Activists and NGOs haven’t been elected by anyone. But yet they play a major role in the war against capitalism, a system based on democratic process.
Yesterday, in Donna Laframboise’s blog, NoFrakkingConsensus.com, she raised this important point, one I’ve discussed on Telofski.com many times. But because it’s such a significant thought, I’m going to reiterate it here:
“Activists inhabit an entirely different world. Rather than being accountable to the public, activists think it’s their job to scold and nag the rest of us about our environmentally sinful ways.”
Well put.
We need to remember that activist groups are accountable to no one other than themselves. (For support on this point, please see the research I’ve completed on this topic.) And that their attempts to attack an economic system based in democracy are particularly hypocritical.
Last August, I posted on this blog an article about the level of democracy in Greenpeace. Specifically, that article, entitled “Greenpeace Voting Incestuous,” pointed out that for Greenpeace, Inc., the primary protest and campaigning organization of Greenpeace USA, a group called “the voting members” selects the members of the Greenpeace, Inc. Board of Directors, and the Board of Directors of Greenpeace, Inc. selects the voting members. Very cozy.
I didn’t put the word “incestuous” into that article’s title for no reason. The degree of democracy operating within Greenpeace, Inc. is fairly low. And in today’s article, I also didn’t put “incestuous” into the title for no reason either.
Today we’re going to take a look at the level of democracy at play in another Greenpeace USA organization. In this post we’ll look at the voting procedures of Greenpeace Fund, Inc. What’s the difference between Greenpeace, Inc. and Greenpeace Fund, Inc.
Basically, Greenpeace USA is made up of two separate corporations. One is Greenpeace, Inc. which is a 501(c)(4) organization. The other Greenpeace corporation, which is not as well known, is Greenpeace Fund, Inc. That’s the one we’re discussing today. This corporation is a 501(c)(3) organization. What’s the difference between the two?
Greenpeace, Inc. is the well-known corporate protest organization that one usually thinks of when the word “Greenpeace” is uttered. Greenpeace Fund, Inc. is essentially a foundation which funds much of Greenpeace, Inc.’s operation.
For more information about the technical differences between a (3) and a (4), please let Wikipedia explain, although to enjoy the balance of today’s post you don’t need to know much more about those differences.
Greenpeace USA makes their bylaws, for both corporations, available on their Web site. Kudos to them for the transparency on this information. Not every protest organization I study is as open. But it’s not necessarily their transparency that I am criticizing today. It’s their lack of democracy, and therefore their lack of accountability, that I criticize today.
In the Greenpeace Fund, Inc. bylaws its says:
“Section 2.1 – No Voting Members
This corporation shall not have any members within the meaning of Section 5056 of the California Corporations Code.” (Note: Greenpeace Fund, Inc. is incorporated in California even though the main office is in Washington, D.C.)
Section 5056 says with regard to a definition of members that:
” ‘Member’ means any person who, pursuant to a specific provision of a corporation’s articles or bylaws, has the right to vote for the election of a director or directors . . .”
Translation? Simple. This means that there are no voting members in Greenpeace Fund, Inc.
No voting members? How un-democratic. But if there are no voting members, then how are decisions made in the governance of this organization? Again, simple. They’re made by the Board of Directors. Entirely.
So, then how does Greenpeace Fund, Inc. get a diversity of opinion injected into their decision-making process? Again, the simplest answer is the most obvious.
They don’t.
Their decision-making process is incestuous. Why do I say that?
Because in those same
Continue reading How Much More Incestuous Can Greenpeace Get?
Corporate Accountability International (CAI) is a non-governmental organization (NGO) that “demand(s) direct corporate accountability to public interests.” Indeed, in their “Standards of Political Conduct for Corporations,” CAI says that corporations must “be more transparent about their activities” and calls for “independent oversight” of corporations. Some of the companies CAI has targeted in the past are Mc Donald’s, Burger King, KFC, and Nestlé.
Those mission statements certainly make sense given the name of this organization, don’t they? And this $3.7 million dollar per year operation goes to great lengths to support that mission. I’ve seen extensive documentation of their campaign efforts given in their annual reports and newsletters and you can see it there too. But what I haven’t seen in those reports and newsletters, nor will you, is information detailing the accountability or transparency of Corporate Accountability International itself. Ironic isnt’ it?
It’s ironic that an organization calling for the accountability of other organizations makes little to no effort to provide information about their own accountability to act in the public interest. I’m speaking of the public interest which they declare to protect as shown on page 32 (PDF version) of Corporate Accoutability International’s booklet “30 Years of Setting the New Standard.” On that page is the quote “we must continue to adjust and act – always representing the needs of people worldwide.”
Such a claim is, of course, not unusual for an NGO. It’s pretty much boilerplate. We expect NGOs to make those types of claims, but few, if any, actually back up their claims with information on their own accountability. I have written much on the subject of the accountability and transparency of NGOs. No NGOs that I have researched meet a high standard in this area and Corporate Accountability International is no exception. Let me explain my findings, or I should say lack of findings, for you, starting at the macro-level.
