NGO - friend or foe?

• Position: Nongovernmental organizations - Editorial

Those of us who work to defend human rights or the environment often find that our main impediments are the dominant institutions of the world - nations and corporations. Up to now our institutional allies have been NGOs - not-for-profit, nongovernmental organizations like the Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace International, Human Rights Watch, etc. In recent years, NGOs have become ever more numerous and influential - witness the successful effort in 1997 by more than 350 NGOs to forge a treaty banning landmines despite opposition from the United States.

Unfortunately, the very fact that they are so influential has opened the door to a new - and now rampant - form of exploitation: NGOs today aren't always what they appear to be. Consider:

* At the time of the Kyoto climate treaty negotiations in 1997, editors and journalists received copies of what looked like a reprint of an article from a scientific journal, from an NGO identified as the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Although the institute had published no peer-reviewed work in any field related to climate change, the Wall Street Journal published an article by the institute's lead researchers, under the headline "Science Has Spoken: Global Warming Is a Myth."

* An NGO called the Greening Earth Society has launched a major media campaign to persuade policymakers and the public that increasing C[O.sub.2] emissions is a good thing, because C[O.sub.2] is a natural part of the environment and will enhance plant growth. The Greening Earth Society turns out to be a front organization for the U.S. coal industry.

* Journalists reporting on the public scare about the health effects of the plant-growth enhancer Alar came to the general conclusion that the "hysteria" had been unwarranted, after...