From the Belly of the Beast – A MUST READ on REDD – | REDD is Supported by Greenpeace, Conservation International, Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense Fund, WWF & Many More Corporate Greens

Blog Post from the Belly of the Beast: In the Bowels of the World Bank

–by Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project; North American Focal Point, Global Forest Coalition

… the Indonesian military is getting money through climate financing for REDD-type projects. The communities that live in the forests–some of them Indigenous to the area, some of them relocated there in the 80s–are being invaded by heavily armed forest rangers, paramilitaries and police; and are forced to leave at gunpoint while their homes are burned to the ground.

Benoit Bosquet, Coordinator of the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, defends the bank’s role in "forest conservation" in Indonesia, where forest-based communities have been forcibly evicted at gunpoint. Behind him is a photo of one such eviction. Photo: Petermann/GJEP

Today commenced the fall meetings of the World Bank in Washington, DC. The Bank has long been known for its strong-arm tactics to force countries in the Global South to turn over their resources–whether natural resources or poor peoples’ labor– to corporations based in the Industrialized North.

While the Bank is notorious as a major funder of fossil fuel projects, devastating large-scale hydroelectric projects and deforestation projects, they have now become one of the leaders in the effort to use “market-based” schemes for climate mitigation. They are the world’s carbon brokers.

Indeed, one of the items on their meeting agenda is climate finance–pumping money into various developing countries to supposedly undertake climate mitigation programs that will predominately benefit countries in the north, by enabling them to maintain business as usual and avoid cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Appropriately, there was a civil society session this morning on the impacts of climate finance for REDD projects in Indonesia. Indonesia is a global focal point for climate action because of the massive climate emissions that have occurred there largely as a result of the burning of primeval peat forests for conversion to oil palm plantations. But even the climate mitigation programs come with a high price, and Indonesia provides a stark case study of the devastating social and ecological impacts of REDD (the scheme to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).

But in order to participate in the workshop, it was first necessary to navigate the World Bank’s ridiculous security process.

It became obvious quickly that the Bank is quite paranoid about security. Now why, I wondered sarcastically, would an institution whose mission is ostensibly about poverty eradication need blocks and blocks of metal barricades and legions of police surrounding it?

Perhaps it has something to do with all of the people around the globe who have suffered under their severely unjust policies. Maybe they never quite got over A-16, (April 16, 2000) when thousands of activists descended on DC to blockade all of the streets surrounding the World Bank in a massive condemnation of the Bank’s dirty dealings.

But on this day, there were no protests, yet I still got the run-around by numerous unfriendly security officers and police, directed this way and that until I finally managed to find the registration building.

Once there, I explained for the fourth time that I was only there for one workshop and just needed a day pass. “We’re not giving out day passes today,” the desk jockey muttered. I had not encountered such surly, robot-like people since the Manchester, New Hampshire jail after a group of us were arrested in January 2000 for occupying Al Gore’s NH campaign headquarters in support of the U’Wa people of Colombia, whose lands were threatened by oil drilling by Occidental Petroleum. (Al had a lot of stock in Occidental).

Frustrated, irritated and thoroughly disgusted, I was ready to give up and make the trek back uptown when I saw a separate registration area for CSOs (civil society organizations). Okay, I thought, one more try.

I won’t go into the details, but suffice it to say, I talked my way into an official access badge. Then after navigating yet more metal barricades, police officers and a metal detector, I finally arrived at my destination: the workshop on the impacts of REDD and forest “conservation” in Indonesia. It was horrifying.

Global Justice Ecology Project has been exposing the impacts of REDD on communities in Chiapas, Mexico and California as the result of a sub-national REDD carbon offset deal between the two states. Indigenous communities in the jungle of Chiapas are threatened with displacement for “forest protection” projects, and being subjected to intimidation tactics such as the withholding of medical services to try to force them to leave.

But what is happening on the ground in Indonesia is even more extreme. As one panelist pointed out, the violence happening to the people in the forests is even worse than the violence that occurred under the Suharto dictatorship.

While the dictatorship no longer exists, the military still maintains most of the power in the country–and now that the forests have suddenly increased in value because of REDD (because the carbon stored by the trees now has value), people who live in the forests but do not have official title to their lands (which is about 80% of the people in the rural areas) are being violently evicted for “conservation” projects.

In the 1980s, a program was initiated in Indonesia called the Transmigration Program. It moved 2.5 million people off of the heavily populated islands of Bali and Java and onto other islands, leading to tremendous land conflicts. In some areas, the ratio of migrants to locals was 2:1. This, the speaker explained, is exactly what is now happening under REDD. Massive population displacement.

In a nutshell, the Indonesian military is getting money through climate financing for REDD-type projects. The communities that live in the forests–some of them Indigenous to the area, some of them relocated there in the 80s–are being invaded by heavily armed forest rangers, paramilitaries and police; and are forced to leave at gunpoint while their homes are burned to the ground.

All in the name of conservation.

I spoke briefly with the panel moderator, a woman native to Indonesia, about our work in Chiapas and what we had found there.

“Yes,” she replied. “What we see in Indonesia is not unique. It is happening all over with these REDD projects.”

And what is the point of all of this suffering and misery and violence? To provide corporations in the industrialized north with the opportunity to avoid reducing their pollution by “buying” carbon stored in some distant forest thereby “offsetting” their emissions.

So, in other words, impoverished rural and Indigenous peoples are being confronted with unspeakable violence to allow companies in the North to continue to poison and pollute poor communities near their facilities in the North.

Benoit Bosque, of the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (the Bank’s program to help design and fund REDD projects in tropical and subtropical countries) spoke and tried to deflect this intense critique by explaining that REDD was extremely complex, but we shouldn’t give up. “These conflicts are about an accumulation of past mistakes. We cannot let fear of mistakes prevent us from taking bold steps forward.”

Yeah, tell that to the Indigenous Peoples being thrown off of their ancestral lands…

His callous reply received a lot of indignant responses from both the audience and the panel, who pointed out that the World Bank’s track record of enforcing even its own safeguards is terrible. “Consultations have been window dressing. Demands must be made for accountability with World Bank partners or don‘t make them partners. Don’t give them funding!”

At that Benoit bid his adieu before there were any more confrontations about the Bank’s role in funding violence against forest dependent communities.

For these reasons and many, many more, organizations and Indigenous Peoples’ groups around the world are condemning REDD. For more information on this, go to: http://noredd.makenoise.org/. To learn more about GJEP’s work in Chiapas and California on REDD, go to http://climate-connections.org/category/chiapas-2/. To view our photo essay from the community of Amador Hernandez in the Lacandon Jungle, click here

http://climate-connections.org/2011/09/23/blog-post-from-the-belly-of-the-beast-in-the-bowels-of-the-world-bank/

Eyes Wide Shut | The Tar Sands Action Protest & The Paralysis of a Movement – Excerpt

Eyes Wide Shut | The Tar Sands Action Protest & The Paralysis of a Movement

August 30th, 2011

Cory Morningstar

Following is an excerpt from Ward Churchill’s Pacifism as Pathology, first published in 1986. For anyone interested in mitigating the global collapse of all ecosystems and deterring planet-wide and species-wide genocide, this is essential reading.

