than in the early 80’s, and retain most of the new structures they developed.

Consequences of growth
As the profile of environmental issues grew, so did the membership and associated income of the environmental groups. The newer groups such as FoE and Greenpeace were able to hire permanent staff and acquire offices. The older bodies such as RSPB developed regional offices, larger policy and sales teams, and generally expanded all round, with all groups moving, as Rawcliffe puts it, from being groups to increasingly complex organisations. 
 It was a period of startling change. Greenpeace, for example, moved from a small anarchic group of six people in the early 1980s, to an organisation with 8 sections and around 25 staff by 1993. These staff were not just more 'campaigners’ but included finance, administration, marketing legal and personnel sections. WWF was similar, developing in 1991 a structure with a Director, five functional sections and 37 individual units – producing an organisation that reputedly had more cost-centres than ICI. Thus the ‘voluntary’ organisations began embracing the business attitudes of the companies that they were often fighting against.                                                                                                                                                              
This growth the groups experienced has changed the face of campaigning, the groups themselves and their relationship with their supporters and the general public. These changes, as we shall see, had profound implications for the direction that the groups followed. The period of growth also caused much internal debate in groups as the dynamics of the small anarchic groups developed into more corporate structures. Talking of Greenpeace for example, Wilkinson says that growth created a ‘fundamental dilemma’ with which the group is still struggling today.
Do you rely on well-meaning, highly motivated people working for an ideal rather than money? Or do you recognise that the outfit is, to all intents and purposes, a multi-national which needs professional skills at the highest level?
Friends of the Earth went through a similar transition, from what was essentially a club whose structure was ‘cobbled together by chance’  to being a national outfit with 18,000 supporters, 150 local groups and an annual budget of £300,000. FoE is unique amongst the groups in having a devolved structure with semi-autonomous local groups working at the grassroots. The relationship between the local groups and the national office has been somewhat problematic, and reorganisation in the early 1980s was particularly difficult. It was at this time that FoE developed into ‘pinstripe protestors’ and many supporters felt they had lost their radical edge. The pay structure moved from being egalitarian to a hierarchical management structure and subsequent differences in power and pay between staff. Local groups were forced to sign license agreements to use what had become the ‘brand name’ FoE, and many felt that national fundraising campaigns were targeting armchair donors rather than local activists . Many local activists felt alienated from the increasingly centralised structure and felt that the organisations efforts were too focussed on playing political games within Whitehall than changing hearts and minds at the grassroots.

This was probably more noticeable in the newer groups that had grown rapidly from small groups of radical, like-minded people to structured organisations. But it was also present in the more established organisations such as the RSPB. As the organisation grew one staff member noted how he passed people in corridors not knowing who they were – the atmosphere of the organisation had changed. Rawcliffe has pointed out how the growth of groups, regardless of their ability to attain their original goals, leads to the maintenance of the organisation gaining increasing priority. As the number of full time staff grows, the groups ability to mobilise new sources of funding increases, leading to more full time staff, and an increasingly formalised structure. This process of oligarchisation, says Rawcliffe, leads to power in groups concentrated in an elite, often of bureaucrats and other functionaries, while the inactivity of the rank and file membership increases. This, I would argue, changes the relationship of members to groups dramatically, in that you are no longer part of a movement for change, you, as a member, are simply buying in to somebody else’s movement. The increased internal structures of the groups, what Rawcliffe calls the ‘iron cage’ of bureaucracy’ also means that their ability to respond to change is limited, as budgets and targets are set, often for some time ahead. 

In addition the groups, as they become more corporate, get on to the vicious circle of having to keep raising more and more funds to be seen to be successful. For example, the RSPB proudly claims to have a million members – an important selling and lobbying tool. However, despite having a low turnover of around ten per cent per annum, still need to recruit 100,000 new members each year just to maintain its size. As Law points out, the costs of research, advertising and promotion makes recruitment a very expensive way to grow, and Rawcliffe has shown how the percentage of income the groups spend on campaigning – actually getting on with their job – has remained stable throughout the period of growth. It sometimes seems to me that conserving the organisation is more important than conserving Nature.

