Speaking Up for the Natural Landscape: A Rhetorical Dilemma

Abstract

This article presents textual evidence which shows some of the ways in which green business corporations and environmental NGOs represent the natural landscape and their relationship with it. It reviews the origin and development of stakeholder dialogue and questions to what extent such dialogue can contribute to a process of corporate change. It shows how the corporations use different language to represent nature than the NGOs and provides evidence suggesting that the green corporations understand their relationship with the natural landscape differently. NGOs that wish to speak up for the natural landscape, face a rhetorical dilemma which has an important implication for their practice. Either they can enter into a stakeholder dialogue with business and risk becoming a party to the exploitive management of nature, or they can refrain from entering into a dialogue and risk becoming marginalised.