For anyone wishing to take a critical look at the Tar Sands protests by groups funded (in some cases created) by the Rockefellers and other corporate foundations – who will stop at absolutely nothing to keep the current power structures intact – the excerpt from this essay is sure to wake one from the paralysis trapping and constraining movements and societies to the status quo.  The parallels of Churchill’s essay and events in Washington DC being celebrated and endorsed, while the planet rests on the precipice, are nothing less than Orwellian.

The question central to the emergence and maintenance of nonviolence as the oppositional foundation of American activism has not been the truly pacifist formulation, “How can we forge a revolutionary politics within which we can avoid inflicting violence on others?” On the contrary, a more accurate guiding question has been, “What sort of politics might I engage in which will both allow me to posture as a progressive and allow me to avoid incurring harm to myself?” Hence, the trappings of pacifism have been subverted to establish a sort of “politics of the comfort zone,” not only akin to what Bettelheim termed “the philosophy of business as usual” and devoid of perceived risk to its advocates, but minus any conceivable revolutionary impetus as well.[55] The intended revolutionary content of true pacifist activism — the sort practiced by the Gandhian movement, the Berrigans, and Norman Morrison – is thus isolated and subsumed in the United States, even among the ranks of self-professing participants.

Such a situation must abort whatever limited utility pacifist tactics might have, absent other and concurrent forms of struggle, as a socially transformative method. Yet the history of the American Left over the past decade shows too clearly that the more diluted the substance embodied in “pacifist practice,” the louder the insistence of its subscribers that nonviolence is the only mode of action “appropriate and acceptable within the context of North America,” and the greater the effort to ostracize, or even stifle divergent types of actions.[56] Such strategic hegemony exerted by proponents of this truncated range of tactical options has done much to foreclose on what ever revolutionary potential may be said to exist in modern America.

Is such an assessment too harsh? One need only attend a mass demonstration (ostensibly directed against the policies of the state) in any U.S. city to discover the answer. One will find hundreds, sometimes thousands, assembled in orderly fashion, listening to selected speakers calling for an end to this or that aspect of lethal state activity, carrying signs “demanding” the same thing, welcoming singers who enunciate lyrically on the worthiness of the demonstrators’ agenda as well as the plight of the various victims they are there to “defend,” and – typically – the whole thing is quietly disbanded with exhortations to the assembled to “keep working” on the matter and to please sign a petition and/or write letters to congress people requesting that they alter or abandon offending undertakings.

Throughout the whole charade it will be noticed that the state is represented by a uniformed police presence keeping a discreet distance and not interfering with the activities. And why should they? The organizers of the demonstration will have gone through “proper channels” to obtain permits required by the state and instructions as to where they will be allowed to assemble, how long they will be allowed to stay and, should a march be involved in the demonstration, along which routes they will be allowed to walk. Surrounding the larger mass of demonstrators can be seen others — an elite. Adorned with green (or white, or powder blue) armbands, their function is to ensure that demonstrators remain “responsible,” not deviating from the state-arm banded sanctioned plan of protest. Individuals or small groups who attempt to spin off from the main body, entering areas to which the state has denied access (or some other unapproved activity) are headed off by these arm-banded “marshals” who argue — pointing to the nearby police – that “troublemaking” will only “exacerbate an already tense situation” and “provoke violence,” thereby “alienating those we are attempting to reach.”[57] In some ways, the voice of the “good Jews” can be heard to echo plainly over the years.

At this juncture, the confluence of interests between the state and the mass nonviolent movement could not be clearer. The role of the police, whose function is to support state policy by minimizing disruption of its procedures, should be in natural conflict with that of a movement purporting to challenge these same policies and, indeed, to transform the state itself.[58] However, with apparent perverseness, the police find themselves serving as mere backups (or props) to self-policing (now euphemistically termed “peace-keeping” rather than the more accurate “marshaling”) efforts of the alleged opposition’s own membership. Both sides of the “contestation” concur that the smooth functioning of state processes must not be physically disturbed, at least not in any significant way.[59] All of this is within the letter and spirit of cooptive forms of sophisticated self-preservation appearing as an integral aspect of the later phases of bourgeois democracy.[60] It dovetails well with more shopworn methods such as the electoral process and has been used by the state as an innovative means of conducting public opinion polls, which better hide rather than eliminate controversial policies.[61] Even the movement’s own sloganeering tends to bear this out from time to time, as when Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) coined the catch-phrase of its alternative to the polling place: “Vote with your feet, vote in the street.”[62]

Of course, any movement seeking to project a credible self-image as something other than just one more variation of accommodation to state power must ultimately establish its “militant” oppositional credentials through the media in a manner more compelling than rhetorical speechifying and the holding of impolite placards (“Fuck the War” was always a good one) at rallies.[63] Here, the time-honored pacifist notion of “civil disobedience” is given a new twist by the adherents of nonviolence in America. Rather than pursuing Gandhi’s (or, to a much lesser extent, King’s) method of using passive bodies to literally clog the functioning of the state apparatus — regardless of the cost to those doing the clogging — the American nonviolent movement has increasingly opted for “symbolic actions.”[64]

The centerpiece of such activity usually involves an arrest, either of a token figurehead of the movement (or a small, selected group of them) or a mass arrest of some sort. In the latter event, “arrest training” is generally provided – and lately has become “required” by movement organizers – by the same marshals who will later ensure that crowd control police units will be left with little or nothing to do. This is to ensure that “no one gets hurt” in the process of being arrested, and that the police are not inconvenienced by disorganized arrest procedures. [65]

The event which activates the arrests is typically preplanned, well publicized in advance, and, more often than not, literally coordinated with the police — often including estimates by organizers concerning how many arrestees will likely be involved. Generally speaking, such “extreme statements” will be scheduled to coincide with larger-scale peaceful demonstrations so that a considerable audience of “committed” bystanders (and, hopefully, NBC/CBS/ABC/CNN) will be on hand to applaud the bravery and sacrifice of those arrested; most of the bystanders will, of course, have considered reasons why they themselves are unprepared to “go so far” as to be arrested.[66] The specific sort of action designed to precipitate the arrests themselves usually involves one of the following: (a) sitting down in a restricted area and refusing to leave when ordered; (b) stepping across an imaginary line drawn on the ground by a police representative; (c) refusing to disperse at the appointed time; or (d) chaining or padlocking the doors to a public building. When things really get heavy, those seeking to be arrested may pour blood (real or ersatz) on something of “symbolic value.”[67]

As a rule, those arrested are cooperative in the extreme, meekly allowing police to lead them to waiting vans or buses for transportation to whatever station house or temporary facility has been designated as the processing point. In especially “militant” actions, arrestees go limp, undoubtedly severely taxing the states repressive resources by forcing the police to carry them bodily to the vans or buses (monitored all the while by volunteer attorneys who are there to ensure that such “police brutality” as pushing, shoving, or dropping an arrestee does not occur). In either event, the arrestees sit quietly in their assigned vehicles – or sing “We Shall Overcome” and other favorites — as they are driven away for booking. The typical charges levied will be trespassing, creating a public disturbance, or being a public nuisance.

