I can see that campaigning by Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, Friends of the Earth and other environmental activists will likely increase between now and at least the November election. Why do I think this?
The results of a Gallup poll last month said that among fifteen issues measured as significant to Americans, the economy was number one with 71% of respondents saying that this issue mattered to them “a great deal.” Where was the environment? Way down there at number twelve.
Only 37% of Americans told Gallup that the environment mattered to them “a great deal.”
These aren’t exactly the kind of survey results that donors of Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, and Friends of the Earth are looking for. And when there’s a possibility, in this case a distinct one, that donors will be unhappy, the campaigners at the aforementioned environmental organizations, and others like them, jump into high gear lest their own jobs go extinct.
So, look for more anti-corporate campaigns, character assassinations, bridge and building scaling along with banner flying, and all the other attention-getting antics that are used by environmentalists and loved by the media.
And of course, all of this will dovetail nicely with the now inevitable “rich people and companies are evil” campaign which will pervade the coming presidential election contest.
It will be an interesting summer.
As you may have noticed, recently I’ve been writing a lot about accountability, or rather the lack thereof, in various global activist groups such as Greenepeace, Friends of the Earth, and Rainforest Action Network. For a list of those articles, just click here.
Why this call for accountability? Why now?
Well, it’s not just a tit-for-tat given that the above mentioned activist groups often call upon corporations for accountability information. (See the articles in the above mentioned list for references to this.) Certainly corporations, multi-nationals in particular, given their wide influence upon society need to be accountable to those they affect. But isn’t it just as certain, especially given that activist influence on corporations has increased over the past couple of decades, that those same activists need to be more accountable than they have in the past to the public whose interests they profess to serve?
The research shown in my recent articles demonstrates that, for the groups studied, their concerns about releasing accountability information are lacking. The research also shows, in the few cases where the information was indeed available, that the control of the organization is very tight and highly parochial. Take for example my post entitled “Greenpeace Voting Incestuous.” In this example, Greenpeace did release very pertinent governance information, but this information shows that the governance of this highly influential organization is concentrated among very few individuals. Yet, Greenpeace claims support from over 12 million people. The governance information I found indicates that those 12 million people don’t get a say in how the organization is run. Why not? Can you imagine the outrage that would ensue if Exxon-Mobil suddenly announced that its shareholders would no longer vote?
For activists to be less accountable than the companies they target is simply hypocritical.
This call for activist accountability is being made now because the influence of organizations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and Rainforest Action Network has reached a critical mass. And if we allow business as usual to continue (pun intended) their narrowly defined influence over the goods and services we all consume may take us in a direction that we don’t want to go.
Among one of the most popular activities of environmental NGOs is the issue of demands for corporate accountability. I don’t think that that’s a bad thing. Corporations, like any organization, can at times run roughshod over the rules. Just as the American system of government with its checks and balances on each branch of the public sector inspires accountability and transparency, having a similar system, albeit informal, in the private sector can prove beneficial. It can prove beneficial, though, only if those doing the oversight are ethical, open, and transparent. To whom are the eNGOs accountable?
Let’s use one major eNGO as an example. Friends of the Earth US (FOE-US), about which I’ve written frequently on this blog, is one of the largest eNGOs in world. A recent visit to the Web site of FOE-US (foe.org) revealed no information which would indicate how this eNGOs governs itself. Such information would be in the organization’s bylaws.
But my search on the foe.org site for the word “bylaws” yielded no results. Hmmm. I searched more deeply.
There was no bylaw information posted on the site, but they did post a collection of annual reports. I reviewed them.
My review of their annual reports, from 2003 through 2010, although filled with much glitzy and flashy information about their various campaigns (perhaps published there in an effort to induce donations) showed no information about organizational governance, not a whisper about the bylaws. (Speaking of 2003, please see my related post “Friends of the Earth Received Narrow Support” which demonstrates that for the years 2003 through 2006 FOE-US received almost 60% of its funding from only 11 donors.) Concerning governance, the closest thing I found in those annual reports were simple listings of the board of directors members and listings of the staff. I already assume they have a board of directors and a staff, but telling me their names doesn’t tell me how the organization is run.
How are those members of the board of directors elected? Are they even elected? Or are they appointed?
If the members of the board of directors are elected, who votes for them? The donors? The rank and file members? The staff? Other members of the board of directors?
If they are appointed, who appoints them?
If the donors vote for them, how many votes do the donors get apiece? Do they get one vote per donor, or do they get one vote per dollar donated? Sort of like shareholders in a corporation.
The answers to all of these questions, and others I haven’t taken the time to pose, are critical in assessing whether this corporate monitor, this organization that regularly calls for corporate accountability, is itself accountable and therefore worthy of doing the job that they appoint themselves to do.
