Hi, I hope there will be some discussion about what we can learn from the 
RGS/IBG meeting on Shell. I understand that the whole proceedings were 
taped. I hope a transcript can be quickly secured and made available over 
the net so that people who were at AAG etc can join the discussion. I did 
not take notes so I can't even provide an interim summary.
1. Shell took the publicity question seriously enough to send a number of 
men-in-suits with mobile-phones - a stroll outside at lunchtime found a 
group of them relaying the reassuring news that the meeting was 
well-mannered and that their guy was holding his own.
2. There was a good number of activists there who were able to put 
various specific points to Shell
3. There was relatively little input from academic geography and the 
public face of geography was provided by Earl Jellicoe and assorted 
members of the RGS Council.

I drew the following conclusions from the day

a. The success of the meeting in getting attention for the cause of the 
people living in the Delta region will depend upon how the proceedings 
are published. A full transcript would be useful but in terms of 
circulation it would be good to have a series of short pieces, perhaps 
by the speakers, in the Geographical Magazine; followed by a wider debate 
in the same or subsequent issues.

b. There was no motion for debate at the meeting and thus the discussion 
somewhat lacked focus. People will have taken from the meeting more or 
less what they wanted. There was, to me at least, a feeling that an issue 
was being aired, steam was being let off and so on. Thus it is important 
to think about how the issue can be followed up.

c. There was a lack of context for issue being discussed. In particular, 
issues about the nature of the Nigerian state and its political geography 
[independence struggles, internal colonialism etc] and about the nature of 
Shell and its political 
geography [Anthony Sampson's Seven Sisters, the Namibia story etc]. This 
meant that details which were thrown up during the day fitted into a 
squabble rather than a structured conflict. This invites a "reasonable" 
disinclination to come down strongly on any side.

d. The few insights we got into the thinking of people on the RGS Council 
- over lunch, eavesdropping at coffee etc - suggest that two interrelated 
questions need to addressed by the Society and its Council. These 
subjects have been widely debated in human geography but it would appear 
that those running the RGS have either not considered or have yet to be 
convinced by such discussions.
The first 
relates to the ethics of development and the second to the ethics of 
academia. Both of these issues are central to the history of the RGS. On 
the ethics of development, three points need to be considered. After 
independence ex-colonies did not start with a clean sheet, they had to 
deal with the legacies of colonialism. These legacies made it more not 
less difficult for them to compete in the capitalist world system. There 
can therefore be no question that a longer a period of colonialism would 
have made such colonies more "ready" for independence. Second, in 
circumstances where there is not genuine democracy we cannot assume that 
governments have the right to speak for the people who live within their 
territory. In other words, multinational companies that do deals with 
military juntas can hardly appeal to the "legality" of their use 
of local resources as justification for the means the military use to 
ensure their easy access to those resources. Thirdly, the ethics of 
development require at the very least that we listen first to the 
oppressed, that we recognise the continuing legacy of injuries done in 
the past and that we acknowledge our complicity in past and current 
wrongs. This means that we recognise the structured inequality between 
the positions from which Shell and the people of the Niger Delta speak. 
SHell have more resources with which to make their case. They have 
readier access to the media and they have the lawyers to police the 
access of others.
On the ethics of academia, we need to distinguish between honesty and 
complicity. It is honest to listen to both sides where there is 
disagreement over something that matters to us. The RGS Council members 
may have felt that they were doing that. Honesty also demands that we try 
to imagine how each side would respond to the points made by the other. 
Thus Shell's point was that the whole of the Ogoni lands were not denuded 
of vegetation [hence the "shaky" video film from the helicopter]? Did the 
Ogoni people have to prove the opposite? Thus Shell's point was that they 
built health care centres. Did the Ogoni people have to prove the 
opposite? We need to consider the arguments as they could be put in their 
strongest form. In this case, that means recognising that Shell have 
certain privileges in the setting and policing of the agenda for 
discussion. In this regard, we might consider how the murder of Ken 
Saro-Wiwe changes the terms of the debate and why it does so. It seems to 
me that the murder exposed the violence required to make the Ogoni lands 
safe for Shell. If those are the terms on which multinational companies 
gain access to oil, then, Shell are complicit in that violence to the 
extent that they could reasonably have anticipated it and we are complicit 
if we benefit from the cheap petrol which motivates Shell's presence in 
Nigeria or if we are party to arrangements which acknowledge or reinforce 
Shell's claim to be an ethical agent [and, again, we are complicit to the 
extent that we could be aware of Shell's complicity]. 
Complicity, then, is about the implications of our not taking certain 
actions given the information to which we could reasonably have access.
In other words, it simply will not do to abdicate responsibility in the 
name of keeping politics out of academia. This has long been a ploy at 
RGS meetings and the benefit of hindsight might enable people to 
recognise its shallowness in the case of such episodes as British 
imperial adventures in Abyssinia emerging as the real reason for surveys 
etc in the 1860s despite attempts to close down public acknowledgement of 
the same in the name of the non-political stance of the RGS [as James 
Ryan shows very well in his thesis, p.107]

e. There are a number of ways the RGS might or should respond to what we 
learned about Shell in Nigeria. First, and most importantly, we need an 
ethical code which we expect sponsors to subscribe to before we would 
wish to be associated with them. This can either be as an instruction to 
Council that they should not accept sponsorship from any company or 
organisation that is engaged in practices which are inconsistent with the 
committment of the RGS to human rights and respect for the environment . 
Or it can be in the form of a similar commitment which sponsors must give 
before their support can be accepted. Then, we need a constitutional 
procedure whereby the ethical code can be enforced. For this reason, 
placing the onus on Council might be the most straightforward because it 
might allow RGS members to challenge any sponsors through a motion at an 
annual meeting that such and such a company was not such as the RGS 
should associate with given the constitutional commitment of the RGS to 
human rights and environmental respect. Beyond that, I imagine a vote of 
no confidence should be the final recourse of the membership if the 
Council refuse to listen to such representations. 
Second, we need to ensure that the specific case of Shell does not run 
into the sands of the RGS Council. I was struck by the self-pity in the 
tone of the last contribution of the day from a Council member which 
praising Shell for their open and full contributions yet added that a 
truly agonising decision awaited Council. Bemoaning the infiltration of 
politics into the proceedings of a "learned society, the speaker gave me 
little confidence that ethics of development and the academy would get a 
decent airing at Council. I heard no hint of the structured inequality of 
the confrontation between the Ogoni people and the oil companies/Nigerian 
state. I heard no recognition of the past involvement of the RGS and the 
British state in the region. It may be that a vote of no confidence in 
the Council is the only way to concentrate minds. Mass resignations might 
not be as effective although I could be convinced otherwise.
Third, we might consider whether there is any purpose in a fact-gathering 
committee. Such a proposal might simply be a delaying and diversionary 
one unless it was tied to a particular motion which had some 
constitutional standing, it was linked to a particularly valuable form of 
publication, it was able to solicit materials from a wide range of 
parties.

I am sorry for the length of this message, especially as most of it so 
obvious but I am worried about the silence over the net on these issues 
since the meeting in London. 

Gerry


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