chapter 7 m ngos in economic diplomacy - … in economic diplomacy 115 less dramatic than mass...

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m Chapter 7

NGOs in Economic DiplomacyDuncan Green and Phil Bloomer

In many ways, the term ‘Non-Governmental Organization’ is a bad place to start. It describes what a given institution is not, rather than what it is, and so leads to considerable confusion over what the category includes – business associations? Churches? Trades unions? Families? The phrase ‘non-governmental organization’ has no generally agreed legal definition. In many jurisdictions, these types of organization are called ‘civil society organizations’ (CSOs) or referred to by other names. We will use the terms interchangeably, although some commentators see CSOs as closer to grassroots organizations, with NGOs at the more professional end of the spectrum. For the purpose of this discussion, we will use a fairly restricted definition: organizations that pursue some wider social aim that has political aspects, but that are not overtly political organizations such as political parties.

But however blurred their definition, NGOs have clearly grown in number, size and influence in recent decades, an impact most recently recognized in their apparent coronation at the heart of the ‘Big Society’ by the UK Government.1 This chapter surveys the role of NGOs in development, and then explores in more detail the work of Oxfam in trying to influence public policy. It discusses how Oxfam’s ‘advocacy’ has evolved over time, and concludes with a brief examination of some of the current challenges it faces.

Even within this fairly restricted definition, the universe of NGOs is extraordinarily diverse in terms of structure, purpose and influence. Oxfam has an international presence with 15 members of the Oxfam International confederation, operating in some 100 countries, with a combined annual income in excess of $1 billion. It therefore counts as an International Non-Government Organization (INGO). But the bulk of NGOs are much smaller, operating at a local or national level. NGOs are active in the vast majority of developing countries, often directly providing crucial services such as health and education, but also increasingly involved in advocacy work. Many have roots in particular religious faiths – such as Christian Aid, Islamic Relief or CAFOD in the UK. Others, such as Save the Children or Oxfam, are secular. Some work on a range of issues, while others, such as WaterAid, are more focussed. Their political and organizational cultures vary enormously, from radical to reformist, and from diffuse movements to highly

1 BBC News, ‘Big Society is my mission, says David Cameron’, available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12443396/



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The New Economic Diplomacy114

organized and centralized organizations where every public pronouncement is carefully vetted for policy coherence (Oxfam errs towards the latter).

National NGOs

At the national level, much NGO work is almost invisible to the wider world: supporting poor people as they organize to demand their rights; pushing the authorities for grassroots improvements such as street lighting, paved roads, schools, or clinics; or providing such services themselves, along with public education programmes on everything from hand-washing to labour rights. However, in recent years, civil society’s most prominent role, at least as reflected in the global media, has been in helping to install elected governments in place of authoritarian regimes. Since the 1980s, successive waves of civil society protest have contributed to the overthrow of military governments across Latin America, the downfall of communist and authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the removal of dictators in the Philippines and Indonesia, the end of apartheid in South Africa. At the time of writing, it is not yet clear what role civil society organizations (as opposed to civil society more broadly) played in the wave of regime changes in the Arab world in 2011.

According to a study by the Freedom House, a US government-funded foundation, civic resistance has been a key factor driving 50 out of 67 transitions from repressive or dictatorial to relatively ‘free’ regimes in the past 33 years (Freedom House 2005: 6). Tactics have included boycotts, mass protests, blockades, strikes, and civil disobedience. While many other pressures contribute to political transitions (involvement of the opposition or the military, foreign intervention and so on) the presence of strong and cohesive non-violent civic coalitions has proved vital.

One example is the Georgia Young Lawyers Association (GYLA), a network of some 1,000 lawyers, established in 1992. The GYLA provides free legal advice to poor people, but also targets government malpractice. As a founding member of the Georgian movement known as ‘Kamra’ (Enough), it played a crucial role in triggering the protests that toppled the corrupt regime of President Eduard Shevardnadze in 2003, by winning a court case against the government over election irregularities, based on evidence provided by its own 200 election monitors.

Compared with the steady hum of the state’s machinery, civil society activity waxes and wanes, coming into its own in moments of protest and crisis, and often falling away after a victory – such as winning a change in the law, or the election of a more progressive government that promptly recruits key civil society leaders. In such circumstances, many NGOs find it difficult to move from a strategy of opposition to one of engagement. Other NGOs, notably those sponsored by religious institutions, are much more stable, outlasting all but a handful of governments, but even they experience cycles of activism and quiescence.



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NGOs in Economic Diplomacy 115

Less dramatic than mass protest, but equally important, civil society can demonstrate broad public support for policy changes, thus making it easier for political leaders to act and resist pressure from those who would rather maintain the status quo. In the late-1990s, for example, the Maria Elena Cuadra Women’s Movement in Nicaragua collected 50,000 signatures calling for better working conditions in the country’s export processing zones, prompting the Minister of Labour to enforce the law and convincing factory owners to adopt a voluntary code of conduct.

