IT HAS taken decades of singleminded toil for the world's leading green organisations to move centripetally from what was considered the lunatic fringe to a position of such popular power and eminence today that governments disregard their opinions only at their own risk. This is civil society at its best: consensual, morally impeccable, dealing with basics.

Greenpeace. Friends of the Earth. The Danish Society for the Conservation of Nature (DN). The Sierra Club. The Swedish Society for the Conservation of Nature. Germany's BUND. Each continues to mobilise the kind of leviathan mass opinion that political parties can only dream of -- campaigns that range from those against water and air pollution, invasive road-building to the disposal of toxic waste. Each of these NGOs, with the millions of members who form its ethical and material foundation, has its eyes open for the political and economic skulduggery that is transforming the world into a waste bin.

Five years ago, DSCN had a membership of 270,000, more than all of Denmark's political parties put together. Greenpeace, which started as a bunch of gritty "radicals" in waterproof yellow parkas trying to stop whalers, had a membership of 2 million. And its present financial clout stands at a whopping $27 million.

All the major issues brought to the fore in the past 30 years of the adulthood of the global environment movement have been matters that have engaged the public consciousness. The political power that green NGOs could command became evident with the electoral maturing of the German Green Party. Hereafter, political parties hastily co-opted green issues into their various agenda, and environmentalism changed from the esoteric passion of a few to a core issue that could mobilise entire armies of people into agitations and purchase selectivity.

And the people leading the green NGOs are slave to the issues -- just cogs in the great machine -- not the other way round. Unfortunately, this is a story that belongs to the developed world. Third World green NGOs are still seen as groups shouting unnecessarily loudly to be heard amidst the din of more serious concerns. And one person does all the talking. Few people remember the identities of those who started Greenpeace. But the Narmada Bachao Andolan will cease to exist without Medha Patkar. Sunderlal Bahuguna and the Chipko movement are virtually synonymous. In that sense, NGOs here are like fiefdoms.

Ultimately, however, it is only numerical power that will force green issues through the barriers of political and economic apathy -- not one person, not even 10. But millions, as the West's green NGOs have shown, can dictate to governments that if a happy environment means a sea-change in established policies, so be it.

What kind of upheaval will it take to create such a civil society in the developing countries?