Just as any organization can run rough shod over the rules, eNGOs are no exception.
If FOE-US made its corporate bylaws accessible on its Web site or reprinted them in their annual reports, their accountability would become more apparent.
Continue reading Why Are FOE’s Bylaws So Difficult to Find?
Today I’m going to discuss one of the lesser known, but still highly influential, activist groups in the environmental campaign business.
For readers who aren’t familiar with Friends of the Earth US, this organization is the American arm of the worldwide environmental non-governmental organization (eNGO) Friends of the Earth (FOE) and is one of the largest environmental advocates on the globe. Strategically speaking, FOE US differs somewhat from its eNGO cousins such as Greenpeace and Rainforest Action Network. In campaigning for the environment, the latter direct much of their actions directly at corporations while FOE US chooses to direct much of their campaigning effort at American legislators.
A few months ago I performed research which looked into the financing of Friends of the Earth US. The findings of the research were reported in a White Paper entitled “Friends of the Earth Received Narrow Financial Support from 2003 through 2006.”
The research I performed used information from publicly-available U.S. government documents and found that FOE US, for the period of 2003 through 2006, received almost 60% of their contributions from only 11 contributors. Given that FOE US spends much of its campaigning effort on American legislators, the implications of such narrow support are readily apparent.
The White Paper was published by The Kahuna Institute and if you would like to receive a copy of the White Paper - ”Friends of the Earth Received Narrow Financial Support from 2003 through 2006,” you may download a copy for free by going to this link.
A government that does an end-run around the spirit of its own laws? And by exploiting green activists in the process? Impossible, you say? Then perhaps you believe that there was no gambling a Rick’s Café Americain?
A recent opinion column, titled “The Multinationals’ Dilemma — Gratify the Greens or Protect the Poor?” and written by James M. Roberts of The Heritage Foundation, made these very assertions, but without the tongue-in-cheek suggestion of disbelief. In his article, Mr. Roberts discusses many different issues, perhaps too many for the space allotted him, the foremost of which is the issue of how multinational corporations may actually damage economic progress when they acquiesce to the protest demands of various activist groups. This is a complicated and controversial issue, one which I have often discussed on this blog. But, this issue is not the topic of today’s post.
Rather, the topic of today’s posts is one of the minor issues as raised by Mr. Roberts in his opinion article. That issue is the financing of activist groups by governments and the reason for such financing. I previously dealt with this topic in my April 2010 post “Nice Work . . . If You Can Get It? Friends of the Earth Does.”
In that post, I noted that in 2008 Friends of the Earth Europe received over 50% of its annual income from a European government grant. Of their €1.5 million budget for that year, Friends of the Earth Europe received €790,000 in the form of a grant from the Directorate General Environmental, the environmental commission of the European government. (Figures per the International Policy Network (IPN). Please see my previous post for full citation.) As I said in the title of that previous post, nice work if you can get it, eh? For sure. But what’s even more interesting is the reason for the awarding of such financing.
The International Policy Network (IPN) is a research organization based in the United Kingdom. On their “About” page they list their mission as to:
Promote the advancement of learning by research into economic and political science and the publication of such research.
Last month, March 2010, they published such research in a report titled “Friends of the EU: The Costs of a Taxpayer-Funded Green Lobby.” In the Executive Summary of this report, IPN states:
Environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have enormous influence in the European Union. However, some of the most vocal green groups are actually funded directly by the EU to lobby it.
Nice work, if you can get it? Absolutely. And it seems that in Europe they can. One of the beneficiaries of such governmental largess is Friends of the Earth Europe (FoEE). On page 8 of the IPN report, in Table 2: Sources of Funding and Lobbying Expenditures, IPN shows that for 2008, FoEE had income of approximately €1.5 million. Of that amount, over 50%, or €790,000, came in the form of a grant from DG ENVI, which stands for Directorate General Environmental, the environmental commission of the European Union. And during that same year, FoEE reported to the EU that FoEE spent €696,000 to lobby the government of the European Union.
Indeed, nice work, if you can get it. And it’s looks like Friends of the Earth doesn’t have too much trouble in doing so.
Implications?
Generally, this means that the taxpayers of the European Union pay advocacy groups to lobby their government for changes deemed important by the advocacy group, and not necessarily the taxpayers.
Specifically, as related to the theme of this blog, this “nice work” means that European companies pay, via their taxes, for NGOs to campaign against them. And with, essentially, all the lobbying budget of FoEE picked up by the taxpayers of Europe, this leaves plenty of revenue left over for FoEE, and other lucky European NGOs, to apply to their online protest campaigns. Theoretically, at least, this means that FoEE’s digital activism is taxpayer supported.
This is an important tidbit of information to keep in mind for the next time that NGOs complain about governmental tax breaks for certain corporations.
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