A searing new report says the environmental movement is not winning and lays the blame squarely on the failed policies of environmental funders. The movement hasn't won any "significant policy changes at the federal level in the United States since the 1980s" because funders have favored top-down elite strategies and have neglected to support a robust grassroots infrastructure. Environmental funders spent a whopping $10 billion between 2000 and 2009 but achieved relatively little because they failed to underwrite grassroots groups that are essential for any large-scale change, the report says.
Released in late February by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, Cultivating the Grassroots was written by Sarah Hansen, who served as executive director of the Environmental Grantmakers Association from 1998 to 2005.
Environmental funders mainly support large, professionalized environmental organizations instead of the scrappy community-based groups that are most heavily impacted by environmental harms. Organizations with annual budgets greater than $5 million make up only two percent of all environmental groups, yet receive more than half of all environmental grants and donations. For building a movement, funding priorities seem upside down.
Instead of funding community-based groups to generate ideas, strategies and political support for transformative change, environmental donors have thrown their weight behind narrow lobbying campaigns in Washington, D.C. -- for example, the failed inside-the-beltway campaign in 2009-2010 to pass "cap and trade" legislation to curb global warming. For their part, mainstream environmental groups rely heavily on science, expecting that decision-makers confronted with powerful evidence will do the right thing. But this has not worked because "a vocal, organized, sustained grassroots base is vital to achieving sustained change," the report asserts.
How does change happen?
"In movements throughout history, the core of leadership came from a nucleus of directly impacted or oppressed communities while also engaging a much broader range of justice-seeking supporters." In other words, successful movements for social change -- anti-slavery, women's suffrage, labor rights, and civil rights -- have always been inspired, energized, and led by those most directly affected. Yet these are the very groups within the environmental movement that are starved for funds.
Analysis of environmental grant-making between 2007-2009 reveals that only 15 percent of environmental grant dollars are classified as benefiting marginalized communities, and only 11 percent are classified as advancing "social justice" strategies, such as community organizing. The report makes a distinction between internet activism or getting your neighbor to sign a petition and real community organizing. "Community organizing builds power by helping people understand the source of their social or political problems, connect with others facing the same challenges and, together, take action to win concrete change."
The report also distinguishes between "national organizations that might parachute into local communities for one-time policy campaigns versus authentic, local organizations that not only work on those same short-term campaigns but, just as importantly, build long-term leadership and capacity in the community to amplify change in the future."
"Unlike many of the professional advocates in Washington, D.C., people of color, immigrants, poor people and young people often are living face to face with the devastating impacts of environmental degradation. These growing communities have the self-interest to do something and, increasingly, the collective power to potentially make real change but may lack the support or resources to organize.
In a stunning revelation, the report offers evidence that, compared to the average of all philanthropic donors, environmental funders are less likely to support disadvantaged people: "There is a seemingly contradictory correlation: analysis shows the greater a funder's commitment to the environment, the less likely it is to prioritize marginalized communities or advance social justice in its environmental grantmaking."
Advice for environmental funders:
The report offers a four-point roadmap for "funding the grassroots to win" --
1. Fund work that benefits communities of the future.
Environmental funders should earmark somewhere between 20 and 50 percent of their total giving to underserved communities. Nearly half of all children in the United States today are black, Latino or Asian American and by 2042, a majority of Americans will be people of color. This is a powerful new constituency ready to take action on environmental issues, the report says.
2. Invest 25 percent of grant dollars in grassroots action.
Speaking directly to environmental funders, the report says, "We recommend that you allocate at least 25 percent of your grant dollars for social justice purposes, specifically with a focus on grassroots advocacy, organizing and civic engagement led by the communities most affected by environmental ills and climate change."
"The way to build a broad movement around environment and climate solutions is to mobilize diverse communities of people around issues that are much closer to their self-interest (such as stopping toxic pollution, creating viable new jobs and reducing energy bills) and then work intentionally to connect those individuals and campaigns to a larger understanding of communal and global interests."
3. Build supportive infrastructure.
As the highly-successful right wing in the U.S. can tell you, social movements grow large and powerful only when they are served by a deep infrastructure of organizations offering technical assistance and know-how. Local groups need to be able to find each other, share strategies, develop leadership, communicate their message, identify allies, and gain a wide range of skills. Such an infrastructure requires sustained funding and without it no movement can succeed.
4. Take the Long View, Prepare for Tipping Points
Supporting grassroots organizing may require a paradigm shift in a donor's grantmaking strategy. This can mean shedding expectations of microscopic, quick deliverables and embracing the slow, patient process of movement building.
"In his important monograph Just Another Emperor: The Myths and Realities of Philanthrocapitalism, former Ford Foundation director Michael Edwards cautions that one of the downsides of increasingly infusing the nonprofit world with business ideals is that social change organizations are expected to churn out good, quarterly metrics. Extreme advocates of these ideas expect social change organizations to report mounds of data and compete with one another for funding based on 'numbers' and 'deliverables.' But on February 1, 1960, sitting at a 'Whites Only' lunch counter at a Woolworth's in Greensboro, N.C., there were only four African American students from a local college. Although those may not appear to be impressive metrics, consider the scale and scope of the movement they helped launch."
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It was the disconnect between the environmental movement and the social justice movement that lead to the exodus of women from the former in the ‘80’s in Tasmania. The chasm between environment and social justice movements is as deep today as then.
Because of the cargo cult mentality in Tasmania, fear has driven many potential grass roots activists into the bunker rooms of the Greens and major eNGO’s because it is safer there than “coming out”.
The Greens and the NGO’s have simply capitalised on the naivety of the drifters into their envirocraccies and questionably funded machinery.