Conservation as commodity
One of the consequences of the developing management styles, taking on as they did the methods of big business, is that they also took on staff from businesses. As the groups developed more and more separate divisions, each with their own specialities, so they hired staff with the appropriate special training. As many of the departments, as we have seen with Greenpeace, were not directly related to conservation, then staff were taken on that did not have a background in the conservation movement. Neither were they necessarily expected to subscribe to the conservation ethic – those employed in sales and marketing were expected to ‘sell’ the organisation just as effectively as if they were selling soap powder or whatever. As in other selling the brand becomes everything and efforts are made to make sure it was not undermined by adverse publicity. 

Thus the hiring of specialist staff leads to a strong division of labour within the corporations. A person hired as a marketing specialist may have no real interest in Nature, nor empathy with the ‘product’ they are selling. A fundraiser at, for example, the RSPB, may initiate a very successful campaign to raise money to purchase a reserve in the wet peatlands of the Scottish flow country. In all likelihood, that person will have never been in the middle of a Scottish peat bog, and will just sell it as another product. They are alienated from the real reason that the peat bog needs to be purchased – that it contains rare and wonderful wildlife, and that it is threatened by a system where there is capital to be made out of planting trees on such ground. The fundraisers are not addressing the root of the problems they are purportedly trying to address. 

Perhaps the most brand conscious organisation is WWF. Lamb has described how the famous Panda logo was in place from the launch of the group (supposedly drawn as a doodle on a tissue by Peter Scott at an early meeting to launch the fund). The Panda has been trademarked since its launch giving the organisation a corporate identity that commercial organisations would spend thousands to achieve. It has also been used as a way of franchising the WWF message through a global network of national chapters, while keeping them under control by threat of loss of the image if they stepped out of line. Such is WWF’s obsession with their corporate identity that they are currently suing the American ‘World Wrestling Federation’ for use of the WWF initials, just in case people got confused and bought into wrestling instead of wildlife!

The increase in the financial reserves and assets of the organisations, and the increasing dependence on brand image to ‘sell’ and finance the organisations has meant a change in tactics and I would argue has undermined the organisations abilities to challenge the status quo. In the early days of Greenpeace they were willing to take risks to make a point. Several times they were taken to court and once had their assets frozen until they could raise the money to pay a fine. Nowadays their assets are so much larger that they are far less willing to go so far as risk the whole organisation for one action – the preservation of the organisation is seen as too important. 

As we have seen, the bigger the organisation, the more time and effort has to be spent on maintaining the organisation. The need to have a high profile – a ‘product’ to sell to maintain income has led the changes in the way campaign issues are chosen. In treating Nature as a product to be consumed – whether as a visit to a reserve, a cuddly toy, or just membership of an organisation -  Jacobs has pointed out this also means Nature has to be produced leading to a competitive environmental industry. The main conservation groups are competing for the same pool of members in many ways and need to have that competitive edge to attract members.

One way of being distinctive is by campaigning on different issues – if you want to save the Panda join WWF, if you want to save a bird, join RSPB etc. Despite the fact the underlying causes of Panda or bird decline are probably the same, the issues are split up into saleable packages which can be branded by the organisation and sold to members. This, I would argue is akin to the division of labour discussed above, and is equally as alienating. By taking issues away from the root cause of the problem we fail to see the big picture like a worker never seeing the end product of his labour. I can pay my membership to WWF to save the panda, but then feel frustrated when it is reported panda numbers are still in decline -  still, what else can I do? Meanwhile I will still happily go and buy cheap Chinese goods, which may well have been produced at the expense of a panda’s habitat. I will not be told the connection because I may well decide to spend my money on more expensive goods and not on WWF. The division of labour also leads to the fragmentation of knowledge discussed by Dickens. The groups increasingly have specialist staff meaning that the specialist on Pandas will probably know little about birds and therefore fail to realise that the problems facing the Panda stem from the same problem, probably being addressed differently, as those faced by their colleague in the bird section. 