Civil society also plays an important, if less visible, role in more closed political systems. A study in Viet Nam revealed a virtuous circle of state and NGO investment in training and education, improved communications (for example, an upgraded road, funded by the World Bank, which allowed easier contact between villages and the district authorities) and pressure from the central government for local authorities to encourage popular participation in poverty reduction efforts. As a result, both villagers and local authorities gained confidence and began to exchange opinions and ideas more openly. Women in particular became much more vocal after receiving training in agricultural methods and making more regular trips away from the village (Leisher 2003).

Alliances and Participation

In practice, civil society is a complex political and social ecosystem, and alliances between dissimilar organizations are both fruitful and fraught, with turf fights and frequent accusations of co-option or of larger NGOs ‘speaking on behalf of’ (and claiming funds for) groups they do not represent.

One regular source of tension is over whether to pursue the tactics of ‘outsider’ confrontation, for example mass street protests, or less visible ‘insider’ engagement, such as lobbying. An outsider strategy based on mass mobilization often needs stark, unchanging messages, but these can alienate officials and political leaders and limit the insiders’ access to decision-makers. A study of women’s rights coalitions in Egypt and Jordan concluded that engaging in informal ‘backstage’ politics is equally, if not more, important than formal channels of engagement in these ‘closed’ political spaces. Policy influence heavily relies on informal relationships rather than strictly formal citizen-state engagements. The ‘formal’ faces of advocacy (such as through petitions, conferences and media advocacy) play a secondary role to informal processes in eliciting change, which is often facilitated by informal, backdoor processes of negotiation and mediation between coalition leaders and key players (Tadros 2011).

Conversely, an insider strategy muddies the waters with compromises, undermining mobilization and raising fears of betrayal and co-option. Yet a combination of insider and outsider strategies can sometimes be highly effective. When doing insider lobbying with supermarkets and garment companies on the need to respect labour rights in their supply chains, one of the authors was more



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than once asked by corporate representatives to ‘do a bit more public campaigning’ so that their work would receive more backing from the boardroom.

NGOs are not immune from the wider inequalities in society. Men often dominate, as do powerful groups based on ethnicity or caste. NGOs of hitherto marginalized groups have often emerged as splinters from NGOs serving the general population, when women, or indigenous or HIV-positive people, found that their specific concerns continually evaporated from the agendas of mixed organizations.

Moreover, participation in civil society organization brings risks of repression or worse. Across the developing world, activists who challenge existing power structures face attacks by police, hired thugs, and paramilitaries – or from irate husbands and fathers. According to the international civil society network Civicus, the crackdown in countries such as Ethiopia, Zambia and India accelerated in 2009–2010, affecting some 90 countries:

What began as a knee jerk reaction to a horrific event in 2001 (9/11), assumed a life of its own by the end of the decade. The world is presently witnessing a cascade of laws and regulatory measures to restrict the rights of citizens to freely express their views, associate and assemble. Peaceful demonstrators, activists, journalists, human rights defenders and ordinary citizens are increasingly facing motivated prosecution, harassment, physical abuse and threats to their lives for challenging well-entrenched power structures. The proffered justifications range from counter-terrorism to national security, cultural relativism to national sovereignty and government ownership of development processes as opposed to democratic ownership (Civicus 2010).

Beyond the personal benefits (and costs) of participation, a strong civil society obliges political parties to compete for the public’s support, and to offer social progress, rather than co-option. In Ghana, political leadership, independent media, and a strong network of civil society organizations have helped build up a politics of interest groups, including urban youth, cocoa farmers, native authority elites, professional and business elites, and unionized workers. The shift to a more stable state was demonstrated when the incumbent party lost the 2000 presidential election and an orderly transition ensued. The ruling party retained power in 2004, but elections were seriously contested. Steady improvements in literacy, access to information, and levels of social organization may help other countries to follow suit.

Civil society can play a crucial role in ‘keeping the demos in democracy’.2 Even the cleanest and most transparent electoral systems can be undermined by undemocratic institutions – corporate lobbyists, clientilist political networks, and the like. For these practices, sunlight is the best antiseptic, in the form of civil society scrutiny and activism. In recent years, civil society organizations have tried

2 The word democracy comes from the Greek ‘demos’ (people) and ‘kratos’ (power).



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to ensure that government spending tackles inequality and poverty. Such ‘budget monitoring’ work involves painstaking analysis of both what is promised and what is delivered, and advocacy to influence the way that budgets are allocated. In Israel, the Adva Centre, an NGO founded by activists from different social movements working on equal rights for Mizrahi Jews, women, and Arab citizens, uses a combination of analysis, parliamentary lobbying, popular education, and media campaigns.