Purchase the book: http://www.akpress.org/2007/items/pacifismaspathologyakpress

Read the full essay online (original): http://zinelibrary.info/files/pap_imposed.pdf

Read the updated version online (2007): http://bit.ly/qujy8b

The Great Rainforest Heist: Greenpeace, WWF, RAN, FSC and REDD+ Conspiracy to Log Earth’s Last Primary Forests for Their Protection

August 10, 2011

By Earth Meanders, a project of Ecological Internet

CONTACT: Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry

WHEN GOOD RAINFOREST GROUPS GO BAD you get monoculture and secondary forest plantations where ancient intact primary rainforests once stood, called sustainable forest management and carbon forestry, by BINGO’s (big NGOs) and United Nations greenwashers, paid for with your membership fees and taxes. Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is primary forest logging greenwash by money-sucking environmental bureaucracies. Rainforests and other old forest must be protected and restored for local and global ecology and local eco-development from standing forests.

Please donate now to Ecological Internet’s “End Primary Forest Logging Campaign” at http://www.rainforestportal.org/shared/donate/end_primary_forest_logging/ in order to help turn this draft document into a polished, photogenic, researched and footnoted report on BINGO’s Increased Old Forest Greenwash. Relax, there are typos, but wanted to get this out right now in draft.

INTRODUCTION

What would you say to me if I told you the world’s pre-eminent environmental organizations, widely perceived as the leading advocates for rainforests and old growth, have for decades been actively, indeed intimately, involved in logging the world’s last old forests. Would you call me a liar? Tell me I am mentally ill? Or because of the cognitive dissonance would you simply ignore me, thinking it impossible? Well here goes nothing…

There is a global conspiracy to log the Earth’s last primary forests – destroying ancient forests for disposable consumer items – while claiming it is “sustainable forest management” and “carbon forestry”. A number of public forest advocacy groups are going so far as to actually claim that industrial first-time primary forest logging is good for climate, ecosystems and local peoples.

This essay is not the result of top secret research – it is all public record. For three years of campaigning and this essay, Ecological Internet, the organization I head, has been simply connecting pieces of public record information to see just how big NGOs (BINGOs), and the United Nations have been selling out old forests under the radar. They have been selling out primary rainforests and other old growth in broad-daylight, the perfect crime, for decades – and things are getting much, much worse as moves to allow primary rainforests to be cleared for toxic monoculture plantations gain strength.

If you are a Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network (RAN), or World Wide Fund for Nature/World Wildlife Fund (WWF) member – you are funding the greenwash destruction of 320,000,000 acres of primary rainforest and other old forest logging. These groups co-founded and have been active members in the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) for two decades, an organization that exists to build markets for primary and other old growth forest timbers. Some 70% of FSC forest products – supposedly the best of forest certification – come with primary forest timbers in them, destroying an area of primary rainforests and other old forests across an area the size of South Africa (or two times the size of Texas)!

Primary rainforests cannot be logged in an ecologically sustainable manner – or for that matter even acceptably. Primary forests logged industrially for the first time – FSC certified or otherwise – are destroyed. What remains is permanently ecologically diminished in terms of composition, structure, function, dynamics, and evolutionary potential. Logged primary forests’ carbon stores, biodiversity and ecosystems will never be the same in any reasonable time-span. Selective, industrially logged primary rainforests become fragmented, burn more and are prone to outright deforestation.

FSC certified forestry destroys ancient naturally evolved ecosystems that are priceless and sacred. Old forests have a prominent role in making the Earth habitable through their cycling of energy, water, and nutrients. The Forest Stewardship Council is a non-democratic, unaccountable, unrepresentative organization that exists solely to greenwash the final first-time industrial logging and marketing of Earth’s original, naturally evolved, and last primary rainforests and other old forests – in order to turn them into tree plantations.

Increasingly both FSC and REDD+ are moving towards certifying and funding the conversion of natural primary forests to be cleared and replanted as plantations. They call it carbon forestry and claim it is a climate good. We ecologists know this destroys primary forests when they become greatly ecologically reduced from first time industrial logging, and are on their way to being plantations. Toxic mono-cultures of trees are not forests, much less when planted on cleared primary rainforests. There is far more carbon stably stored in old forests than toxic monocrop tree plantations, most of whose timbers are in the landfill decomposing within months of harvest.

There is no doubt that these groups – Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace and WWF – are involved in this primary forest logging. Five minutes on Google can confirm this for anyone interested, as each of the old forest logging apologists takes credit for founding and supporting the FSC publicly on their websites. Despite claiming credit, there is little justification for doing so. The logging apologists are closed-mouth regarding their justifications for doing so – but presumably they believe that by industrially logging primary forests they are ending deforestation, and claim that their rules for doing so make it acceptable and superior to other ways of murdering primary forest ecosystems.

But being the best ecocidal rainforest destroyer is nothing of which to be proud. All such deadly old forest certification schemes must stop in order to ensure enough intact terrestrial ecosystems exist to power Earth’s biosphere. For nearly 20 years the FSC has certified as “well-managed” and “sustainable” primary old forest logging on a massive scale. Competing certifiers make similar claims, as do old school non-certified primary forest loggers. FSC legitimatizes this larger trade in old forest timber products, and a false market for green products from the destruction of ancient trees.

FSC is primary forest logging with Greenpeace, RAN and WWF greenwash, corruption, conflicts of interest, bad ecology, and ecocide. 500 year old trees in 60 million year old primary rainforests and other old forests are chopped for toilet paper, lawn furniture and other such “necessities” with these groups’ greenwash and marketing clout. The rainforest logging apologists – with little or no accountability, transparency, or openness are killing Earth’s last old forests. They – particularly WWF – boast they are creating markets for ancient trees industrially pillaged from primary forests, and such market forest logging campaigns are thus little better than illegal logging, which at least is honest that it is about the money for old forest timbers.

After 20 years of working prominently with various stakeholders in the rainforest movement, I have seen a whole generation of promising activists and groups sell out for good paying jobs, saying logging old forests protects them. None have fallen as dramatically or treacherously as Greenpeace and RAN and their staff (you sort of expect this corporate greenwash bullshit from WWF and the United Nations) who suckle on the teat of rainforest logging everyday for decades. The UN’s “Avoided Deforestation” work – which is now known as REDD+ – is to pay to marketizes rainforests claiming “sustainable forest management” of primary forests – turning them into secondary forests and always ultimately into tree plantations – is a public good and helps ecology.

