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Mini Profile
Organizing for corporate accountability
by Kari Carney, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, ELP Fellow 2002-2004
 For the past five years, I have been working as a grassroots community organizer on issues of the environment, economic and social justice, and corporate and government accountability.
It has been my experience that consumer groups, environmental organizations, and unions can drive corporate policy by organizing citizens. Through incentives and deterrents, we can force corporations to be more environmentally responsible. In the absence of citizen participation, corporations almost always choose to externalize their costs at the expense of the environment. That is why it is so important for citizens and consumers to engage corporations and the government bodies that regulate them.
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement uses a carrot and stick approach with corporations. We will publicly promote and support corporations that use environmentally friendly practices. For example, we have done a lot of work to promote Niman Ranch, a company that purchases meat only from farmers who raise their livestock using environmentally safe farming practices. Their farmers use no hormones or antibiotics; use deep straw bedding; and raise animals outdoors. Public support has encouraged Niman Ranch to maintain their sound environmental policies.
On the flip side, we organize citizens to force corporations to stop environmentally harmful practices. Through citizen participation we were able to prevent Anderson Erickson, an Iowa-based dairy, from building a factory farm that would have polluted Iowa's groundwater. The company planned to build a 1,400-head dairy farm on a site in Des Moines' Lobe aquifer, Iowa's largest aquifer. The farm would have produced 8 million gallons of raw feces and urine, which they planned to store in an earthen lagoon below the water table. In this case, a corporation that actually had a good environmental track record decided to put Iowa's groundwater at risk in order to maximize profits. Public pressure stopped them from moving forward.
We have come up against many corporations that continue to pollute our environment, sell products that are not produced in an environmentally safe way, or use corporate power to weaken environmental laws. Ultimately it is the consumer who can influence corporations to become environmentally responsible. |
Kari Carney,
Michelle Knapik,
Tara Wesely,
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