Many activists here have called for a rethink and regroup on future ways of working together, forward planning and building lasting grass roots activism.Unfortunately the Green Party here now in coalition minority government and truly compromised and major eNGO's have ignored this call.
Enviros can turn this around by collaborating instead of litigating. Cooperating instead of obstructing. Working with people in communities instead of against them. It does work. Look at the new Owyhee Canyonlands Wilderness in Idaho. Nearly every party in the collaborative process supported the legislation, and now we see millions of new acres of wilderness in one of the most conservative states in the nation. Collaboration does produce concrete environmental benefits.
The hypocrisy and extremism doesn’t help either. Many enviros oppose ALL mining, logging, oil and gas drilling, and grazing, while at the same time driving to the ski hill, talking on their smart phone, using all those resources. I am NOT saying you need to live in a cave in order to advocate for environmental causes. Buy you at least need to acknowledge that humans, including you, need to use some resources.
How about fighting for RESPONSIBLE development of resources instead of fighting against all development?
The problem is, sometimes that doesn’t bring in money for these groups. When a national NGO releases their newsletter saying “compromised with Forest Service to do selective cutting to increase forest health,” the donations from San Francisco don’t come in as fast as if their newsletter said, “We sued the Forest Service for wanting to thin forest.” So to some extent, I don’t blame them. But it’s unfortunate, because I don’t think it’s helping the environment as it could.
Back in my undergrad days I didn’t like people much either. I blamed them for all environmental ills and thought the solution was simply to lock up resources and not let people touch them. Then I spent several years in Africa and that changed my outlook significantly. I fell in love with the people. I used to ride my bike to town every day and I’d pass this shack with a little girl dressed in rags. She would run out and wave at me and yell “How are you!” Cutest kid, but desperately poor. I used to think “I don’t care if her father cuts a tree if it gets this girl one square meal a day instead of zero.” I think many enviros have lost all empathy for their fellow humans.
Therein is the global conundrum. How does mankind preserve all the reasons he exists while obliterating all the reasons Earth creates and sustains all life?
Man exists only because of Earth's natural and wild ecosystems or the real Earth, the real living and life giving of Earth, void of the planetary death of Mars. What is the most alive on Earth and the most dead?
The most alive is a wild, natural landscape or ecosystem; the most dead planet represents houses, shopping malls, parking lots and cornfields. Alive as the dead tumble or rocks on Mars. Therein is the problem, man's failure to comprehend how Earth functions to create and support all life.
It isn't scare tactics; it is science. Think in terms of what is a living, life giving Earth and that which is as dead as the surface of Mars. A forested, wild ecosystem is living planet. So is a grassland [prairie] ecosystem, the same for a wetland, riverine or hardwood forest ecosystem. Concrete, asphalt, bricks, cities, cars, freeways, shopping malls, houses and parking lots are dead planet. Take for instance a city is an artificial environment, supporting maybe four species of life, humans, the European pigeon, the German cockroach and European rats and a sea of alien, unnatural plants/trees and European lawns. Now, look at a boreal forest ecosystem, functioning as one whole organism or the real, natural Earth, that which seeded all life and maintains it right today, thriving and supporting vast and diverse, natural species of animals and plants.
For most of man's existence on Earth, it was ecosystems that supported his existence totally, not concrete, not cities. Ecosystems are the life support systems of Earth.
I could have every elite scientist from every country sitting on one panel, with collective research in 100% agreement on a topic and yet this evidence means nothing in the face of propaganda. False propaganda overpowers gathered evidence almost every time because the method is to incite "sheep" and play to the one that does not value independent research. Environmental based activism aims at "enlightening". Enlightenment can't be reached..won't be reached without self-dedication to discover or learn on your own behalf(on your own time). Some in our world do not wish to read or research. Irrational thinking cannot be changed by activism. One Rick Santroum trumps the entire NASA and every intelligent person across the globe. If I am wrong, his movement would have been laughed away to the point he would be embarrassed to come out in public. People wouldn't cheer for or "champion" calling smart people "snobs".
Religion, racism, bigotry and anti-intellectualism prove this disconnect every day. If I stay in my four wall world and allow NO alternative information to enter my brain, I cannot be conquered by reason. Not now, not ever.
"Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it.- Ayn Rand
Check this interview:
http://oilprice.com/The-Environment/Global-Warming/The-IPCC-May-Have-Outlived-its-Usefulness-An-Interview-with-Judith-Curry.html
Many scientists are screaming, they have "no analogues" for all the unnatural changes occurring globally. Others maintain, Earth is losing the ability to sequester the heat trapping gases, the natural life supporting service of Earth's ecosystems. Others claim, man is devolving Earth into another Mars. If any credibility exists to the science of ecology, man is destroying his very own life supporting services provided by Earth's ecosystems and biodiversity.
The sky isn't falling but much evidence exists, we have no analogues, and of course, we can merely assume ecologists are merely alarmists; however, the stakes are high, if they are just alarmed!
He has forgotten his ecology along the way. He has forgotten science claims, killing and deforesting Earth's living, life giving physical body or ecosystems and biodiversity scramble the climate too, not merely man's carbon footprint. What sits on the surface of the Earth impacts the climate. Science knows, cities' climates are hotter as well as agriculture. Though terrestrial ecosystems represent a minority of the of Earth's surface, they create and support the vast majority of all life on the Earth, being replaced by concrete, cities, asphalt, roads, office complexes, shopping malls and parking lots, all as life creating and sustaining as the surface of Mars.
It's time the first green, the big green is resurrected, and we experience once again, the old battle cry of 50 years ago, "Ecology Now", and "in wildness is the salvation of the Earth."