How to mitigate against instrumentalization in partnerships

In this blog, we look at the risk of instrumentalization in partnerships, and how to mitigate against this. Key points are summarised at the end of this blog.

Blacklists and redlines

Many partnerships have legal or ethical criteria for who can join a partnership. Blacklists and redlines are relatively common for large global policy or development partnerships. For example, a child’s rights partnership will exclude partners who use child labor to produce or deliver their products. A health partnership will not include organisations who profit from health-harming products, such as tobacco firms.

Partnering under influence

However, many global policy and development partnerships operate in a grey zone, especially when funding is involved. The days when health partnerships celebrated alcohol companies as new partners (for supply chain purposes, of course) are thankfully rare and generally no longer accepted. But if you look at last year’s climate summit, COP27 (and its catastrophic partnership with Coca Cola, one of the largest plastic bottle polluters) and this year’s COP28 and its close ties to the oil industry, the largest polluters on the planet, it is clear that partnering under the influence of those exact harmful industries and effects thereof that a partnership is expected to tackle is still common. A partnership is in these cases instrumentalized, e.g., for greenwashing.

Many global policy and development partnerships operate in a grey zone, especially when funding is involved.

Partnering with “the enemy”

Many partnerships defend partners who lie in this grey legal or ethical zone as being a lesser evil. For example, a vaping company is argued to be a lesser culprit that the tobacco industry (which happens to own vaping companies). Or partnering with responsible alcohol associations is a lesser evil than partnering with the alcohol industry (which happens to fund the associations). Others argue that benefits of the partnership outweigh costs (e.g. the age-old supply-chain and market-reach arguments). Finally, some partnerships argue that partnering is a way to move the needle and influence foes to become friends. They may not do pure good, but they will through the partnership do better.

Some partnerships argue that partnering is a way to move the needle and influence foes to become friends. They may not do pure good, but they will through the partnership do better.

The risk of instrumentalization

No matter whether friend or foe, partnering always involves some risk of instrumentalization. This is because partners may share a common cause, but have different interests (e.g. competing bottom lines or resource mobilisation campaigns). It’s natural for all partners to want to provide as little “give” as possible (e.g. funding, own reforms), and as much “take” (e.g. new market capture, visibility).

Partnering always involves some risk of instrumentalization.

Mitigation tactics

To ensure that partnerships deliver on their impact goals, instead of undermining these, the following 5 mitigation tactics can help:

1. Use criteria of potential impact, not potential funding, as the primary partnership criteria.
2. Evaluate partners using a legal and ethics blacklists and redlines, instead of arguing that some aspects of partners fall under grey zones or outweigh harmful criteria.
3. Carry out thorough due diligence of the sector a potential partner is engaged in, with a specific focus on signs for greenwashing, healthwashing, etc.
4. Weight potential reputational and credibility damages higher than potential funding or visibility gained.
5. Include exit and sunset clauses in all partnership contracts and agreements, to be enacted with immediate affect if partners violate agreed goals and ways of working.

Key points summarised:

• Partnering always involves some risk of instrumentalization, because all partners have own interests.
• To ensure that partnerships deliver on their impact goals, instead of undermining these, mitigation tactics are needed.
• Five mitigation tactics include: focusing on potential impact rather than potential funding, using blacklists and redlines consistently, carrying out thorough due diligence, weight potential reputational damages highly, include termination and sunset clauses in all contracts and agreements.

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