Ecological Internet and others feel strongly based upon the urgency of emerging ecological science and our closeness to global ecological collapse that it is better to fight like hell in any way we can to fully protect and return to native tenure standing old forests as the most desirable forest protection outcome. The Earth is already undergoing global ecological collapse and it is deeply irresponsible for organizations committed to the environment to carelessly make false old forest logging prescriptions that worsen the problem.

The BINGO old forest greenwashers sound just like get-out-the-cut forest managers – we need these resources, better to log them legally than legally, primary forests exist to be logged. Where is their former channeling of the spirit of Edward Abbey, John Muir and the other conservation greats upon whose back they stand? Somewhere along the line these groups lost sight of ecology truth, didn’t keep up with the science, had no metrics or systems to identify, monitor and handle their failed forest policy, perhaps didn’t think it mattered because it was win-win and economical.

So the rainforest logging apologist lent their names and logos to those murdering rainforests, ecosystems, their plants and animals, to wipe our asses. They turned to the dark side, using business and PR techniques to market ill-gotten old forest timbers as sustainable. They sold their souls. They have bullied critics, censored and stonewalled their brothers’ and sisters’ forest protection. They have lost their souls and legitimacy as old rainforest protection voices. And they must be stopped from doing so any longer with public monies.

BINGO COMPLICITY IN FSC LED PRIMARY RAINFOREST ECOCIDE

FSC was created in 1993 to “promote responsible management of the world’s forests”, yet has failed miserably. FSC certifies as “sustainable” the logging of over a hundred million hectares of primary and old-growth forests – hundreds of year old trees in millions of year old naturally evolved ecosystems – for lawn furniture, toilet paper and other throw-away consumer items. Many environmentalists initially supported FSC, expecting it would reduce logging of primary and old growth forests, and result in more community based eco-forestry. Instead, FSC and members have built a massive market for continued business as usual industrial primary forest timbers – with minor, cosmetic changes – in order to certify as acceptable murdering old forests for consumption.

FSC has become a major driver of primary forest destruction and forest ecological diminishment. Despite certifying less than 10% of the world’s forest lands, their rhetoric and marketing legitimizes the host of other ghastly certifiers like PEFC, SFI and others, as well as traditional non-certified ancient forest timber. It is expecting far too much of consumers to expect them to differentiate between the variety of competing claims to being green and environmental sustainability – when in fact none are as they all include old growth forest timbers.

FSC and old forest logging apologist pals policies seeking to prevent primary forests from being deforested, by allowing them to be heavily industrially and selectively logged for the first time, becoming either secondary forest or toxic mono-crop tree plantations, is not old forest protection. Deforestation and ecosystem diminishment of forests are both of profound concern ecologically – much of great importance is lost when primary forests are logged for the first time.

Standing old forests are a requirement for global ecological sustainability and local advancement. Yet, FSC is about getting out the primary forest cut – recall best estimated as 70% FSC timber and fiber from planned and past logging of 320,000,000 acres (120,000,000 hectares) – and is particularly threatening now as FSC and old forest logging apologist friends claim carbon forestry (logging primary forests to plant new plantations) is a climate change solution.

FSC’s relatively minor improvements upon the murdering of old rainforests legitimate the entire trade, FSC certified or not. While other certification schemes may be even worse, this is not the issue, as industrial first-time primary forest logging cannot be done ecologically sustainably and should not be happening at all. FSC’s claims to being the best destroyer of primary forests is like killing someone more humanely, treating your slaves better but refusing to release them, or being half pregnant. Like past battles to end monarchy and slavery before them, and continuing efforts to resist their recent forms found in fascism and human trafficking, the task before us is to fully END the stripping of Earth of its protective covering. Not doing it marginally better.

These independent estimates of FSC’s dependence upon old forest logging, one published in German already and the other by myself in publication, were able to make reasonable estimates from FSC’s own national certification data which is collate and released, and what is known about each country’s forest types and industry. If they are wrong after three years of complaint, they would have trotted out the figures and shown us. Conveniently, none of the culprits say they collect information regarding whether any particular FSC certified forest that was logged was primary, old growth or other old forests.

After years of campaigning against Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network – two key co-founders and supporters of FSC’s primary forest logging – and FSC itself; Ecological Internet’s genuine forest ecology concerns have been met with nothing but stonewalling, censoring and vilification. No one within FSC will say how many hectares of primary forests FSC has certified for industrial logging, how much more is planned, and explained in detail how logging primary forest protects them.

Despite tens of thousands of people from around the world asking, none of the organizations who routinely campaign against other close-lipped forest destroyers, feel obligated to explain how logging primary forests protects them. Nor can they provide any other reason to justify, or to otherwise defend, the ecology, strategy and tactics of continued prominent membership in FSC primary forest logging.

WWF, Greenpeace, and RAN’s forest campaigns have been perhaps mortally compromised. Their forest advocacy efforts are a corrupt shell of their former selves. The rainforest logging apologists have chosen power, prestige and money coming from sitting at the old forest logging mafia’s table, rather than and over protecting rainforest and other primary forests. With rainforests threatened as never before, RAN targets Disney and the Girl Scouts, Greenpeace Barbie dolls, and WWF runs a bad-boy logger club which they call the Global Forest & Trade Network (GFTN). Posers like Greenpeace and RAN don’t get it because by and large they are marketers and accountants, elite liberal arts grads, and not ecologists.

WWF forest campaign is composed of resource managers, not deep ecologists, and it shows. Not only is WWF perhaps the most power BINGO totally enmeshed with FSC, it also partners with the World Bank and companies that destroy rainforests, and threaten endangered species. Some 20% of the timber industry has lined up to pay WWF $50K, for which they can use the panda logo and continue to log as they were. This is unethical, corrupt and destroying global ecology and local options for advancement.

Greenpeace’s forest protection campaign is all over the place, full of contradictions, and it is nearly impossible to see the strategy of divergent and countervailing forest protection campaign tactics. Greenpeace not only co-founded the Forest Stewardship Council, until recently Greenpeace held the international chairman of the board position for FSC for six years! Greenpeace’s quirky new rainforest campaign says Ken is leaving Barbie (Mattel’s dolls) because of rainforest destruction, yet they leave the door open for “certified” primary rainforest paper pulp for toy packaging. Two years ago Greenpeace openly embraced Kleenex’s clearcut of Canadian old growth forests for toilet paper. Now they condemn Barbie doll for tiny amounts of packaging from primary forests!

The Rainforest Action Network is the smallest of the lot, yet they are a well-known rainforest protector organization in the United States, soaking up most of the money for doing so. RAN similarly says is against primary forest logging, yet promotes FSC paper – full of old-growth – for Disney’s children books. The group is ridiculously under-qualified to be determining global rainforest policy. Their staff is mostly liberal arts grads and accountants that wouldn’t know a rainforest if it bit them in the ass. They are great at raising money, throwing lavish parties, being seen with the right celebrities, trashing opponents, and working to end coal – but their rainforest campaign is in shambles. For the first decade they worked strongly against old forest logging, but now target the Girl Scouts and Disney for relatively small amounts of rainforest destruction, as global stores of ancient rainforest temples burn and require a much larger, more urgent response.

