Activism and Corporate Environmental Norms: Revisiting the Case of the Brent Spar, 1995-1998

Abstract

This article revisits the well-known Greenpeace campaign against the offshore dumping of the Brent Spar installation by Royal Dutch Shell in 1995 as a case study of the impact of NGO activism on corporate environmental norms. It proposes a new reading of the case, based on previously understudied Greenpeace archival material, reappraising the agency and the intentionality of Greenpeace’s campaign strategies and tactics in seeking durable environmental norm change in the governance of offshore decommissioning in the North-East Atlantic. The article argues that the NGO’s two-pronged approach of simultaneously targeting Shell directly and indirectly through its wider regulatory environment proved an effective recipe for fostering durable change in corporate and international environmental norms.