The rapid spread of cheap communications technology has enabled NGOs to ‘go global’. Not all such networks have their origins, like Oxfam, in the North. Via Campesina links together peasant and landless movements around the world, while Social Watch, an international NGO watchdog, links national citizens’ groups from 50 countries. Based in Uruguay, Social Watch monitors progress on governments’ international commitments on poverty eradication and equality.

In recent years, North–South alliances of NGOs have successfully pushed issues to the top of the political agenda at meetings of the G8, the World Bank, and the WTO. Landmark initiatives, such as the International Criminal Court and International Landmines Treaty, were spearheaded by joint efforts of concerned citizens and NGOs, while sustained campaigns have sought to improve the respect of transnational corporations for labour rights and reduce the damage they cause to local communities and environments.

The great attention attracted by NGOs is viewed by some with concern, as a ‘reification’ that downplays the historically much more significant contribution of trade unions and political parties. Western governments and private philanthropists have poured money into NGOs, especially the kinds of organizations they recognize: urban, middle class-led, and modern, such as credit associations, women’s groups, law societies, business associations, or local development NGOs. They have sometimes given succour to NGOs that are little more than vehicles for relatively educated people to access funds when other jobs are scarce. In the process, they have ignored kin, ethnic, religious, or age-based groups, even though these often have deeper roots among much larger numbers of people, especially in the poorest communities.

Being ignored by funders may be no bad thing. Some donor governments deliberately use funding to defuse radical social movements that threaten vested interests. Other donors undermine the potential of NGOs by making them administrators, rather than irritants – funding often pushes NGOs towards the ‘service delivery’ end of the activity spectrum, and away from more confrontational areas of advocacy and campaigns. According to two authorities on the subject, ‘Donor civil society strengthening programmes, with their blueprints, technical solutions, and indicators of achievement, run the risk of inhibiting and ultimately destroying that most important of purposes of civil society, namely the freedom to imagine that the world could be different’ (Howell and Pearce 2001: 237).



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International NGOs and Advocacy

The bread and butter of international NGOs like Oxfam remains what is called ‘programming’. In the case of Oxfam GB, Oxfam’s affiliate in the UK, this is evenly split between humanitarian relief work in response to food crises, weather events, conflicts or earthquakes, and long term development work aimed at enhancing, in Amartya Sen’s classic definition of development, ‘the real freedoms that people enjoy’(Sen 1999: 3).

But in recent decades, Oxfam and other international NGOs have devoted an increasing amount of resources to ‘advocacy’ – influencing public policy, and the activities of other actors such as private companies and international institutions. The motive for this evolution was NGOs’ frustrations at building islands of success in a sea of failure. Their good projects were swept away by larger political and economic tides, such as the structural adjustment programmes of the 1980s and 1990s, premature trade liberalization and more recently, the growing impact of climate change. The focus of such international advocacy was primarily, though not exclusively, economic policy: globally, on issues such as debt relief, aid or climate change; in rich countries on issues such as the negative developmental impact of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy or US cotton subsidies; or in developing countries on support for small farmers or the terms of bilateral and regional trade agreements.

The aim of such advocacy is both ambitious and complex. According to one internal Oxfam document:

Lasting change requires decision makers convinced of the need for change. They need to be convinced by credible arguments, evidence of impact in people’s lives, and often by public and political pressure. Change also requires an infrastructure that sustains change, the appropriate political and legal framework, good quality policy decisions, and a vocal civil society. And lasting change requires sufficiently broad and intense public support.3

That last sentence, on the need to demonstrate wide public support, represents an evolution from a previous more elite-based advocacy model, which targeted specific policy changes on trade, debt, aid and so on, without explicitly attempting to influence public attitudes and beliefs. Oxfam has concluded that major paradigmatic changes, such as the transition to low carbon economies, need a broader and deeper shift in thinking, beyond the more technical discussion between lobbyists and policy ‘wonks’, both inside government and without.

The Oxfam document, quoted below, describes a ‘global campaigning force’ based on variable combinations of seven elements:

3 Oxfam International (2009). The Global Campaigning Force: Update Discussion Document (mimeo)



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Research: Good quality research as a basis for our policy and campaigns.Global lobbying: Access to and influence over decision makers in key capitals

and multilateral organizations.Presence: Campaigning and advocacy activities in key countries and regions,

based on power analysis designed to produce change. This point relates to the broader Oxfam plan for confederation growth and for strengthening the global movement for social justice.

Media coverage: Targeted media work to deliver strong campaign messages in priority media markets.

Alliances: Contributing to and being part of the global movement for social justice to have more impact.

Campaigners, supporters and activists: Building a global constituency of the campaigns that agrees with and supports the changes in policy, practice and ideas that we push for.

Popular communications: Reaching not only the convinced, but the general public through closer and more passionate communications, supported by celebrities and popular media.

