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Chapter 7
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Duncan Green and Phil Bloomer
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NGOs in Economic Diplomacy
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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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organized and centralized organizations where every public pronouncement is
carefully vetted for policy coherence (Oxfam errs towards the latter).
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National NGOs
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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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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
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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:
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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).
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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
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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:
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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
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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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Designing an Advocacy Strategy
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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.
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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:
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First Phase: Defining Objectives
Define 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)?
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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?
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Third Phase: Defining Tools to Influence Your Targets
Which 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
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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 exGreenpeace activists to train their staff in advocacy techniques, and produced a
strategy based very much along the above lines.
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When Does NGO Advocacy Succeed?
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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
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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:
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• 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 insiderstyle 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:
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• 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 decisionmakers.
• 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.
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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
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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:
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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 fundraising 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 decisionmaking 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 NorthSouth 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.
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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%20
Papers/Working%20Politically%20Behind%20Red%20Lines.pdf
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Useful Websites
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Avaaz: www.avaaz.org/en
Oxfam: www.oxfam.org
Pan African Climate Justice Alliance: www.pacja.org
Social Watch: www.socialwatch.org/en/portada.htm
Via Campesina: www.viacampesina.org/main_en/index.php
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