In being so focussed on neatly packaged issues, groups may win a battle, but ultimately weaken their position in the longer war against biodiversity loss. One example of this is the campaign for increased protection of SSSIs. This campaign, led by FoE but eventually supported by most major conservation groups, focussed on the need to protect the small proportion of our land that is protected as being of ‘special scientific interest’. I have already shown how I believe the site-based approach is elitist and alienating, but the basis of the campaign was not based on the ecological needs of protected habitats and species, but on the ‘winnibility’ of the campaign. A campaign against the root causes of the losses of SSSIs – the industrialisation of agriculture generated by European policy - was judged not to be a ‘good use of resources’. The end result was some increased protection for a small proportion of Nature, and a Government let off the hook when it come to doing anything more fundamental in terms of addressing the root causes of biodiversity loss. 

There are many other examples of campaigns that, while successful, have failed to address the problems of over consumption and resource use. Many of these have involved consumer campaigns where groups asked the general public to boycott certain goods in favour of more so-called ‘environmentally friendly’ alternatives. One of the early successes in this field was the campaign against CFC propellants in aerosol sprays – a chemical that was shown to be damaging to the ozone layer. However, rather than campaign against the use of aerosol sprays which were usually deodorants or air fresheners and not exactly vital in everyday life, the campaign focussed just on which chemical was used in the propellant.  Jonathon Porritt, Director of FoE at the time has reflected
…critics suggested (and who can blame them?) that by campaigning for CFC free aerosols we were in fact condoning, if not positively promoting, self-indulgence, vanity and wholly unsustainable patterns of consumption. As Director of FoE, I knew we were right to campaign in the way we did. We would have made little headway with an anti-aerosol campaign. As an individual member of the Green party, I felt distinctively worried about the long-term implications of what we were doing 
FoE, it seems, did not have the confidence that it could campaign against unsustainable consumption – it would not make the group attractive to members. So, despite the Directors personal misgivings it chose a winnable battle over the aims of the long term war. 

CFCs were also used as the refrigerant in many fridges and freezers. Greenpeace, having failed to persuade commercial companies to develop alternatives, teamed up with independent researchers whose work had been rejected by the main suppliers. They developed their ‘greenfreeze’ technology and joined up with a manufacturer to produce the new commodity. Soon, the main manufacturers changed their minds and embraced the new refrigerant in their mainstream models. This has been described as 
perhaps the most successful and creative example of the strategic use of technological innovation as a catalyst for change 
However, I would argue that again it fails to address the root causes of the crisis, and promotes an unsustainable lifestyle. It is not really deeply embedded change. Why do we need fridges? We need them because we are so physically removed and alienated from the sources of our food that we cannot buy really fresh food. The market has decided that so-called ‘fresh’ food has already been transported long distances, and displayed in heated shops so that it is already starting to decay by the time we buy it. We need fridges because we heat our houses to the extent that we can sit around in light clothing even in winter, and no longer build in cool pantry’s for the storage of food. As with aerosols, promoting the use of fridges and freezers is really promoting long term unsustainable consumption patterns.

One supermarket chain, Iceland, enthusiastically embraced the new freezer technology, and then was also the first to refuse to use genetically modified ingredients in its products. For taking this stance it was supported by Greenpeace and FoE, who welcomed the announcement that it had increased its profits. But the fact remains it is still a supermarket which promotes the consumption of needlessly processed and frozen food, transported large distances around the globe before sale. It’s customers are as alienated from the source of that food as any other shopper and in encouraging the consumption of such food surely the environmental groups are promoting unsustainable lifestyles?

It can be argued that campaigning through consumer boycotts is a way to reduce alienation. In a way I would agree. They are a way of empowering people, enabling individuals to promote change through their own actions. It also forces people to think about what they are buying, and may help reconnect people with the raw materials, the natural resources, that they are using, and the consequences of that use. However, the way that they have been run is, I contend, counterproductive in the long run. Rather than persuading people to exercise their choice by not consuming, we only say buy brand X instead of Y. The underlying problem of over consumption of resources is not addressed. FoE ran a campaign persuading shoppers not to buy toilet seats made from mahogany, but choose those made from less endangered wood. Why not instead try and persuade people they do not need a new toilet seat, just to keep up with a passing fad in house decoration? The myth of Green consumerism just supports an unsustainable system. There is an annual ‘no shopping day’ but it is noticeably not supported by the main environmental groups.