Designing an Advocacy Strategy

The starting point in building a campaign is what is known within Oxfam as ‘power analysis’. This is carried out in three phases, according to the organization’s internal guidelines, which are quoted below at some length:

First Phase: Defining ObjectivesDefine the policy change objective clearly: How does it relate to poverty reduction? What would it change in poor people’s lives?What needs to change to achieve this policy change objective (what laws, policies, practices, markets, relationships need to change)? Is it an international, a regional agreement, a national law, company practices or all of the above? If there are several elements to change, is there one that paralyses progress on all the rest? Or one that could act as a catalyst for change?What are the obstacles to change?Intellectual: a) Is this defying conventional wisdom? Is there a body of literature and academics going against the recommended policy change objective? Are there valid and recognized counterarguments available or not? b) is there a degree of uncertainty about the problem (for instance, are we talking about something that might or might not happen in the future)?Political: Are there clear losers from a potential achievement of the policy change objective and are these losers organized? Do they have political clout and for what reason (financial power, voting power, investment power, source of employment)? Who would gain from the reform? Are they potential allies that could counteract the power of the losers? What is the source of their political



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clout? What level of reward can we guarantee if politicians make the right choices?Financial: What is the cost/benefit analysis of the policy change objective? Is there a cost linked with inaction?Practical: Is the reform feasible and under what conditions? Are those conditions achievable? Who would have to act to make it happen? How long does it take to put the reform in place? Are there political opportunities for change specifically related to the objective? Are there any imperatives for reform (for instance an international agreement lapsing, or budgetary restrictions)? Is there any current reform process, major event, debate or forum for discussion directly or indirectly related with the policy change objective? What is the time frame? Is there a change in government which might lead to a new direction? Are there any champions of reform in a position to act as catalyst or to break ranks with other stakeholders (e.g. more progressive pharmaceutical companies)?

Second Phase: Defining Targets: Who Has the Power to Make Change Happen?Who are the decision-makers and institutions that define the rules, practices and structures that need to change? At what level are decisions made (embassy, advisor in capital, minister, president)? Who is consulted in the decision-making process? Who has formal and informal power on a reform process?Among all of the targets, which individuals have a decisive influence (i.e. power to propose a reform, power to accept/oppose, power to influence tone and direction of the debate).Among these individuals, which ones are the most accessible? The most sensitive to or positive about Oxfam? And which ones are the most negative (‘lost causes’)? Which are the ‘shifters’ – the undecided or persuadable? Who influences the people in this key group, who are often the principal target for our campaign?

Third Phase: Defining Tools to Influence Your TargetsWhich are the tools that are best adapted to a specific target? What encourages/threatens a target to take action – possible candidates include compelling research; lobbying; advice of key advisers and trusted colleagues; positive/negative publicity; private or public criticism by foreign governments, renowned academics, journalists, politicians, parliamentarians, CEOs, religious leaders, international organizations; pressure from politically influential organizations (e.g. business associations, farmers, trade unions); public pressure from mass demonstrations or e-mail; consumer pressure? 4

In practice, advocacy planning may not always be so rigorous, but these approaches are spreading. In the run-up to the Copenhagen climate summit, one

4 Celine Charveriat (2005), Power Analysis Checklist And Methodology, 2005 (Oxfam International, mimeo)



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of the authors spent an afternoon at an internal seminar of the UK Government’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office climate change team. They had hired ex-Greenpeace activists to train their staff in advocacy techniques, and produced a strategy based very much along the above lines.

When Does NGO Advocacy Succeed?

The answer is of course, that usually, it doesn’t. But when it does, it is because NGOs are (or can be) particularly good at certain things. They talk the language of politicians – telling stories, establishing a straightforward narrative, and illustrating it with the kinds of ‘killer facts’ that stick in the mind and that civil servants need to include in decision-makers’ speeches. One of the author’s most memorable experiences in this regard was coming up with a simple calculation that each European cow receives support amounting to some $2 a day from the Common Agricultural Policy, more than the income of half the world’s population. The ‘cow fact’ promptly went ‘viral’, becoming a ubiquitous meme demonstrating the EU’s double standards on development. The same skills also mean that NGOs are often good at getting media coverage for their views, something any politician is keenly aware of. When one of the authors worked in DFID’s International Trade Department, the only time he saw the Secretary of State’s special adviser was when a trade-related story appeared in the Financial Times.

Successful NGO advocacy also moves the public, for example a number of faith-based NGOs successfully mobilized the biblical concept of ‘Jubilee’ in the Jubilee 2000 debt relief movement.

Finally, at least compared to civil servants, NGOs can be quite entrepreneurial, spotting emerging issues early, as in the ‘Publish What You Pay’ initiative, which was subsequently adopted and turned into the less memorably-titled Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.

