[R-G] Can Pew's Charity be Trusted?

[Anthony Fenton]

November 25, 2007

http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/1473

Can Pew's Charity be Trusted?
US foundations give millions to Canadian environmental groups

by Dru Oja Jay

The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca

Is money from US foundations slowing down efforts to stop tar sands  
mines? Photo: Dru Oja Jay

Since major foundations in the US began funding environmental groups  
in the late 1980s, many grassroots environmental activists have  
sounded the alarm about the rise of the "Big Greens." Featuring six- 
figure salaries and foundation funding, critics say the large  
environmental NGOs coopt grassroots movements and excercise control  
over what issues are brought up.

Recently, some activists are warning of a similar shift in Canada. In  
2006, land-use planner Petr Cizek wrote an article for Canadian  
Dimension, calling attention to millions of dollars from US  
foundations being given to Canadian environmental groups.

The money comes from the Pew Charitable Trusts, which is endowed by  
the fortune of Joseph Pew and his heirs, as well as more recent  
donors. Joseph Pew founded Sun Oil, now Sunoco, a US oil company with  
revenues of $36 billion in 2006. Under Pew, Sun Oil also founded  
Suncor, a Canadian counterpart to Sun Oil and currently one of the  
two largest operations in Alberta's tar sands. Suncor has been  
independent since 1995.

Sunoco's US refineries process synthetic crude oil from the tar  
sands. According to a 2004 Philadelphia Inquirer report, a Sunoco-run  
Ohio refinery processes 100,000 barrels of synthetic crude per day.

The Pew foundation's original mission reflects on "the evils of  
bureaucracy, the paralyzing effects of government controls on the  
lives and activities of people, and the values of the free market."  
Pew money has funded many right-wing Christian groups and  
conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation, the John  
Birch Society, and the American Enterprise Institute.

In the early 1990s, the Pew Trusts began funding environmental groups.

Since 2003, Pew has spent about $41 million on programs on the  
Canadian boreal forest. Much of this money went environmental and  
aboriginal groups, and came into Canada via through the Canadian  
Boreal Initiative (CBI). CBI is technically a project of Ducks  
Unlimited, a conservation group operating in the US and Canada,  
though this relationship is not stated in materials on CBI's web  
site. CBI has no board of directors, and no official status as an  
organization other than its affiliation with Ducks Unlimited. Critics  
point out that there that this leaves no mechanism for holding CBI  
accountable for how it uses its money.

According to Executive Director Larry Innes, CBI gives out  
approximately $2 million per year, though the figure varies. The  
money is disbursed in roughly equal measure to conservation NGOs and  
aboriginal groups. Suncor, among others, is listed as one of CBI's  
"industry partners."

Does the money have an effect on the groups' agenda? "Our role is  
convener and talent scout," says Innes. CBI's aim is to be "in a  
position to advance conservation objectives." In many cases, CBI sets  
up meetings between industry, aboriginal groups and conservationists  
in order to establish common priorities.

Lindsay Telfer, director of the Sierra Club's Prairie Region, which  
has received CBI funding in the past, says that groups need to be  
careful with funding sources.

"Is there a risk that some environmental groups are going to go down  
a more conservative path because they get funding? I don't doubt  
that," Telfer told the Dominion. "We have to keep our eyes on our  
mandates and our goals."

"I believe I've lost funding because of our positions on the tar  
sands, but where I've lost it, I've picked it up in other places,"  
says Telfer. "It's a difficult debate, because in some ways all money  
is dirty money."

"The question to ask is, 'Are there ties to how that money is being  
spent?'"

Cizek says his critique of Pew funding "doesn't have to do with  
whether money is tainted, but whether a funder directly interferes  
with the agenda of an environmental organization."

"The Pew Charitable Trusts have consistently set up front groups"  
that act as a drag on the overall demands of environmental groups,  
Cizek says.

He sees a "pattern of funding from CBI" corresponding to "a pattern  
of incredible timidity among the mainstream environmental  
organizations, who don't seem to be able to take a principled stand  
on anything." Cizek notes that Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society  
(CPAWS) and the World Wildlife Federation (WWF), two major recipients  
of CBI funding listed as "partners" in CBI's TV ads, have taken a  
"low-hanging fruit" strategy of lobbying for protection of areas that  
are of little interest to industry.

Innes says CBI was founded to address a "tremendous opportunity to do  
development differently in Canada." The opportunity, Innes say, is  
the culmination of a series of trends in conservation work: the  
recognition of treaty rights, the willingness of some corporations to  
embrace "sustainable practices," and the trend among conservationists  
to protect entire areas instead of chasing biodiversity "hotspots".