The older wildlife conservation organisations have always ‘sold’ nature as a commodity, through promoting the ability to visit nature reserves as the main benefit of membership. As we have seen above, the coming of the newer groups in the 1970s widened the issues. In their early days Greenpeace used native American legends to promote living in harmony with Nature, from where came their famous ‘Rainbow Warrior’ ships name. FoE also used to promote living is a more ecological way, such as through their FoE Cookbook, which was in a large part about lifestyle. As the groups have grown this side of their message has been diluted, with a more anthropocentric, or even selfish, approach being used to sell the benefits of membership. For example, RSPBs ‘strapline’ is now
For Birds, For People, For Ever
And FoEs has become
For People, For Planet
Thus the groups seem to be promoting a utilitarian approach to conservation – it’s a good idea because it is good for you. None of the mainstream conservation groups are promoting Nature as having any intrinsic value in itself. This I would argue increases our alienation from Nature. Jepson and Schmitt have pointed out have pointed out that even what were originally Natural History organisations, such as the Wildlife Trusts and RSPB are
more and more adopting the language of scientific utilitarianism, not only in their discourse with Government policy makers, but increasingly when communicating with the public, as witnessed  by the growing usage of the term ‘biodiversity’. This practice threatens to weaken Britain’s natural history traditions and the broad base of support that nature conservation has enjoyed for more than a decade.
If we only protect it because of its utilitarian value then there is always a compromise, a way of buying our way out of the problem. Again, we do not address the root causes of the crisis nor engage people with Nature.

The business of conservation
As the organisations became more like businesses they start to adopt the language of business. As Lamb notes in the development of FoE it was noted as a potential problem
Sooner or later it had to decide if business, industry and Government were going to be shunned as out and out evil empires, or engaged in debate.
I would argue that it is not as black and white as this, and you can engage in debate without adopting the language of capital, although as I have found personally, this can be quite difficult. 

The organisations also got increasingly drawn into the economic debate, without challenging the economic system. This maintains the underlying capitalist assumption of nature conservation as a cost – a luxury to be only afforded at time of plenty. For example, Lamb, talking of the Rio summit, and the limited outcomes in terms of actual actions, continues
And the cruellest blow of all was yet to follow. Only a short time after the Rio Summit closed the world was plunged into economic recession. It is perhaps one of those inevitable ironies that at exactly the moment when the world realised that a massive financial input would be needed to tackle environmental problems, the global economy went into a violent dip. Promises of international largesse evaporated as the industrial world struggled with a sharp economic downturn.

Similarly, Simon Lyster, Director General of The Wildlife Trusts has said
Everyone in the country inevitably takes a share in a recession, and the voluntary sector is no exception. In fact charities today are very sensitive to recession…..and we are having to work harder for it(business sponsorship).Our corporate clients have become more demanding about what they get for their money…Sponsorship is no longer philanthropic – it is unambiguously linked to company performance and image. 

In taking these approaches the organisations are promoting the economic system that is causing the damage in the first place. The organisations fortunes rise and fall with the overall economic cycle, and it seems that conserving the business of the organisation is taking preference over challenging the system that is causing the damage in the first place. The economic boom that may trickle down to them from their corporate sponsors is, after all, founded on ecological bust. A recession therefore should be celebrated as a temporary let-up in consumption patterns. I would argue that the aim of conservation organisations should be to make themselves redundant – after all if we win the war there’d be no job left to do!

The tying in to the economic system through business sponsorship also ties the hands of the organisations to criticise the underlying system. As Lyster points out, business want something for its money, and by putting money into a cash-strapped conservation organisation they can ‘buy’ a green image for very little. The fact that the conservation organisations argue that by taking money they can not only carry out ‘conservation work’ but also they hope in the long term to educate the business sponsors into a greener way of life is undermined by the facts. 