Research by the Institute of Development Studies explored eight successful examples of lasting social and political change driven by civil society organizations in developing countries. This drew a number of conclusions: change processes are unpredictable, slow and highly context specific – beware blueprints and ‘best practice’; most change emerges from a combination of insider and outsider activity; external pressure can easily provoke a nationalist backlash; successful campaigns often involve conflict and contestation (Gaventa and McGee 2010).

Case Study: Oxfam International’s Climate Change Campaign

The evolution and challenges of international NGO advocacy are well illustrated by Oxfam’s 2008–2010 campaigning on climate change. The following section is based on the Evaluation of Oxfam GB’s Climate Change Campaign, which covers



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the period up to and including the Cancun summit of December 2010 (Cugelman and Otero 2010).

The decision to campaign on the links between climate change, poverty and development was both a radical departure for Oxfam, and something of a comfort zone. Radical departure because the organization had hitherto done little work, certainly in its advocacy, on environmental issues, and some voices within the organization felt it was in danger of climbing aboard a northern bandwagon and abandoning poverty and development. Comfort zone because the primary target, the UN climate change negotiations, provided a series of global summits, influencing which had become Oxfam’s stock-in-trade through its work on the WTO and G8 processes. The negotiations reached a climax each year at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Oxfam decided to focus its international campaigning on climate partly because of the opportunity provided by the UNFCCC process, but principally because Oxfam was alarmed at the prospect of climate change negotiations being conducted from an exclusively environmental point of view. Back in 2006, almost all media attention on climate change was focused on emaciated polar bears and blanched coral reefs, rather than the planet’s poorest and most vulnerable people, who are the first and worst affected.

At that time, Oxfam’s own humanitarian and development programmes were grappling with the impacts of climate change: its humanitarian programme was dealing with many more medium-scale weather emergencies (storms, floods, droughts); and its development programmes were doing far more on building resilience and disaster risk reduction, in the face of increasing shocks in poor communities. In its contribution to broad civil society campaigning it therefore focused on highlighting the human impact of climate change, and the need for adaptation plans and finance (whilst also wanting these messages to strengthen the demands for urgent action to reduce emissions in the rich economies). This ‘people first’ approach was epitomized by long-suffering campaigners at the Bali Conference of the Parties (COP13) in 2007, who got the message across by donning suffocating polar bear costumes and brandishing ‘Save the Humans too!’ placards.

Oxfam’s basic campaign ‘ask’ in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit was for a fair, ambitious and binding (‘FAB’) deal:

• Fair: cut emissions by responsibility and capability; finance adaptation for developing countries;

• Ambitious: keep global warming well below 2°C; help poor people adapt to unavoidable impacts;

• Binding: legally binding deal to ensure enforcement.

Oxfam’s focus on adaptation was far from uncontroversial at that time. Adaptation was a dirty word amongst a number of northern civil society organizations, who saw any talk of ‘adaptation’ as at best a distraction from, and at worst a sell-out



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of, the need to stop climate change at source by mitigating CO2 emissions. The strengthening of development voices, particularly from sub-Saharan Africa with the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), and from Bangladesh with the Campaign for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods (both supported by Oxfam and others), helped to shift the debate among the civil society groupings around the UNFCCC.

Oxfam’s decision to run a campaign on climate change exemplified the increased focus on public ‘attitudes and beliefs’ discussed earlier, with mass mobilization at the heart of the campaign. Its discussions with progressive governments in developed countries had seen them plead for more public campaigning to create the political space for them to move into. This highlighted an acute and newer tension for Oxfam working on global issues like climate: the publics in its affiliate countries are yet to be convinced by the environmental narrative of a ‘new prosperity’ through a transition to a low carbon economy. In that sense they represent a powerful source of inertia, defending the status quo of high emissions. An appeal to ‘think of the poorest in the world’ was unlikely to change that on its own, but nevertheless Oxfam felt that its public constituency could add a further strong voice to the movement for decisive governmental action.

As it turned out, the climate movement delivered major mobilization, of which Oxfam was a part. This included a global ‘Day of Action’ with 4,000 events in 140 countries; a march in Copenhagen during the summit of 100,000 people; and petitions with 10,000,000 signatures handed to the UNFCCC Executive Secretary and the Danish Prime Minister and Climate Minister chairing the conference.

This public mobilization also provided the political leverage for more insider-style advocacy work, with an Oxfam International team at the summit that held meetings with some 30 government delegations. The expertise of Oxfam’s own staff earned them places on six official delegations – a valuable source of both intelligence and influence.

One of the keys to successful advocacy is also building alliances across different sectors – these coalitions of odd bedfellows can be more effective than alliances of like-minded NGOs. Where common ground could be found, Oxfam built joint activities and positions with Coca Cola, Unilever, Nike, Swiss Re and other multinational companies before and during the summit.

What did all this activity achieve? Clearly, not a breakthrough – the Copenhagen summit (COP15) ended in a major setback for the UN process and particular humiliation for the EU, which was marginalized by the US and emerging powers in the last hours of the talks. However, more detailed examination in the evaluation showed some campaign achievements at a less momentous level.

