Environmental activism and advocacy - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 206

legitimacy, trust transparency and accountability that come along with
that, have strengthened the position of environmental NGOs in envi-
ronmental governance. These organisations are crucial managers of
trust and legitimacy, and through that they fortified their position in
the environmental governance arena. In Chapters 5 , 6 and 7 ,wehave
seen several examples of how civil society actors manage to enhance
their position and influence in environmental governance, for instance,
in labelling and certification practices and arrangements, in disclosure
programs, in monitoring and verification. Some of these innovations
make use of and run via ICT and the Internet, but this is often not an
essential precondition.
These new power balances give also rise to new strategic alliances
between civil society actors and political and economic sectors. In the
early days of environmentalism, in the 1970s and 1980s, environmen-
tal NGOs were mainly positioned at the periphery of environmental
policies and reforms, only able to criticize and disclose the unwilling-
ness and failures of political and economic powers. As emphasised in
the ecological modernisation literature and ideas, we have witnessed
a repositioning of mainstream environmentalism, more towards the
centre of economic and political decision making. 20 With the grow-
ing importance of informational governance, this repositioning is even
further strengthened. Environmental NGOs are able to use their 'infor-
mational powers' of trust-generators, legitimacy providers and trans-
parency watchdogs to build strategic alliances with the powers that
be. Representatives of civil society are increasingly included in major
decision-making structures of national institutions; they sit regularly
around the table with major international bodies such as the World
Bank, the IMF, the OECD or the World Economic Forum; they set up
institutional arrangements with national and transnational companies
around labelling schemes, environmental reporting, codes of conduct
and environmental disclosure; and intelligent national and transna-
tional companies involve NGOs in their assessment procedures for
new products and investments or engage them in identifying or even
promoting green niche markets. These positions are more and more
institutionalised and/or legally codified, for instance, through the Arhus
convention and the inclusion of that in national and EU legislation.

20

On an earlier occasion (Mol, 2000 ), I have elaborated on the repositioning of
the environmental movement following ecological modernisation
developments and discourses.