Greenpeace, RAN and WWF must continue to be encouraged to resign from FSC greenwash; and work to end primary forest logging, protect and restore standing old forests, for local and global advancement and ecology. These groups’ vision of sustainable rainforests is logging, turning them into both secondary diminished forest (essentially plantations) and fully replanted mono-crop tree plantations, rather than working to fully protect and restore as much as possible. The rest of the grassroots global rainforest protection movement thinks we need to implement proven ways to keep old forests standing intact for local advancement and global ecology (and vice versa).

Rainforest Action Network continues to censor – and along with Greenpeace stonewall – legitimate global protest by tens of thousands of grassroots forest activists regarding their greenwash complicity in logging 320,000,000 acres of primary old forest for such necessities as toilet paper. I really don’t think young adults with liberal arts degrees should be seeking to discredit PhD professionals on the question of whether primary forests should be logged or fully protected for local community development.

At FSC recent tri-annual General Assembly in Malaysia – the “sustainable” old forest logging greenwash worsened, as FSC voted (seconded by Greenpeace) to start the process to begin certifying plantation timbers from land cleared of primary rainforests as being “sustainable”. FSC Motion 18 which was approved furthers the process of industrial toxic plantations being established on rainforests cleared since 1994, to be certified as sustainable by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Just before the vote Ecological Internet’s global network’s carried out a large email protest, which led to the motion’s wording going from essentially preparing to certify plantations on cleared rainforests, to studying it, to the latest revisionary history of completing an unnamed earlier report. Despite how it is packaged, FSC decided last month to begin trying to certify monocrop plantations on land cleared of primary rainforest since 1994.

By crossing the rubric, FSC’s embrace without merit the ideas of carbon forestry – that it is better to log well stored and carbon rich old forests, in order to plant fast growing carbon removal species – they have gone from being misguided on forest policy to being downright dangerous. FSC has already lost European NGO FERN on the issue of carbon forestry – which sees the potential peril of essentially geo-engineering the world’s old forests upon community and ecology – one of the last mighty naturally evolved ecosystems.

FSC plantations on cleared primary rainforest had rightly been excluded since FSC inception in order to not promote primary rainforest being converted specifically for later planting of depauperate plantations, but now the flood gate is wide open. FSC is continually changing the wording of Motion and downplaying its importance, and as usual Greenpeace and RAN aren’t talking, but I reckon they think tree plantations –are better than outright deforestation of primary and old growth forests. So they are trading away ecological jewels – primary forests – to become managed forests and plantations, thinking slowing outright deforestation justifies destroying wild forests.

REDD+, FSC and other certifiers, sustainable forest management, and carbon forestry are all myths and meaningless catchphrases to allow continued western market access to primary rainforest logs. Standing and intact primary rainforest and other old forests are a requirement for sustaining global ecology and achieving local advancement. We must end their logging for full protection and restoration. REDD+ has become all things to everybody – forest logging, protection, plantations, carbon, growth – when all we need is funding to preserve local old standing forests.

These organizations believe their own PR that they are so special – so hip and groovy – they can establish and avidly support with impunity an organization that facilitates the logging of rainforests and other old forests. They don’t have to answer questions about their role in rainforest destruction like others supporting logging do. It is really an abuse of power and trust. The old forest logging greenwashers all follow the same playbook and personally attack the messenger (me!). Shameful, as more old forests and terrestrial ecosystems have been lost than the biosphere can absorb and continue to make Earth habitable. This dispute is about ecological science and not personalities.

Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace and WWF are engaged in a con game for money and influence at the expense of old forests that must remain standing for local peoples and global ecology. Global ecosystem collapse is being abetted by these so called protectors. These organizations’ policies are a carefully calibrated effort to be seen as reasonable by the growing logging industry machine and benefit in donations for doing so. None make a decision without thinking how it affects their bottom line. The only way this old forest greenwash logging machine will be stopped is to make doing so too expensive to them in terms of lost donations, grants, and other support – whose sources are usually unaware of the great rainforest heist.

WHY FSC AND OLD FOREST LOGGING MUST END FOR A NEW FOREST PROTECTION VISION

Here is the honest to Gaia old forest ecology science narrative. The human family must protect and restore old forests – starting by ending industrial-scale primary forest logging – as one keystone response to biodiversity, ecosystem, climate, food, water, poverty and rights crises that are pounding humanity, ecosystems and plants and animals. When naturally evolved old forest ecosystems are logged in any manner other than appropriately small-scaled local community traditional uses and eco-forestry – their ecological function, structure, dynamics, and composition are destroyed forever.

Protecting and restoring old forests – which means ending their industrial harvest – are a keystone response to climate, biodiversity, food, water ecology crises. You can’t take a bulldozer for a rumble through intact natural rainforests, cutting all the big merchantable timbers, and causing huge amounts of collateral damage – and not rip the hell out of ecosystems, plant communities, wildlife populations, species biodiversity, local forest dependent communities advancement potential, and carbon holding potential.

Old forests are a vital part of the biosphere’s eco-infrastructure. Along with other terrestrial, water, ocean, and atmospheric ecosystems, old forests makes Earth habitable and ensure it is fed and watered.
Old forests are perhaps the most important global ecosystem as intact primary, old growth, and regenerating old forests are at the hub of the nutrient, energy, heat, and water transfers and fluxes which power global ecosystems. It is clearly past time for an end to primary forest logging to protect these global ecological processes and local advancement potential from standing old forests.

Industrial old forest logging must end in order to protect and restore ancient forest ecosystems necessary for a habitable Earth. Primary rainforests that have been logged for the first time are on their way to being scraggly secondary forests that are in fact tree plantations, and might as well have been deforested, as their full natural ecological patterns and processes have been destroyed. When primary forests become secondary must is lost and diminished and many local and region ecological processes fail. The impacts of seeing primary forests only as resources to be whacked down has impacted a large enough area globally, with over 80% of old forests being gone or logged for the first time, that old forest logging’s impact is aggregating to diminish, damage and destroyed our one shared biosphere. Old forest logging is one of a handful of ill-advised industrial processes leading to global ecosystem collapse.

There is no such thing as well-managed, sustainable primary forest logging – first time industrial harvest always destroys natural evolution and intact ecosystems. Humanity can, must and will meet wood product demand from certified regenerating and aging secondary growth and non-toxic, native species plantations. Any lesser vision that includes “sustainable forest management” of primary forests is worthy of virulent opposition, as such greenwash destroys local livelihoods and global ecosystem services associated with standing old forests, for throw-away consumer items.

FSC should meet market demand for well-managed forest timbers by certifying only 1) small scale community eco-forestry practiced by local peoples in primary forests, 2) regenerating and aging secondary forests, and 3) non-toxic and mixed species plantations. Further, reducing demand for all timber and paper products is key to living ecologically sustainably with old forests. Only 10% of any given FSC certified product’s content need come from a certified source anyway, this is mixed with conventional fiber sources, and the 10% that is certified content is mostly murdered primary forest.

