Sustainable communication: green PR and the export of corporate environmentalism, 1989–1997

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article evaluates the role of public relations (PR) consultants as influential actors in the politics of environmental governance. It examines the historical case of EnviroComm, a network of environmental PR firms that sought to define and manage the communication of environmental issues during the consolidation of the European Single Market in the early 1990s. The article presents EnviroComm as an epistemic community, drawing on in-depth interviews and archival research to show how its members engaged in information sharing, capacity building, and rule setting around environmental management. The network developed and successfully promoted environmental standards, practices and disclosure processes among public and private sector clients throughout Europe, the United States, and Mexico during a critical time period in international environmental governance. By diffusing its core principles of sustainable communication as best practices, EnviroComm helped not only to diffuse an American variant of corporate environmentalism as an alternative to public policy but also to cement environmental communication as a field in its own right. More than an intermediary, it acted as a cultural producer in the realm of environmental governance.