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 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%