Globalisation:Green Alliance

Marie-Louise Apostolescu Rebecca Hogg Barry Strain

Videos

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History ^[1]

Green Alliance was created in 1979 and Mr Maurice Ash, its then chairman, said: “We’re a bunch of optimists. We’re not the doomsters. We believe in the possibilities of the future...”. At the beginning it was a small group of people but very soon they started lobbying on new issues. In effect, GA has achieved many “firsts” as they say in their 25th anniversary report ^[2]

In 1983 Green Alliance lobbied for the Environmental Impact Assessment which was adopted in the 1990s. In 1984, they made political parties to present their first environmental policy statements. Three years later, GA raised for the first time the issue of Genetically Modified organisms (GM). In the same period, they combined businesses’ with environmental groups’ agendas. In the 1990s they gathered Eastern and Western European NGOs and lobbied for the first White Paper on environment in UK. Then, in 1992 the government promised GA to ratify the Rio Convention on Biodiversity. Two years later they lobbied for a more powerful Environment Agency in the UK. Furthermore, they hosted Tony Blair’s first “green speech” in 1995 then in 2000 as PM. In 1997 GA launched Green Globe Task Force as an independent group focusing on international environment issues.

People

Green Alliance gathers three types of members ^[3]. It has a permanent staff (director, paymaster, etc.) that is in charge with administrative and communication tasks. Twelve trustees meet quarterly to supervise the programmes and eight associates (professors and consultants in specific areas) who work on an ad-hoc basis but have strong links with GA.

For more details, see following page: Globalisation:Green Alliance: Staff