BP is one company that has aggressively tried to market itself as ‘green’ without really changing it’s core business as an oil producer. It has rebranded itself as bp – ‘beyond petroleum’, yet has not increased its investment in its non-oil business. It has taken out a series of glossy advertisements in environmental magazines showing little projects that are meant to portray a cosy green image. One of these, showing how it had sponsored the building of a bird-watching hide next to one of its chemical plants, appeared in the Wildlife Trusts magazine. The fact that it was a couple of pages after an article expressing the Trusts concerns at the opening up of new marine oilfields did not concern Simon Lyster, nor did the fact that the article somehow forgot to mention that BP were the main company involved in drilling in these new sea areas. The Wildlife Trusts were ‘happy’ with their relationship with BP even though the company had changed none of its practises.

As the environmental groups adopted more of the language of business, so business started to adopt the language of the environment, such that Eder claims that the environmental movement no longer dominates the discourse on the environment. The language of environmentalism has now been appropriated by the movement’s opponents, and there are now so many voices it is difficult to be heard. Eder asks if the environmental movement can survive this marketplace of communication on the environment. Given the ‘iron cage’ of bureaucracy that has gripped the organisations, it may be they cannot now move quickly enough to stay ahead. 

This appropriation of the environmental message by business, and to a degree the acquiescence of the environmental groups in this process, has meant that instead of looking at alternative models of ‘progress’, we are stick in the capitalist growth model, with a few green bits stuck on at the edges. This view starts from the conviction that the ecological crisis can be overcome by technical and procedural innovation – what has been termed ‘ecological modernisation’.
This view holds that the ‘ecological deficiency’ of industrial society can be turned into the driving force for a new round of industrial innovation. As seen above, with Marx’s view on capitalism needing a constant crisis, this approach holds that remedying environmental damage can be seen as positive – environmental damage is not an impediment to growth; quite the contrary, it is a new impetus for growth. Ecological modernisation therefore helps keep the capitalist engine in motion. The environmental groups are increasingly talking this language. When challenged about the ‘costs’ of environmental protection they more often than not now reply with a list of the jobs that can be created by environmental technology, rather than questioning the need for technology in the first place. This is Marx’s ‘technology as an adjunct of capital’ par excellence. By following this route we are stuck in a vicious circle of creating a crisis, engineering our way out of it and straight into the next crisis. In this circle our reliance on technology, and our alienation from Nature, will be ever increasing.

There are those that hold that the widening of the environmental discourse and the move to environmental modernisation are the way forward out of our crisis. Jacobs, for example, argues that the way to get environmental thinking into mainstream Government thinking is to disentangle it from what he calls the ‘green orthodoxy’ . Jacobs claims that, uniquely among political subjects the environment is not just an area of policy. It is also the basis of an alternative political philosophy and accompanying social movement – that of the greens. He feels that the ‘ideological baggage’ that environmental issues bring with them deters mainstream political parties (Labour in this case) from properly addressing the real issues. As he says, you don’t have to be an environmentalist to want to protect the environment. The environmentalist ideology is, he says important, but need not have a monopoly on environmental concerns. Jacobs goes on to say that this need to escape the green ideology is paradoxical. 
In effect the environmental movement has simultaneously been responsible for putting environmental issues on to the political agenda and for marginalising them. ….The environment is too important to be left to the greens. 

I would agree with part of Jacobs analysis – that the environmental groups are as responsible for marginalising environmental issues as they have been for highlighting them, but not for the same reasons. By packaging environmental problems into neatly saleable packages (or issues) environmental groups have allowed industry and Government to concede small points, such as the propellant in an aerosol, or the refrigerant gas in a fridge, while conducting business as usual. By taking issues out as separate identities and giving them an environmental badge then they will always remain in an environmental ghetto. We have seen that by concentrating on campaigning to protect SSSIs FoE have conceded that Nature is to remain a small ghettoised part of the wider landscape. The groups need to keep issues as ‘environmental’ in order to justify their continued existence, and have become so tied into the economic system they are unable to challenge the underlying causes of habitat and species loss. I think that environmental modernisation would fail to address the root causes of the crisis for the reasons given above. I would therefore turn Jacobs analysis on its head, and say that the problem is that the environmental groups, in becoming more corporate and business like, have rejected a lot of green ideology. If it is the economic system that is leading to resource depletion, then the economy is too important an issue to be left to the economists.