In light of current and emerging ecosystem, biodiversity and climate science; it is clear that FSC certification for industrial primary and old-growth logging is antiquated and dangerous. By logging old forests and now moving to certifying plantations established on cleared rainforests as being “sustainable”, the Forest Stewardship Council and allies are no longer a force for good, and like all primary forest logging apologists, must disband and be forcefully encouraged and assisted in doing so.

Industrial primary forest logging must end to herald in era of old forest protection and restoration based upon standing forests for local advancement and global ecological sustainability. Logging and otherwise destroying ecosystems is an 8,000 year old disease upon Gaia now perfected and terminal with RAN, Greenpeace, FSC, WWF, and REDD+ greenwash. Like slavery, industrial old forest logging for throw away consumption is a global evil that must end, not be slightly reformed. Old forest diminishment when first industrially logged is nearly as ecologically damaging as outright deforestation, as naturally evolved ecosystems that make Earth habitable are on the path to becoming tree plantations.

There is a zero chance of protecting and ending first time industrial logging of primary rainforests when RAN, Greenpeace and WWF say it is sustainable, even desirable, and continue to greenwash FSC markets for old forest timbers through their presence in the organization. Old forests must be protected and restored in order to sustain global ecology and local well-being. This NGO complicity with rainforest murder must end in order to collapse FSC and all other old forest certifiers, and move onto stopping old forest timber producers and consumers from continuing to do so using whatever means are necessary.

From the perspective of a 60 million year old primary rainforest with 500+ year old trees, it does not matter if being destroyed by illegal or legal logging, certified or not, the Asian timber mafia or WWF, Greenpeace and RAN. There is no such thing as well-managed, sustainable primary forest logging – as first time industrial harvest destroys natural evolution and intact ecosystems. Humanity can and must and will meet wood product demand from certified regenerating and aging secondary growth and non-toxic, native species plantations. If all BINGOs greenwashing FSC withdrew, old logging may well collapse as ratchet up pressure together on even lesser certifiers and old forest logging industry in general.

Together we must end primary forest logging, protecting and restoring old forests. The unholy trinity of REDD+ finance, FSC and BINGO pals for greenwash and “sustainable forest management” are clearing the biosphere’s last old forests. Please Greenpeace, RAN, WWF, and REDD+ tell us how your FSC’s logging of 500 year old trees in 60 million year old rainforests is sustainable and offers any real protection. You tout this as ending deforestation. Yet, are you aware of the tremendous damage and, by definition, ultimate destruction of primary forests that are heavily industrially and “selectively” logged for the first time?

There are others like EI that understand we have already lost more intact terrestrial ecosystems including old forests than the biosphere can bear. We will fight for each old forest and their peoples as resources and people allow, understanding when ecosystem collapse comes, having as many intact ecosystems for restoration as possible will be key to any sort of ecology and human recovery. We ecologists know that primary forests are destroyed when greatly ecologically reduced from first time industrial logging, and that plantations are not forests, much less when planted on cleared primary rainforests.

As Earth burns, any groups engaged in greenwashing primary forest logging and offering no defense of doing so are seriously misguided and in crisis themselves. If you are a RAN, Greenpeace or WWF member your donations support participation in logging primary forests and converting to plantations! Greenpeace, RAN and others’ PR stunts and market campaigns have become old, stale, ineffective and even dangerous. They are inadequate to the ecological crises on hand, and do not use these organizations’ resources and organization well. Campaigning groups need an overall ecology vision of how to achieve global ecological sustainability, to campaign more on sufficient ecological policies (whether initially photogenic or not), and work more to mobilize people protest – and less on quirky, token stunts to raise awareness and funds for themselves.

Local community development based upon standing old forests including small scale eco-forestry is fine. Small scale community eco-forestry has a context of intact primary forests as its context for seed and animal sources, and management mimics natural disturbance and gap species establishment. It is the industrial first time logging – selective logging defined as selecting all merchantable, mature trees – turning primary forests into plantations that is problematic. Ruling elite and their bought shills will not manage, invest, certify or greenwash their way to global ecological sustainability. There is no way other to global ecological sustainability than people power ecology, protecting old forests, powering down, and returning to the land.

The human family – if need be as part of a people’s power Earth revolution – must end primary forest logging, and protect and restore rainforests and all old forests, as a keystone response to biodiversity, climate, ecosystem and poverty crises. Together we will end primary forest logging, herald in an era of old forest protection and restoration, to benefit local people and sustain global ecology. We will fight for each old forest and their peoples, saving and delaying old forest industrial destruction and diminishment, and understanding when ecosystem collapse comes, having as many intact ecosystems for models and seed sources for restoration as possible will be key to any sort of ecology and human recovery. Ecological Internet puts our faith in truth and ecological science over looking good and PR greenwash.

WHAT NEXT TO SUSTAIN OLD FORESTS AND THEIR ECOLOGY

Ending primary forest logging is Ecological Internet’s number one commitment to sustaining global ecology. We will not rest until dead or an end to trade in ill-gotten forest timbers by murdering natural evolved forest ecosystems for trinkets, curios, and ass wiping. Please join with Ecological Internet and others to oppose all forces working to industrially cut or otherwise develop rainforests and other old forests, laying bare the illogical, greedy and lying rhetoric for doing so. Doing so is crucial to our and many species’ survival including Gaia, the Earth System.

As a movement, we must return to the goal of a ban on industrially harvested primary forest timbers. This means continuing to resist and obstruct old forest harvest, businesses involve, timber marketing, purchase, storage, milling, product construction and marketing. The entire supply chain for ecocidal primary forest timbers must be destroyed. More of us must return to the forests to work with local communities to build on-the-ground desire for ecologically inspired advancement from standing old forests, and blockading and physically obstructing the practice of old forest logging.

We must make ill-gotten old wood from life-giving ecosystems to become an unacceptable taboo, like gorilla hand ash-trays only worse. Ending primary forest logging further requires greater international affinity made possible by transnational advocacy networks on the Internet. There is a long proven track-record of using the boomerang effect – whereby local forest protection advocacy efforts that are being stonewalled are expressed simultaneously by the international community. The dual voices make the concern hard to ignore, the first step to ending old forest logging.

The rainforest movement has become split between those logging primary rainforests and others working to fully protect and restore for local and global benefit. I’m old enough to remember when the rainforest movement worked to protect ancient forests and ban their logging, not abet their ‘sustainable’ destruction. What these rainforest logging apologist groups are doing is every bit as alarming as loggers and governments, and they will not be given free rein to continue in their not thoughtful, self-aggrandizing manner any longer. The rainforest, forest, and ecological protection movements must unite behind effort to end primary forest logging for full protection and restoration.

