Commentary Governance and accountability of environmental NGOs Paul Jepson * Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Dyson Perrins Building, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK Available online 1 September 2005 Abstract The issue of the governance and accountability of environmental non-government organisations (ENGOs) is gaining in prominence in academic and public discourse. Ideally each sector of society should be characterised by a distinct accountability regime, but faced with calls for greater accountability there is a risk that ENGOs might apply accountability regimes uncritically from the business or private sector. This could undermine the independent change-agent role of ENGOs and therefore weaken aspects of the democratic system. The present paper argues that ENGOs, and the NGO sector in general, need to develop and debate a distinct and credible accountability regime that strengthens and defines their role in society. In support of this goal a framework for conceptualising a legitimacy-based approach to accountability is described. This is based on the observation that NGO capacity for impact is founded on different types of legitimacy that together establish and maintain public trust. One role of governance is to maintain and strengthen these legitimacy assets by establishing and over-seeing accountability streams that recognise that public trust is built on the cumulative evidence of legitimacy. # 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Non-governmental organisations; Governance; Accountability; Legitimacy 1. Introduction This article is a contribution to the growing debate on the governance and accountability of environmental non- government organisations (ENGO), with a focus on household name environmental groups with annual turn- overs in excess of s 15 million. The article begins by discussing the rise of the issue and its potential implication for environmental policy. The second section explores the question of NGO legitimacy which, for the purpose of this article, is employed as a conceptual framework for discussing the governance and accountability issue. The third section develops the idea of a legitimacy-based approach towards ENGO accountability as a means to build an effective and distinct accountability regime for the sector. The arguments and frameworks developed in these latter two sections are relevant to questions of governance and accountability relating to the wider NGO sector, social enterprises (Dees, 1998) and indeed values-led organisa- tions in general. The article arises from an on-going programme of research that first considered ENGO performance measure- ment (see Jepson and Canney, 2003a) and is now moving on to explore questions of governance, accountability and legitimacy. In particular, it draws on presentations, debates and insights arising from the ‘green power: green responsibility’ lecture series convened by Linacre College and the Environmental Change Institute of the University of Oxford during February and March 2004 in which chief executives of six ENGOs were invited to reflect on the basis of their organisation’s success and comment on the issue of accountability and governance. The speakers, in order of appearance, were Tony Juniper, 1 John Elkington, 2 Graham Wynne, 3 Kate Parminter, 4 Robert Napier 5 and Steven Sanderson. 6 A review of each lecture is available at http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/linacrelectures04. www.elsevier.com/locate/envsci Environmental Science & Policy 8 (2005) 515–524 * Tel.: +44 1865 275881. E-mail address: paul.jepson@ouce.ox.ac.uk. 1 Executive Director, Friends-of-the-Earth, UK (FoE). 2 Co-founder and Chairman, SustainAbility. 3 Chief Executive, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). 4 Chief Executive, Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE). 5 Chief Executive, World Wide Fund for Nature UK (WWF-UK). 6 President and Chief Executive, Wildlife Conservation Society, New York (WCS). 1462-9011/$ – see front matter # 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2005.06.006