The most significant contribution was, perhaps, to southern governments and civil society: through technical support to over-stretched and under-resourced delegations from least developed countries, and the emboldening of civil society organizations across Africa, Asia and Latin America to bring development and adaptation to the fore. For instance, the Bangladeshi Campaign for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods organized a meeting in July 2009 of civil society from the most



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vulnerable countries. The communiqué from the meeting demanded that climate finance be focused on the poorest countries, a demand taken up by the Bangladeshi government, which is credited with drafting the wording subsequently appearing in the Copenhagen Accord.5 That approach has since been consolidated at Cancun (COP16) as a key principle of the negotiations. This type of impact was more noticeable than efforts to change the policies of large emitters.

The campaign helped put climate finance on the EU and UN agenda. The most successful piece of advocacy was probably a single number – a ‘back of an envelope’ estimate that at least $50bn a year would be needed globally to finance adaptation. Published in 2007, this calculation by Oxfam’s Kate Raworth showed the importance both of ‘killer facts’ and of shaping debates by entering early on, as agendas are still malleable, rather than waiting until all the detailed research is in, by which time the moment for influencing may well have passed. After its publication, a coalition of NGOs, including Oxfam, pressed European governments to produce its own ‘big number’ for climate finance for poor countries’ mitigation and adaptation needs, as an essential confidence-building strategy with developing countries in the run-up to Copenhagen. Gordon Brown then stated in June 2009 that he expected $100 billion per year by 2020, which was subsequently adopted by Europe and has become the accepted figure for the deal.

In terms of attitudes and beliefs, the movement’s main impact was increasing public awareness of the need for urgent action. Oxfam’s public opinion polling shows that significantly larger numbers of people associated the words ‘climate change’ with its current and growing impact on poor people and countries than was the case two years before Copenhagen. Soberingly, however, since the peak in December 2009, the public understanding and desire for urgent action has fallen back.

In climate vulnerable countries, Oxfam worked closely with numerous allies throughout 2008 and 2009 to deliver ‘climate hearings’ in over 30 countries, with 1.6 million people participating. Often welcomed by their governments, the hearings became national events where people from poor and vulnerable communities could express their experience and aspirations around climate change, and be heard through national and international media who attended. Many participants found this personally empowering, moving them from the idea that the inexplicable shift in weather patterns was ‘God’s punishment for our communities’ sins’ to a sense that climate change was soluble and an issue of justice.

The hearings provided a wealth of human stories and experience of human impact and human agency in adapting to changes already under way. Just before Copenhagen, a Pan-Africa Climate Hearing was held in Johannesburg, followed by a global hearing in Copenhagen with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson, alongside community leaders from Uganda and Bangladesh, which was

5 ‘Funding for adaptation will be prioritized for the most vulnerable developing countries such as the least developed countries, small island developing states and Africa’. Copenhagen Accord, 18 December 2009.



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then reported back to all organizations involved in the climate hearings around the world.

Oxfam’s evaluation produced a number of other findings:

• Oxfam’s grounding (real or perceived) as an organization working in communities in developing countries was key to its credibility.

• Supporting ‘drivers’ as allies was more productive than opposing ‘blockers’.• Some stunts, such as the creation of melting ice sculptures in Poznan

(COP14 in 2008) and Copenhagen, got a powerful human image on climate onto TV news, and front pages.

• Oxfam’s media skills continue to make a significant contribution to getting the message of urgency and human justice across to publics and decision-makers.

• Otherwise, its key role was as a ‘convenor’, building alliances and coalitions, brokering deals, finding finance to support new initiatives.

• The work with private business actors had a significant impact, especially supporting progressive companies to advocate stronger action from the business sector to the UNFCCC negotiating parties, and emboldening their own communications to customers.

Moving the thinking of an organization as large as Oxfam is not easy, but climate change is now part of the corporate DNA, and central to a range of its programme and advocacy activities. This influence is apparent in the focus on climate in GROW, Oxfam’s new global campaign on food, hunger and resource constraints, to run from 2011–2015.

Problems, Challenges and the Future

Internally, NGOs often exhibit a disorienting combination of self doubt and self congratulation, and lest this chapter descend into an unseemly orgy of the latter, there are a number of doubts and ‘challenges’ (as problems are now known) about the evolution of INGO advocacy work.

The Global Campaigning Force document cited above usefully summarizes the recent evolution of Oxfam’s campaign model:

If the first phase of Oxfam campaigning was elite advocacy and media on multilateral issues, and the second was an expansion into popular campaigning, communications and alliance-building, the third might be described as expansion into more diverse approaches that understood change to be led in both north and south, at both multilateral and national levels, and influenced by tactics informed by views coming from different parts of the Oxfam system.