And to those that say these concerns are splitting the movement, just shove it. There is no benefit to Earth from unity in support of ecocidal rainforest policy. Just as working to better the conditions of slaves is no substitute for working for total emancipation, we cannot log and have our old forests too. Even as we protest the loggers and government policies, we must continue to confront our wayward brethren that think that logging primary forests protects them – or risk becoming irrelevant as global ecosystems collapse. Rallying around a false and ecologically destructive global forest policy of logging primary forests for plantations is a must.

Rather than participating in old forest logging, it is better for the rainforest movement to fight to work to protect each old forest and their peoples, understanding that when ecosystem collapse comes, having as many intact ecosystems for restoration as possible will be key to any sort of ecology and human recovery. The grassroots global forest protection movement has to commit to fully protecting and restoring old carbon, species and ecosystem service rich forests as a keystone response to achieve global ecological sustainability.

The goal must remain to maximize the extent, size, connectivity of core terrestrial ecological areas –largely but not exclusively forested – to maximize global and local ecosystem processes, and local material and other advancement from standing old forests. By dragging out the forest protection fight on a forest by forest basis, until ecological collapse becomes publicly acknowledged, we can hold onto more ecosystems, biodiversity, and carbon than logging them now. Soon the human family will catch up with the ecological science and realize old forest destruction and diminishment must end as we ramp upreforestation and ecological restoration for large, connected natural forests adequate to power the global ecosystem.

We must continue to call upon all BINGO FSC members to reject the certification of primary forests by resigning immediately, as many others have recently done. We must continue to call upon Greenpeace, WWF, and RAN to resign from FSC, to fully account for its founding and 20 years of membership, including detailing expenditures and benefits received for greenwashing old forest logging. Further, we must demand FSC immediately stop certifying primary forest logging or disband itself.

Greenpeace, WWF and RAN have been revealed as corrupt greenwashers of the final harvest of Earth primary rainforests and other old forests, and must be stopped for global ecological sustainability and local benefits from greenwashing the destruction of standing old growth forests. This means boycotting these organizations, even their other work as what to do with old forests is such a fundamental ecological issue, until they stop greenwashing the final loss of old forests. And it is past time for the groups’ members to end their memberships as ultimately these big NGO businesses are more concerned with their image and money than having global forest policy that is ecologically valid and correct.

The worst part regarding Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace and WWF greenwash membership in Forest Stewardship Council is their secrecy, lack of transparency, censorship, stonewalling, vilifying critics. Who do they think are? What are they hiding? What benefits are they receiving from old forest logging? Their stonewalling is reprehensible and alarming. Like all public entities they have a responsibility to defend your public positions.

Despite best attempts to portray Ecological Internet campaign and ecological science concerns as being personal and political motivated, this essay and continued growing global protest demonstrates in fact efforts to resist those supporting primary forest logging is a reasonable ecology dispute that must be redressed. We have had bad experiences with the head of RAN’s forest campaign for years, before he worked for RAN and this campaign started, so this is immaterial and we deal with his debilities. There have been a series of personal attacks coming from the other side which refuses to have a specific debate, or even provide any justification, in defense of this ecological travesty known as FSC.

Given RAN and Greenpeace’s irresponsible behavior when questioned on their rainforest ‘protection’ policy that is of global ecological importance how can they be trusted? These liberal arts under-grads and accountants think they are qualified to set policy because they have money and influential friends, but are making dreadful mistakes. Despite founding and actively supporting, they can’t say how much primary forests are being destroyed by FSC. This is ignorance, duplicity, or corruption. These groups are dangerous enemies to old forests and biosphere, profiting from their demise, while acting like and being paid well as the publicly viewed good forest protection groups.

This old forest logging corruption will not stand, it must and will be fully investigated, and end with widespread resignations. Ecological Internet calls upon Greenpeace, WWF and RAN staff to protest their organizations’ greenwash of primary forest logging from within, and resign immediately if they are not heard and NGO primary rainforest ecocide continues. It is time to investigate all three organizations’ involvement with FSC and other activities to support primary forest logging with the timber industry. Until then the awareness building and resistance to greenwash of BINGO old forest logging must continue, tarnishing the not good old forest protection names. EI remains willing to negotiate terms of their resignation from FSC and debate the importance of doing so in a public arena at any time.

In the meantime, Ecological Internet is writing a grant to do a report on the matter based loosely upon this essay. We have a good lead on a funder to investigate BINGO complicity in FSC old growth logging, but need a couple thousand dollars to prepare and do the initial research. We would really appreciate your help turning this document into a fully referenced report based upon FSC logging site visits and full of pictures by donating to our “Ending Primary Forest Logging” campaign at http://www.rainforestportal.org/shared/donate/end_primary_forest_logging . This is a draft document, put out hurriedly in draft form, before I go to vacation and decide upon Ecological Internet’s future.

Ecological Internet challenges Rainforest Action Network and/or Greenpeace to debate any time and any place of their choosing (which can afford to get to) regarding the efficacy and ecological sustainability of first time industrial logging of primary forests for toilet paper and other consumer items. From dialogue comes truth, reduction in conflict and hate, and right action. Their greenwash of old forest logging will not stand. The secret of their having been compromised is out and nothing can save their policy of logging old rainforests for their protection.

No excuse for Greenpeace, RAN and FSC for not having answered a three year global protest demanding details regarding how their forest campaign policies see logging primary forest as benefiting ecology.
Hundreds of thousands of protest emails and a dozen protests have been ignored simply because the guilty organization are bigger and think they can get away with ignoring us. Even as we protest and demand they resign, let’s hold out our hands to help rehabilitate our fallen brethren. WE have truth, ecology, old forests, Gaia and Internet on our side. Forward!

Greenpeace International and Rainforest Action Network in particular would rightly never accept rainforest or other environmental destroyers unwilling to defend their policies, they would protest until they got answers and it ended. The same is true with the more grassroots, transparent rainforest protection movement regarding RAN and Greenpeace’s failure to defend in detail their support and membership in FSC, which greenwashes the destruction of massive tracts of primary rainforests, old growth and other old forests for consumer products.

The Greenpeace and RAN Out of FSC Primary Forest Logging Now! campaign on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/oldforests/ has been going on for nearly 3 years with picketing and online protests. We will protest there and elsewhere at the time and place of our choosing – as the old forest logging apologists do against the orders of magnitude smaller rainforest destruction by Barbie, Disney and Girl Scouts – until old forest logging apologists unconditionally resign from FSC greenwash of ancient primary forest logging.

ANY continued deforestation or diminishment of old forests – legal or illegal, certified or not – are not ecologically or socially acceptable. At risk is Earth’s continued habitability if old forests continue to be lost and are not restored. Old forest logging certification schemes are ecocidal certified madness as these standing old forests are needed for global ecology and local advancement. BINGO’s will resign from FSC and forest certification of primary forest logging end or protests continue against the greenwashers and all perpetrators of these ecocidal practices. For Earth, we must end old forest logging now.

http://www.rainforestportal.org/issues/2011/08/earth_meanders_the_great_rainf.asp

A Tar Sands Partnership Agreement in the Making?