"It's one thing to walk in as an environmental group" and speak to  
policymakers, says Innes, "and another thing to walk in as an  
environmental group, shoulder to shoulder with First Nations and  
industry representatives and saying, 'we've got a solution.'"

The CBI is "pretty up-front about wanting to protect at least half of  
Canada's boreal, and do responsible management where development is  
going to occur," says Innes.

It's this industry-friendly approach to conservation that many  
activists object to. The problem with the consensus-building  
approach, critics say, is that avoiding conflict with corporations  
means that the fundamental problems with mining or logging that  
provoked popular resistance in the first place are not addressed.

"In the 1970s and 1980s a vibrant, truly grassroots public land  
protection movement emerged--first in the West and then nation-wide,"  
writes Felice Pace of Oregon's Ancient Forest Campaign in a 2004  
article. "During the 1990s Pew, with support from other foundations,  
moved decisively to control this movement."

"Pew favors concentrating on 'low hanging fruit,'" writes Pace. "That  
is, wilderness areas which local congressmen and senators are eager  
to support because they are not controversial."

In his 1996 book Washington Babylon, US-based author Alex Cockburn  
noted that "the Pew Trusts' endowment is wisely invested in the very  
corporations that a vigorous environmental movement would adamantly  
be opposing."

"In its initial National Forest Campaign, Pew demanded that  
recipients of grant money agree to focus their attention on  
government actions; corporate wrongdoers were not to be named. This  
extreme plan was modified after some recipients balked."

Cockburn writes that just one of the Pew Trusts made $205 million in  
"investment income" in 1993 from investments in companies like  
Weyerhaeuser, International Paper, and Atlantic Richfield. Cockburn  
notes that at the time this was "six times as large as all of Pew's  
environmental dispensations." Today, however, Pew is reportedly not  
as heavily invested in resources extraction.
Photo: Dru Oja Jay

A more recent attempt at cooperation between industry, First Nations  
and environmentalists in British Columbia has recently drawn the ire  
of grassroots activists. In 2006, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Rainforest  
Action Network and ForestEthics celebrated a major agreement for the  
preservation of the Great Bear Rainforest. A year later, however,  
logging companies have ramped up clearcut logging to levels that are  
"unprecedented in 15 years," in order to gather as much timber as  
possible before the agreement takes effect in 2009. To make matters  
worse, "ecosystem-based management" techniques named in the agreement  
have yet to be defined. Meanwhile, environmental groups agreed to  
stop the direct action campaign that had previously halted logging,  
enabling the sped-up clearcutting to continue unimpeded.

“They made the Central Coast an environmental-protest-free zone,”  
Nuxalk hereditary chief Qwatsinas told the Dominion earlier this  
year. (See A Clearcut Answer?) “They’ve given away too much. It takes  
time to get the market campaign, the boycott campaign going again.  
Think about those strengths that were given up -- the power that they  
had in making demands, but it’s gone now. What else can they use?”

"We've found organized, institutional environmentalism has failed  
over the last four years to accomplish anything," forest campaigner  
Ingmar Lee told the Dominion. "The successes have come from  
individual grassroots efforts that have basically bypassed the  
entrenched, bureaucratic, environmental institutions that have been  
sucking up the enviro-buck and just not getting the kind of  
accomplishments we need."

Cizek agrees. "In the US," he says, "it has been pointed out that the  
organizations that are taking a principled stand are the community  
organizations, the ones whose neighbourhoods are being destroyed."  
The "Big Greens," says Cizek, often serve to tell local groups that  
they're asking the impossible, but when proven wrong, take credit for  
their achievements.

"And they often win the biggest victories."

"Victories," says Cizek, "will not be achieved in Washington, DC, or  
in Ottawa. They will be achieved on the front lines. The people on  
the front lines are the ones who are under attack directly. They're  
not policy wonks trying to figure out what public opinion will  
tolerate. For them, it's a matter of survival, in many cases it's a  
matter of life or death."

When discussing the tar sands, Cizek says that the groups receiving  
CBI funding have been extremely timid. CPAWS, WWF, Pembina, the  
Sierra Club and others signed a statement calling for a "carbon  
neutral" tar sands by 2020 through the purchase of "carbon offsets,"  
but said nothing about slowing down or stopping tar sands development  
itself. A short time later, the Sierra Club called for a moratorium  
on tar sands development. But it was only after arch-conservative  
former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed called for a moratorium that  
CPAWS and Pembina followed suit. WWF Canada has remained silent,  
though its UK counterpart has recently called for a moratorium.