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The shift to a more variable geometry of campaigning, combining shifting combinations of national, regional and global advocacy, is a proper response both to the increasingly multi-polar distribution of power, and the recognition that national decisions continue to dominate many development issues (the importance of global processes has sometimes been exaggerated in the past). But it also creates some real tensions: global campaigns need a single message, and preferably a single ‘villain’ as target. They move rapidly from one event or policy target to another. In contrast, national campaigns often move to a slower rhythm, spending years painstakingly building alliances between dissimilar groups. Such tensions were epitomized by the 2005 ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign, which declared victory and closed down after some significant achievements on aid and debt relief at the Gleneagles summit in 2005, even though the anti-poverty coalitions it had worked with in many developing countries saw their jobs as very far from over.

Equally, Oxfam is struggling to build its campaigning capacity within its national programmes. It has not found it easy to move the staff culture in many countries to accept influencing as an integral part of their role as ‘change agents’, rather than simple administrators of programme funding. One useful approach has been to convert national annual plans into ‘National Change Strategies’ with an explicit demand for power analysis and the integration of influencing strategies. But building staff confidence to work with partners and allies to enhance campaigning capacity has not been simple or quick.

Most effective NGO campaigning either involves asking for more money (aid, debt relief, climate finance), or is focused on ‘stopping bad stuff happening’ (e.g. premature trade liberalization via the WTO). Often, it follows a basic campaign recipe of clearly defined ‘problem, solution and villain’. Positive, propositional campaigning is much harder: alliances easily fragment over what level of reform is sufficient; political and ideological differences surface over what kind of world the NGO seeks. Nowhere is this starker than on climate change, where huge differences persist on the kind of ecological, economic and political models required to avoid catastrophe.

Despite the recognition of the reality of multi-polarity, the 1970s division of the world into rich ‘North’ and poor ‘South’ remains deeply rooted in the hearts and minds of many INGO staff, as well as in the rhetoric of developing country governments. This makes it particularly difficult for INGOs to speak out over conflicts between developing countries, where disparities of power and influence can lead to deeply lopsided agreements on a range of issues. In the case of climate change, Oxfam struggled with divisions within the G77 umbrella group of developing countries, a problem that will only grow greater as the emissions of emerging countries such as China grow, along with the damage to the most vulnerable countries.

A similar tension occurs on naming key southern countries that are failing their poor people. INGOs like Oxfam are adept at criticizing rich country governments for their failings on climate, aid, trade, debt, but often shy away from criticism of other governments’ appalling record on poverty reduction or climate adaptation.



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This is partly because of issues of legitimacy, partly due to sensitivities around not occupying the space of national allies and partners, but also partly because of concern about the future of Oxfam’s country programmes, which rely on government acceptance. Nevertheless, this can lead to INGOs not being effective in challenging the greatest blockers to poverty reduction at a national level.

A further consequence of multi-polarity is that NGO tactics that have evolved to influence largely open, accountable governments may be of little value when targeting more closed systems, especially those in countries where space for civil society is limited. How to influence Chinese policy in Africa, or Gulf countries that fund land grabs in Africa?

Institutional pressures can also be unhelpful. Although the political logic is compelling for focusing resources on backstage support for small developing country delegations, the institutional incentives sometimes undermine that logic. For example, media coverage is important as a measure of success and a means of encouraging activists and pressuring politicians, but that can mean a major diversion of energy into press work rather than directly supporting poor countries. Some NGOs even seemed to see Copenhagen as primarily a fund-raising opportunity – a view definitely not shared by Oxfam (Green 2009).

In terms of media in poorer countries, INGOs need to be mindful of their power to overshadow national organizations in the media. Oxfam has an explicit principle that it has no strategic interest in promoting Oxfam’s identity in countries where there is no Oxfam affiliate. In these countries, its media staff should be working to support the messages and profile of partners and allies. The exception to this is where it has global media messages that are covered by international wires, and through general briefings to the global press corps.

NGO campaigns continue to privilege the economic and the technocratic, over the political. Insufficient attention is given to power analysis, with many campaigns instead exhibiting what one of the authors caricatures as ‘if I ruled the world’ advocacy, divorced from real world distribution of power, and decision-making processes. There are institutional reasons for this – an overly political stance carries high risks for many NGOs, whether legal, financial and physical, as well as the more subtle reputational risk of losing the ear of decision-makers.

As a global campaigning organization, Oxfam has come to realize that power analysis must not only embrace the government and private sector actors, but also civil society organizations and, importantly, the public. Almost all the major changes Oxfam seeks will mean confronting vested interests. Therefore public opinion (or anticipated public opinion through extensive media coverage), is a vital element of its campaigning tool-kit. But to be effective in motivating publics and strengthening their resolve to get change, advocacy organizations have to have a better understanding of the public’s current thinking and assumptions on the issue, and how they fit into the wider cognitive frames by which we all make sense of the world. Only then can campaigners be confident in designing their overall strategy, including the public messages and big asks.