Money Go-round
The problem is that the main environmental groups have left economics to the economists. Whilst occasionally challenging parts of the system there has been no concerted effort to either undermine the current capitalist system or promote viable alternatives. Indeed, as we have seen ,by tying themselves into the need for continued marketing and income generation the groups are as much part of the system, and therefore the problem, as anybody. 

Most of the groups now issue ‘affinity’ credit cards, whereby a banks card holds the groups name, and the group gets a small percentage payment whenever the card is used. The message here is simple – the more you use the card (and so the more you spend and consume) the more money you will give to your environmental cause. This gives the appearance that consumption is good, as long as it is done with the right card, thus you can appear to be ‘green’ while in substance remaining steadfastly capitalist.

Marx claimed that the market system produced this focus on appearance rather than substance. Individuals he claimed relate in accordance with the appearances they buy, not what they are. Appearance therefore becomes alienated from reality.
Money’s properties Marx wrote are my – the possessors – properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am is by no means determined by my individuality. ….Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good. I am brainless, but money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides he can buy clever people for himself, and is he who has a power over the clever not more clever than the clever? Do not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart longs for, possess all human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacitates into their contrary?

So you can consume with impunity, but buy conservation with your money. Use the right affinity card, send off your membership fee and all will be OK. Industry follows the same argument. Yes, they pollute, but if they generate enough money they may be able to pay to clean it up at some later date.

As the environmental groups grew and became more professional there was less of a role for the volunteers that in many cases used to provide a crucial role. Members of groups are not generally encouraged to get involved, but urged to send in that extra donation and the group will then be able to do your conservation for you. Conservation then becomes another commodity you buy. You are alienated from the actual ‘act’ of conservation (whatever that is!) but you are a conservationist as you have bought into it. There is little exhortation to change your own consumption habits beyond choosing the right brand – either the less damaging variety or the one that guarantees a donation to your chosen group.

The domination of this thinking was seen in the debates trying to ratify the Kyoto climate treaty. Industry and some countries, especially the United States, argued that pollution was itself turned into a commodity. They should, they argued, be allowed to buy carbon credits from countries that pollute less while they continue as normal.  It is, however from the actions of corporations and Governments at international conferences that the hegemony of capitalism, and its environmental effects has started to be challenged. It is also noticeable how the big environmental organisations have refused to become involved in this debate.

Mayday!
As the power of capitalist corporations around the world has grown, along with the power of capitalist institutions such as the World Bank, so has the realisation of the increasing democratic and environmental deficit that has grown with them. Modern corporations have been given the right not only to exploit natural resources, but also the right to choose how they are exploited, marketed and packaged. As Paul et al have pointed out, the corporations obligation to maximise sales and profits directly conflicts with what should be our democratic right to choose how society’s finite resources are allocated.  

As Governments over the years have ceded more and more power to the corporations it seems odd that most of the environmental groups still spend most of their energies lobbying Government for small changes in law and/or policy. However, more and more people are realising that to address the environmental crisis we need to challenge where the power lies and have been trying to strike at the heart of capital and the systems that sustain it. This came to public attention at a meeting of the World Bank in Seattle in 1999. Thousands of protestors from around the world tried to halt proceedings and protest at the consequences of the World Bank’s policies. The resulting ‘battle of Seattle’ hit the world headlines.

