Transcript This strange place called Europe

Environmental funding – what are we doing?
Jon Cracknell – EFN Retreat – January 2009
On this day
• “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. We
are faced now with the fact that tomorrow is today. We
are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this
unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a
thing as being too late... We may cry out desperately for
time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every
plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and
jumbled residues of numerous civilisations are written the
pathetic words: Too late.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
Overview of presentation
• Our current practice – generalised
• How much we give, the issues we like, the type of work
we fund...
• Scorecard of environmental philanthropy
• What we don’t like
• Our responsibility going forwards
• Things we could do together
• What our grantees would like
• Possible EFN activities
How much we give
• 2005/06 a little under £38 million – up 19% from the year
before – similar number of grants, c. 1,300 (new funders
too, to add in)
• US foundations c. $1 billion a year on environment, 4
times as much per capita as the UK (on climate change 7
times as much per capita)
• US environment grants = 5% of total foundation giving, UK
= 2%
• BUT UK foundations dominate the European
environmental grant-making scene, EFN members would
account for about half of the EU’s “top 30”
The issues we like
• We love biodiversity and species preservation! Particular
habitats (wetlands, forests, canals), or particular species
(rhinos, gorillas, squirrels, bats, butterflies, pheasants,
sharks...), wildlife trusts
• Terrestrial ecosystems – trees, national parks, gardens,
landscapes, grasslands, peat bogs...
• Agriculture – lots of education (city farms, children visiting
countryside...), research, community food projects,
projects in Africa
The type of work we fund
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Lots of research, on science, or policy, or technology, or...
Education and ‘awareness-raising’ (of a general nature)
Hands-on conservation work
Demonstration projects at small-scale
We like to fund large well-known organisations – the
household names, even though our grants represent a
small proportion of their total income
Where we fund
• In the UK either through organisations with national remit
(Soil Association, RSPB), or via county level organisations,
or in grants to community projects
• International giving is high relative to that in other fields
of philanthropy, often done via UK based organisations
with international reach, (Plantlife, Kew, Fauna & Flora,
Tusk Trust...)
• We like to fund projects in Africa and also in India
How we distribute grants
• Very ‘scattergun’ – broad and shallow
• A lot of duplication amongst grantees – starting to map
this
• Turnover/churn – not enough continuity?
• Rather blindly – we don’t understand well what other
larger funding agencies are doing (Lottery, central
government, Natural England etc)
• Often too slowly in the eyes of our grantees – agenda is
moving fast – the fierce urgency of now
Scorecard of environmental philanthropy
• Where has our comfort zone got us?
• We know how to do conservation – reasonably successful
at that
• We have helped to ‘norm’ environmental awareness and
concern in many ‘developed’ economies, although with
quite limited effects in terms of behaviour change/habits
• Helped construct large social movements – 110,000
organisations on www.wiserearth.org
Reasonable success on ‘domestic’ agenda
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Understandable scientifically
Highly visible impacts
Current problem
Us/here
Acute problem
• Developed world - air pollution, water pollution, acid rain,
deforestation, strip mining...
Limited success on the ‘global agenda’
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Complex, difficult to understand
Remote or difficult to perceive impacts
Future problem
Them/there
Chronic problem
• Natural resource depletion, climate change, soil erosion,
water scarcity, peak oil, over-fishing, tropical
deforestation...
A precarious position
• “Climate change is not some future prediction of what
might happen, it's happening now and having a serious
impact on our countryside every year.” National Trust
• “If nothing is done to substantially cut emissions, we could
effectively lose coral reefs as we know them, with major
coral extinctions.” Coral Reef Monitoring Network
• “We need to rethink how we do conservation. Investing
millions in protecting one area for a given species will be
pointless if climate change means they can’t live there in
50 years time.” WWF UK
The issues we don’t like
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Population growth
Economic growth
Consumption, materialism, advertising, wellbeing
Subsidies and tax reforms
Corruption/governance
Transport/mobility
Poverty alleviation in developing world
What we don’t fund much
• Work that addresses the causes of our environmental
crisis, as opposed to its effects – we fund downstream
• Creative work around messaging – reaching beyond ‘the
converted’
• Grounded yet inspiring visions of the future – “I have a
dream” instead of “I have a nightmare”
• Work that directly confronts power-holders – “Power
concedes nothing without demand” – Frederick Douglass
Our responsibility
• Not in ‘high-horse’ mode – JMG Foundation definitely not
grappling with all these difficult issues
• And we are constrained to an extent by the agendas
adopted by our grantees
• But we cannot excuse ourselves on this basis. We have
the power to change things. We’re worth £25 million
here in this room. We have a responsibility. The fierce
urgency of now.
• “We are the one’s we’ve been waiting for”
One practical response
• We could fund much more at the European Union level
• More than 80% of UK environmental legislation is framed
there – important global leadership role
• EU now 27 countries, with 497 million consumers, the
world’s biggest and most lucrative import market
• UK environment groups are much wealthier than their
counterparts in most European countries
• Total staffing of Green 10 groups in Brussels is 111 in 2007
– equivalent to two of the larger county wildlife trusts in
the UK
“Sometimes voluntarily, sometimes through gritted teeth
and sometimes without even knowing, countries around
the world are importing the EU's rules ... whether they
like it or not, rice farmers in India, mobile phone users in
Bahrain, makers of cigarette lighters in China, chemicals
producers in the US, accountants in Japan and software
companies in California have all found that their
commercial lives are shaped by decisions taken in the EU
capital.”
Financial Times
European Climate Foundation
• Interesting that the European Climate Foundation,
comfortably the most important philanthropic innovation
in recent years in our world, making millions of euros a
year of grants, was born out of the realisation that so little
money was being directed towards climate and energy
policy at the EU level
• To a certain extent an indictment of our collective
approach
What we could do – grants market
• Bundle grants together – to try and reduce the scattergun
distribution
• Ensure core funding to smaller change-oriented groups
• Specialist funders collaborate on lists of ‘hot
opportunities’ for more generalist funders – swarm
intelligence...
What we could do - approach
• We are only 3% of NGO income on average – focus on our
strengths – risk-taking, innovation, speed
• Exploit our potential to fund for the long-term
• Recognise that our grants are relatively more important to
smaller organisations, and for new ideas
• Fund challenges to business-as-usual – government and
businesses rarely do this
• Be bold – the fierce urgency of now – not a time for
tokenism or incrementalism (a bit of tree planting...) – we
need ‘war economy’ mindset
What we could do - innovate
• Strengthen civil society across Europe
• Use the City of London’s role as a global standard-setter
• Take advantage of the fact that English is a leading world
language – innovate in communications
• Help develop new narratives around regulation, choice,
freedom
• Develop ‘acupuncture maps’ – work together to see
where our philanthropy needles can best aid the body
politic
Take on the difficult issues
• Can we work together to do this?
• To get handholds on what seems like a glass cliff
(population, consumption, governance, subsidies...)
• This is our responsibility, if we choose to accept it
• If we recognise the fierce urgency of now
• If we don’t want to be “too late”