I am going to talk about the current tactics that companies are using to counter environmental and public interest activists as well as the media and the public at large.

On the whole the techniques the companies have used for the last few years have been very simple: On the one hand they have co-opted the environmental debate, by changing their language, and by greenwashing their products. On the other hand they have demonised and marginalised activists by labelling them as extremists, as violent and as terrorists. The result of activists being demonised is something that Sheila O'Donnell will talk about in a moment.

I am going to concentrate on is the increasing co-option of the environmental debate by industry and the use of dialogue as a PR tactic that companies are using against activists. For examples, I will mainly focus on the oil company, Royal Dutch/ Shell.

Dialogue is a part of a greater drive for transparency that has occurred amongst the largest corporations in recent years. What we have to try and work out is whether these companies are genuine in their attempts to be open, or whether it really is some cynical PR plot. There is no doubt that links with environmental or development groups help industry establish or improve their 'green credentials' and it helps the company gloss over its polluting practices. For example, in the USA, the joint project between Environmental Defense Fund and McDonalds has been repeatedly praised throughout the industry. In the UK, McDonalds sued two unemployed activists who questioned the company's health, and environmental record, in the now infamous "McLibel" case.

One prominent anti-environmental PR guru E. Bruce Harrison advises that "choosing green partners is without doubt the best strategy to improve your standing". Harrison cut his spurs working for the chemical industry against Rachel Carson's infamous book Silent Spring.

We must understand that for business, both transparency and establishing links with environmental, human rights, development and Indigenous groups and having dialogue with the opposition are simple PR techniques. Dialogue is the most important PR tactic that companies are using to overcome objections to their operations.: "To get on the green" as E. Bruce Harrison calls it, "be the model of openness. Initiate dialogue".

It is a typical divide and rule tactic. One PR guru has outlined a three step divide and conquer strategy on how corporations can defeat public interest activists who apparently fall into four distinct categories: "radicals", "opportunists", "idealists" and "realists". The goal is to isolate the radicals, "cultivate" the idealists and "educate" them into becoming realists, then co-opt the realists into agreeing with industry'

Another PR executive divides activists into five personalities:

Advocates who argue for what they believe in
Dissidents who are against things because of their character
Activists who want to get something done or changed
Zealots who are overridingly single-minded
Fanatics who are "zealots with their stabilisers removed"

The reasonable activists can be dealt with by dialogue, the zealots and fanatics you can only be overcome by undermining their support through marginalisation. And one way to marginalise people is through dialogue.

Take Shell, for example: This month the company kicks off a twenty million pound corporate PR campaign in a bid to restore its tarnished image, dented by the Brent Spar fiasco and its collusion with the military regime in Nigeria. The PR campaign will focus on environmental and social issues. The two key issues are encouraging dialogue and debate with the public and use of the internet.

The PR campaign is being managed by J Walter Thompson and Fishburn Hedges, who are working closely with the new media agency Traffic Interactive, which is co-ordinating their internet campaign.

On the net, Shell has set up a new discussion forum will go live tomorrow on the 15 March. The site will encourage online debate on topical environmental issues, such as renewable energy, Banner adverts will be placed over the internet inviting you to join the debate.

This PR offensive is an extension of a policy that the company launched in 1996, the year after Brent Spar and Ken Saro-Wiwa's murder in Nigeria. In essence the internet has become the cutting edge medium for greenwashing. Shell already has dialogue forums about topical discussion areas. If you look at Shell's web-site, you can already discuss environmental, petrochemical, employee, social, and technical issues in one of the company's Forums.

You can also express your opinion in the Shell Ballot Box responding to questions such as "Do you think Shell is an effective communicator" or "Should businesses use their influence with governments to address broader issues of human rights."

On the Net you can read about Shell's values, where the company says that "Having unshakeable moral values and sound business principles means we take pride in what we do. Since our earliest days, we have been guided by a passionate commitment to honesty, integrity and respect for people". You should ask the Ogoni in Nigeria about Shell's honesty and integrity; where 2000 people died and 30,000 were made homeless.

But there is more on the net from Shell. "This section is about dialogue. We want you to know more about how we work and how we strive to live up to our principles" and in return Shell "Promise to listen".

But do they listen and if they do listen, do they change their operations? We know the site receives over 1,100 emails a month, and a full-time staff member answers all these mails personally and within forty-eight hours. But the real question to ask is has Shell changed? Have their operations changed, or is it just the PR.