"To their utter embarassment, the big greens found themselves  
trailing far behind the curve of public opinion," says Cizek, "and  
had to scramble to catch up." But the moratorium on new developments,  
according to Cizek, still does not address the damage that will be  
done to the water and land by operations that have already been  
approved.

CPAWS did not respond to an interview request, and a WWF  
representative declined to be interviewed.

"This is a very high-level political process that's going on," he  
adds. "This is about cutting closed back-room deals at the very  
political top, and allowing the environmentalists to achieve some  
concessions through dealings at the political top to manage their  
dissent into appropriate channels, so that the industries maintain  
their right to operate."

Sierra Club's Lindsay Telfer says that too much time is spent  
denouncing others within environmental and social justice circles.  
"That's something I've always found frustrating--divisiveness," says  
Telfer. "I'm more than supportive of other groups that call for more  
than what the Sierra Club calls for."

Telfer also comes to the defense of those who call for less. "I don't  
buy into the arguments that CBI is all bad, that Pew is all bad,"  
says Telfer. "I try not to get involved in the infighting." She says  
she would take money from the CBI in the future if it fits the needs  
of a particular campaign. "If we're fundraising for a project that  
has specific goals, I'll take money from people who support those  
goals," though she adds that the Sierra Club has strict standards  
concerning who it accepts money from.

Cizek sees a need for a "profound dialogue about the democratic and  
non-democratic aspects of environmental organizations." Many  
environmental organizations are private non-profits with few  
accountability mechanisms. The WWF, for example, has only  
subscribers, no members. The Pembina Institute, he says, takes money  
directly from oil companies, to which it sells carbon credits. The  
Sierra Club is "one of the more democratic of these environmental  
organizations," he says, and that is "perhaps why they were able to  
initially take a more principled stand" on projects like the tar  
sands and the Mackenzie Gas Pipeline.

But he emphasizes that "it's not about quibbling about calling for a  
moratorium or a shut down," but "what were the processes by which you  
came to this point, and how might your funders have influenced this  
decision? What do they actually expect to settle for?"

"Do they actually believe in this insane program of the tar sands  
becoming carbon neutral by purchasing carbon offsets?," he asks,  
referring to a statement signed by several groups before Lougheed  
called for a moratorium.

The CBI's Larry Innes says that the issue of accountability is "an  
interesting question." His response to it is candid.

"We're accountable to those people who write us a cheque every year,"  
says Innes. "If we don't achieve the kind of goals that they're  
interested in spending their money on, the funding stops."

For Innes, "a more interesting question is why we need US funding at  
all. Why is the environmental movement in Canada so small and poorly  
funded? Where is all the Canadian money? Why aren't Canadian  
philanthropists (with a few notable exceptions) investing in Canada's  
environmental and social justice movements?"

Depending on which explanation of foundation funding one finds more  
convincing, what CBI is accountable for accomplishing and why  
Canadians aren't providing the same levels of funding to  
conservationists will have very different answers.

...

Groups in Canada that have received money from the Pew Charitable  
Trusts via the Canadian Boreal Initiative (CBI), according to CBI  
director Larry Innes:

Boreal Forest Network
Center for Science in Public Participation
CPAWS
Ducks Unlimited
David Suzuki Foundation
Ecotrust Canada
Fondation de la faune
Forest Ethics
Forest Stewardship Council of Canada
Global Forest Watch
Manitoba Wildlands
Miningwatch
Nature Canada
Nature Conservancy of Canada
Nature Quebec
Northwatch
Ontario Nature
Pembina Institute
Protected Areas Association of Newfoundland & Labrador
Reseau Quebecois Groups des Ecologistes
Saskatchewan Environmental Society
Sierra Legal Defense Fund
Silva Forest Foundation
SNAP
The Sustainability Network
The Wild Foundation
Western Canada Wilderness Committee
Western Newfoundland Model Forest
Wildlands League
Wildlife Conservation Society
World Wildlife Fund
Yukon Conservation Society

Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
Bloodvein First Nation
Carrier Sekani Tribal Council
Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources
Dehcho First Nations
Grassy Narrows First Nation
Innu Nation
Kaska Dena Council
Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation
Little Grand Rapids First Nation
Little Red River Cree First Nation
Lutsel’ke Dene First Nation
Moose Cree First Nation
Mistissini Cree First Nation
National Aboriginal Forestry Association
Nishnawbe Aski Nation
Pauingassi First Nation
Poplar River First Nation
Prince Albert Grand Council
Treaty 8 First Nations of Alberta
Treaty 8 Tribal Association (BC)
West Moberly First Nation