The following year in London, protestors took to the streets of London on Mayday. In an action named ‘Guerrilla gardening’ they took over Parliament Square to reclaim part of the city landscape for people and Nature. Turf was removed from the green and re-laid across the tarmac, seeds and plants were planted and gardens created. Alongside this there was some ‘ritual violence’ against a branch of McDonalds and graffiti was sprayed onto some monuments. These last acts led leading environmentalists to dismiss the protestors as “mayday mobsters” (Charles Secrett, Director of FoE) or “incoherent vigilantes” (George Monbiot, radical journalist). The underlying, anti capitalist message of the protest was not addressed. Indeed in the resulting debates in the media Charles Secrett lauded the possibilities of a “regulated market economy” to solve all our ills. Hugo Young, a political columnist wrote that “capitalism…is the best system anyone can think of”. A statement which, as Chesters points out,
 “epitomises the lack of imagination which currently passes for political commentary”.

Chesters applauded the protests saying that
Those who experienced Mayday will remember the space reclaimed: not just the physical space, the space in which many people laboured despite the inevitable futility of their actions, but the space such labour creates, the space to imagine the unimaginable, a liberated ecological society based on cooperation, participation and democracy.

Imagination is something that does seem rather lacking in the modern environmental corporations. That thousands of people with no central leadership or organisation, can turn up regularly for protests against the damage wrought by the pursuit of capital should be something the mainstream groupsmight be expected to support. But instead, in their ‘race for safety’ they choose instead to denounce the protest and stay safely within the system. Rather than be alienated from the corridors of power they have chosen to walk, the groups instead choose to side with the corporations they purport to oppose. 

The growth of the anti-capitalist movement is, I contend, a reaction against alienation. I have argued above that the bigger environmental groups themselves have become corporations and in doing so have alienated the very people that should be their supporters. The new movement is about empowerment. It is about people making an individual choice and not buying in to an existing neatly packaged movement. This new movement has remained deliberately anarchic, with people choosing loose affiliations rather than creating another formal organisation. The very act of doing so has challenged the capitalist corporations and Governments. With no central organisation to confront, authorities become powerless to confront the movement – there is no central badge to debate with, or take to court or to directly criticise.

The movement is, says Chesters
By definition, utopian and romantic, but this is what many miss in politics, as in everyday life, a vision that moves beyond the ‘inevitability’ of the market place and the ‘triumph’ of transnational capital.
And, I would add, attempts to overcome our continual problem of alienation and to address the root cause of our environmental crisis.

Conclusion
It may be that as it develops the new movement will move, as to an extent have groups like Greenpeace and FoE, from utopian romanticism to corporate pragmatism. If that happens then undoubtedly newer radical groups will continue to emerge. Although the new movement  may be helping address the alienation of people it is mainly urban and has not yet started to look at our relationship with Nature  However, the current movement has a much wider base on which to build.

It is without doubt that the growth of the environmental groups has made the environment an issue that needs to be addressed, and that they have helped keep it visible. Lamb though has noted that
the gains, although undeniably impressive and valuable in myriad circumstances, were somewhat of a letdown in the mass. The quality of the environment continues to decline overall despite what is being done.
I have shown how this failure may be linked to the environmental groups becoming more corporate in their approach. As they take on the language of business they continue to maintain the gap between people and Nature. As they become larger their members become removed from direct involvement in the work and become more alienated from Nature and the causes of its decline. This has increased the view of Nature as just another commodity, to be consumed when and if we want.  

Dickens interpretation of Marx’s approach to alienation has shown a process by which peoples understanding of themselves and their relationship with the world are removed. In maintaining the alienation of people from Nature we have increased the loss of the tacit ‘lay knowledge’ that would help us understand the damage we are doing and regain our connections with Nature. O’Neill, taking a position from Aristotle, has said
The value of knowledge lies in the contemplation of that which is wonderful and beautiful. Such contemplation extends our own well-being since it realises our characteristic human capacities. There is a relationship between our capacity to appreciate the value of the natural world and human well-being. 
The environmental groups, if they are to address the root causes of our environmental crisis need to revisit their roots. They need to help their members, politicians and the wider public re-engage with Nature, to see it as more than a commodity and as something ‘wonderful and beautiful’.