What I mean here by the macro-level is the employment of a larger organization through which NGOs can report their accountability and transparency. Sort of a “monitor of monitors,” if you will. Such an organization exists. I’ve written about it before on this blog. It’s called the Global Reporting Initiative. As I’ve written before:
“The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) ‘is a network-based organization that produces a comprehensive sustainability reporting framework that is widely used globally. . . . GRI’s core goals include the mainstreaming of disclosure on environmental, social and governance performance.’ Via the GRI, many corporations, labor, academic, and professional organizations report to the world their positions on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. To improve this process for NGO (non-governmental organization) reporting, during May 2010 the GRI created the NGO Sector Supplement, which was a framework modeled on other GRI report structures, affording NGOs a way to better report their accountability and sustainability positions to their stakeholders.”
The
Continue reading Corporate Accountability International Rates Low on Accountability Reporting
I’ve written about this type of problem before on this blog, this problem of the lack of governance transparency on the part of some major NGOs. Greenpeace has this problem. So, does Rainforest Action Network. And Friends of the Earth is no exception. Now, I find that the Environmental Working Group (EWG) suffers from the same ailment.
EWG is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization registered in the United States, and as such benefits from the labor of the taxpayers of America. For that reason alone, we all need to be able to gain ready-access to information about how EWG governs itself, how it makes the decisions it makes, how it selects board members, how it selects staff members, and how much input its members or donors have into EWG’s campaigning processes and other procedures. After all, this organization is, as is any non-profit, tax-exempt organization, partially financed by taxpayers who have the right to know these things.
Recently, I went to the EWG Web site in search of this information. I was disappointed.
Poring through the EWG Web site, I found no information relating to organizational governance. A search of the site for the organization’s bylaws was fruitless. Try it yourself. (You may also search on variations of the word “bylaw” and those searches will be equally as fruitless.) Yes, they had the usual information on staff members and board members, but not a word of information about their organizational rules that govern how those people conduct their day-to-day activities on behalf of EWG. Thinking that the information I sought might be in their annual reports, I downloaded their 2008, 2009, and 2010 annual reports from their site and looked through those.
Nothing.
To EWG’s credit, they did post quite a bit of information in their annual reports as to who their donors are. Just as I’ve credited other NGOs in the of listing donors, I’ll say that this is a darn sight more than many NGOs do. But this information doesn’t tell us how this taxpayer supported organization conducts itself.
So, this leads me to one question.
Environmental Working Group, why can’t we know about your governance?
In an article entitled “Activists Growing More Sophisticated with Time,” as published on StatesmanJournal.com, Michele Betsill, a political science professor at Colorado State University, in discussing the influence that NGOs have upon organizational decision-making, said:
“There’s a need for somebody to translate the science and help decision makers understand what science has to say about the decisions that they’re making. And NGOs have often stepped in to fill that role.”
Are we as a society lucky that NGOs have stepped in to fill that role? Perhaps in some cases, but certainly not in all cases. Why? As the “Activists Growing . . .” articles continues it answers this question.
The problem is that advocates are not neutral, as scientists are supposed to be. ‘Science becomes linked to particular positions, and this gets to the whole politicization of science,’ ” said Betsill.
NGOs are advocates. They’re activists. They’re not neutral parties.
The scientists hired or engaged by advocate groups are likely going to give those groups the “findings” that they’re after, just as consultants hired by corporations might, a condition that advocate groups often like to point out. Hypocritical? Yes, but that’s just how the dance between these two parties rolls.
So, the next time you read “scientific findings” issued by Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, Corporate Accountability International, or any of countless other advocate organizations, please consider the source of their findings and question their accountability. These partisan groups have a position, an organization, and employees as well as other overhead to maintain. Their reason for being is not to present objectively-based arguments.
Transparency International recently published their Global Corruption Report: Climate Change which they bill as “the first comprehensive publication of its kind to explore the corruption risks related to tackling climate change.”
So far, I’ve reviewed only the Executive Summary of the report. It looks like it might be an interesting document and one that may well be applied on the issue of climate change mitigation. The Exec Sum reviews many different topics related to the overall goal of corruption prevention. Among those topics are recommended actions for government, business, and civil society.
The recommendations for civil society would include the organizations that we consider as “irregular competition.” The number one recommendation that Transparency International makes here is that civil society organizations “undertake independent oversight and monitoring in terms of governance and corruption risk in climate change issues.” (Download the Executive Summary, then go to page xxxviii to see quotation.)
But who monitors these self-appointed monitors in this extremely important role?
The recommendation also promotes the initiation of “transparency tools” for civil society organizations to employ in their evaluations.
But who selects these transparency tools and how would the public know if they are aptly applied?
Certainly this document is well-intentioned, but unless the civil society organizations doing the transparency monitoring are more transparent themselves (And as we have seen in past posts on this site, many are not.), the outcome may be just as corrupt as, or more corrupt than, the corruption this document is trying to prevent.
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