I argue that any changes you see in their operations are just cosmetic, that there is no such thing as environmentally and culturally sound oil and gas development, it is pure greenwashing, part of a systematic attempt to spread a green veneer around their polluting practices. Dialogue is being used to maintain a business as usual future for Shell and other TNCS.

What we are witnessing is that the net gives companies like Shell the chance to have a much softer interactive interface with consumers and critics that was previously not possible through the traditional annual report.

However, Shell reiterates this compassionate theme in its ground-breaking booklet "Profits and Principles: Does there have to be a Choice" which takes corporate PR into a new phase as well. "We care what you think about us, it says in hand-writing on the inside cover, whilst also mentioning dialogue.

You do not have to look far to see the hypocrisy of Shell's position. In Profits and Principles, Shell says about climate change that "prudent precautionary measures are called for" and that "the world needs to take action now". However last year Shell also spent $7.5 billion on exploration and production of new oil and gas. This is hardly a precautionary measure.

The company has adopted the dialogue approach elsewhere. Over the last eighteen months, it pioneered a sophisticated "stakeholder" process, which it hopes will become a blue-print for industry to use elsewhere. Having learnt from its operations in Nigeria and the Brent Spar fiasco, the company tried a different tract in Peru, where it has been exploring for oil in some of the most culturally and ecologically sensitive rainforest left on the globe.

In an unprecedented move, Shell held a series of workshops in Lima, Washington and London in December 1997 and June 1998 to which some 90 interested groups or "stakeholders" in its Peruvian Camisea project were invited. Not up for discussion was whether the project should go ahead, but how it should go ahead. Meanwhile, the whole process divided different groups on whether to take part in the Shell- initiative before Shell decided not to proceed with development on economic grounds. All the more radical groups were marginalised from the process.

In the UK we now have forums set up between environmentalists and biotech, oil, mining and nuclear industries. It's all part of growing stakeholder consultation. Its dialogue with the moderates, marginalisation of the radicals.

This whole process of stakeholder consultation is the start of a systematic attempt by TNCs to redefine themselves as corporations operating for the common good, not for profit, whilst dividing the opposition.

We have to understand that companies will do almost anything to defend the bottom line, one of profit maximisation. Truth is often the first casualty in the corporate war against activists. As more and more companies want to sit down and negotiate with NGOS, we have to understand why they are doing it. We have to be clear in what we want and what our vision is for the future. Do we envisage these companies being par of a really sustainable future, or do we ask ourselves can these companies ever be sustainable?

Take the oil industry - Critics of the industry argue what is the point is negotiation with an industry that continues to ruthlessly search for more oil and gas, at a time when we need to be rapidly reducing our fossil fuel dependence because of climate change. Recent indications are that we face a climate catastrophe in the next fifty years.. However, not only is oil development incompatible with climate stability, its also incompatible with economic stability.

There is a myth about oil development in that it actually benefits the host country. Petroleum led development strategies have delivered nation after nation into a spiral of debt and dependency. Recent ground-breaking research emanating from Ecuador shows that the country is actually worse off now than before its oil was exploited. Its oil reserves have allowed the country to borrow heavily from international money sources, but little of this money has actually benefited the public. 80 per cent of oil revenue now goes to service the debt and nothing else. The country has a greater number of people who live in poverty, and a greater gap between rich and poor. Not only has Ecuador got a higher national debt, but it also a huge ecological debt, with millions of hectares of rainforest and thousands of Indigenous people adversely affected by oil development.

All in all, from an ecological, cultural and economic perspective we should be disinvesting out of oil and gas now. But oil companies cannot disinvest because they have to find more oil and gas to maximise a return to their shareholders. If Shell explores for more oil and gas, this makes a good return for their shareholders, but not for everyone else because of climate change.

What they are largely doing, critics argue is working against the public interest. We have to ask ourselves can companies like Shell, BP, Exxon, Monsanto, or Novartis ever be sustainable. If we believe they cannot, I would say what is the point in wasting precious time, energy and resources talking to them?

So what should we do.

I believe that we should not dialogue with ompanies, nor be fooled by the tactics on the internet.

I believe public interest groups should not take money off companies.

I believe we have to ask ourselves very searching questions about some of these companies and be truthful when we say it doesn't matter what shade of green you paint yourself in, you don't exist in our future.