Concluding our occasional series on links between NGOs and companies, Alison Maitland warns that there are risks as well as benefits for both sides Have pressure groups gone soft on business? Activists who once resorted to open confrontation to make their point now talk to companies behind the scenes or take their money to set up joint projects to tackle social and environmental problems.

Even Greenpeace, the environmental campaign group that went down in history for its assault on Royal Dutch Shell over the planned sinking of the Brent Spar oil platform nearly a decade ago, speaks a more conciliatory language about business today. The old view of companies as uniformly bad was “a big missed opportunity”, says Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace UK.