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Linked to this focus on the economic and the technocratic is a weak understanding of models of change. Pushed partly by the world of fund-raising and programming, large NGOs inhabit a ‘planners’ world’ of 5 year strategic plans and continuous and predictable change. The larger the NGO, the more Byzantine the processes for adapting and changing those plans. This can lead to a degree of inertia that makes it hard to react to opportunities for influence, such as events, shocks, changes of government etc. A good example of this was the lack of agility many organizations, including Oxfam, showed in moving fast to link the global financial crisis with the need to promote a transition to a low carbon economy, the so-called ‘Green New Deal’. There were a small number of fleet-of-foot organizations that were capable of making this rapid shift. But for many larger organizations, it took too long to turn the super-tanker around.

Of course, agility is now facilitated greatly by digital communications technologies. These offer both opportunities and challenges to large INGOs. Viral campaigning and communications offer massive potential for citizens’ empowerment and participation, but compared to the past, these are much more on citizens’ terms than Oxfam’s. This demands that INGOs like Oxfam reduce control of their campaign messaging and let their constituencies play with and adapt the campaign to suit themselves and their online communities. This implies a profound shift in its campaigning approach, away from one of ‘pushing’ campaign messages out to supporters, and ‘giving’ them campaign actions to take; towards ‘facilitating’ supporters to campaign in their online networks and for them to design how they want to go about it.

Where is the world of NGOs headed? The growing obsolescence of the North-South frame will only deepen. INGOs must adjust if they are to be capable of persuading the G20, rather than the G8, of their cause.

The sustained rise of citizens’ power and digital communications means that INGOs must work in effective networks and coalitions across countries and regions, supporting national voices that relate to their campaigns. INGOs also have to take public opinion and cognitive frames seriously if they want to ensure that their appeals to justice are heard clearly (after all, INGOs are competing with a cacophony of commercial messages for the public’s attention).

The rise of continental organizations like the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) and other international networks of like-minded NGOs, along with agile, global, digital campaigning organizations like Avaaz (meaning ‘Voice’), challenges the financial and political dominance of their large northern colleagues.

With growing maturity, recognition, and influence will come greater demands for public scrutiny. NGOs that get involved in campaigning need to ensure they are transparent and accountable, something that is only fitfully occurring at the moment in many organizations.

Finally, the recessions in many of the richest countries mean that INGO income is down or flat, either through less generous public donations, or through cuts in government funding. For INGOs that became dependent on the latter, the implications can be severe, though perhaps healthy in the long term. Either



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way, fiscal austerity will restrain the expansion of INGOs, and perhaps the civil societies of the BRICs and similar countries will grow to take some of that space. In the long term, that is surely inevitable anyway.

But overall, NGOs and other non-government actors will continue to complicate and complement (though seldom compliment!) the work of diplomats and decision-makers, who will need to invest in both understanding them and learning how to work together for common goals.

References

Civicus 2010. Civil Society: The Clampdown is Real! Available at: http://www.civicus.org/civicus-home/1623-civil-society-the-clampdown-is-real.

Cugelman, B. and Otero, E. 2010. Evaluation of Oxfam GB’s Climate Change Campaign. Available at: http://Oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/Oxfam/bitstream/10546/119438/1/er-climate-change-campaign-010310-en.pdf.

Freedom House 2005. How Freedom Is Won: From Civic Resistance to Durable Democracy. Available at: http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/special_report/29.pdf.

Gaventa, J. and McGee, R. (eds) 2010. Citizen Action and National Policy: Making Change Happen. London: Zed Books.

Green, D. 2009. Population: why it’s a dangerous distraction on climate change (and makes us feel uncomfortable). Available at: http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=1521.

Howell, J. and Pearce, J. 2001. Civil Society and Development: A Critical Exploration. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

Leisher, S.H. 2003. A Case Study of Donor Impact on Political Change at the Grassroots in Vu Quang District, Ha Tinh Province, Viet Nam. Available at: http://www.mande.co.uk/htpap/docs/Hopkinsreport.pdf.

Sen, A. 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Tadros, M. 2011. Working Politically Behind Red Lines: Structure and Agency in

a Comparative Study of Women’s Coalitions in Egypt and Jordan. Available at: http://www.dlprog.org/ftp/download/Public%20Folder/1%20Research%20Papers/Working%20Politically%20Behind%20Red%20Lines.pdf

Useful Websites

Avaaz: www.avaaz.org/enOxfam: www.oxfam.orgPan African Climate Justice Alliance: www.pacja.orgSocial Watch: www.socialwatch.org/en/portada.htmVia Campesina: www.viacampesina.org/main_en/index.php

chapter 7 m ngos in economic diplomacy - … in economic diplomacy 115 less dramatic than mass...

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