By Macdonald Stainsby
Canadian Dimension
August 1st 2011

 

Campaigns against tar sands production have grown rapidly over the last four years. From the relative obscurity in Alberta to an international lightning rod for people trying to address all manner of concerns from indigenous and community self-determination to peak oil and climate change – criticisms of the largest industrial project in human history have gained a major voice.

The voices are certainly not homogenous, but a large contingent of these voices call for a shut down of tar sands production and a move away from fossil fuels – if not an outright move away from market-led growth of any sort. But, in the language of the environmental elite, what are the “decision makers” preparing to do with all this anti-tar sands resistance?

While there are still small scale, community led victories against certain developments – like the defeat of the recent Prosperity Mine proposal in British Columbia – I contend that mainstream environmentalism has effectively become a means by which corporations (who used to be anathema to environmentalists) now get the social license necessary to operate. There are obvious examples such as the World Wildlife Fund running commercials with Coca-Cola. But the real social management is done out of sight, and involves some of the most important players in the circles of the North American ruling class.

Co-opting Environmentalism

In the United States, major foundations – led at the time by the Sunoco-oil founded and controlled Pew Charitable Trusts – stopped fighting against environmentalism and sought instead to co-opt it and make it a “partner.” This model expanded over the next couple of decades until it slowly began to creep north of the border into Canada. Now this same technique dominates the Canadian enviro landscape as well, in some cases with a new twist. The Canadian Boreal Initiative [CBI] – a champion of “working with industry to find common solutions” – is not even an organization, but receives their money from Ducks Unlimited Canada who receive theirs from Ducks Unlimited in the United States. All of this funding originates with the Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia. The Pew Foundation was started with a multi-billion dollar grant from Sunoco and today their board of directors is more than 50 percent tied to Sunoco, either through the Pew family or executive work with the oil giant. This same Pew gives funding to other well-known policy right-wing hawkish think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.

The CBI spearheads something they call “the Boreal Conservation Framework,” a plan to protect at least half the Boreal Forest. Fact: far, far less than half the boreal forest has been developed or is slated for development. This “initiative” partners openly with corporations such as Suncor, Nexen and several leading forestry corporations. The CBI, funded and directed by the Pew, also signs on to their framework the International Boreal Conservation Campaign – another Pew front group in the US. Along with corporate friendly organizations like the WWF, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, the Nature Conservancy and of course, Ducks Unlimited are a smattering of First Nations governments. Also among their signatories are the Tides Foundation and the Ivey Foundation.

With this behind them, the CBI then “negotiates” what the final deal of a particular industry should look like. Guaranteed at the outset is that corporations will continue operations, and that the general public is out of the loop right up until the moment the “deal” is announced.

Many other foundations – most but not all American – now play the same game of social manipulation in the environmental field. Foundations such as Rockefeller Brothers, Ford and Hewlett have not only entered into the fray in a major way, in the case of the tar sands campaigns, they have collaborated with the Pew to take social manipulation to a new level. The aforementioned Tides Foundation was set up as a sort of clearing house for other philanthropists and foundations, for many years receiving the overwhelming bulk of their money through the Pew. Today, other groups and foundations give them money and earmark where they want it spent. Tides exercises total control over something you are not supposed to hear about: The North American Tar Sands Coalition.

The Tides and the North American Tar Sands Coalition

The routine is fairly straightforward. After a long stretch when grassroots and community led struggles build up support using a multitude of strategies – from direct action blockades to boycott campaigns and speak outs, demonstrations and more – suddenly many of the organizers who started the campaign are shuffled aside. Professionals are either appointed within the ranks or are imported from outside and all are given foundation-led salaries. With or without public knowledge (almost always without) a “stakeholder” negotiation is undertaken between corporations, government and the new “professional” environmentalists will take place. The terms of the negotiations do not reach the public until a smiling photo-op of the “stakeholders” appears at a press conference to announce an “end” to a particular “campaign” now called a “win-win.” Details will vary, but they always include three things: A promise to stop organizing against a particular industry, market-based incentives that would lead to “change practices” and a guarantee for that industry to be allowed to develop, now unhindered. Such a process is slowly being constructed for tar sands production in Canada.

As if on cue, once the multitude of forces against tar sands development began to crack into both national and international media the large foundations appeared in the background. In this particular case, they had set up a spider’s web of control from the getgo. All the usual foundations – Pew Charitable Trusts, Hewlett, Rockefeller Brothers, Ford Foundation – now use the Tides Foundation as a singular source to centralize control over the would be recipients of funding.

By funnelling all money through the Tides Foundation all organizations and movements that approach any of these sources can be directed to only one source – the Tides Foundation and their “North American Tar Sands Coalition.” The NATSC is headed by one Michael Marx. While they also have “Canadian” and “American” campaign leaders, Marx has near total authority to forge the funding decisions, policy directions, media strategy and over-all focus of how the “coalition” will operate. Who then, is Michael Marx?

Marx is known as a “corporate responsibility” campaigner. Previously working with Forest Ethics and now, along side his control over the tar sands campaign, he is a head of Corporate Ethics International. His own personal bio celebrates that he has previously helped “green” Wal-Mart, one of the largest and most labour exploitative corporations in the world. He does not believe that the tar sands can or should be shut down, and is shaping political messaging to that end. The list of ENGO’s that are funded by Michael Marx’s NATSC is long, but to list merely the largest of the Canadian ones that have been with them from the beginning of the “invisible to the outside” coalition: The Pembina Institute, Environmental Defense Canada, ForestEthics, World Wildlife Fund (Canada), The Sierra Club of Canada (and associated regional chapters), Eco Justice and the Canadian Boreal Intiative. Perhaps most important to note is that the coalition also involves Greenpeace Canada – important because historically GPC did not take foundation funding but has now been listed for several grants from Tides Canada for this work.

There are also many regional only organizations – working on regional only campaigns, such as to ostensibly stop the Enbridge Gateway Pipeline across arts of unceded first nations territory in northern British Columbia. These groups involve Living Oceans society, The David Suzuki Foundation, west Coast Environmental Law and the Dogwood Initiative with a host of community led groups. These regional grants are controlled by Canadian understudy to Michael Marx, Jennifer Lash.

Since the highly criticized deal called the “Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement” was signed in 2010 between what was called nine environmental NGOs and 21 forestry companies, Tides has started muttering in public as their own voice – calling for the “bridging of the two camps” of environmentalists and energy companies over the tar sands. No first nations have been mentioned in their pronouncements. Nonetheless, in Europe they have moved in to steer the direction of anti-tar sands campaigning. Marx himself showed up recently in the UK, speaking out on campaigns to “stop tar sands expansion” in ads paid for by Corporate Ethics International. These same ads have appeared in Alberta; Marx himself lives in San Francisco.

Astro-turfing is a term often applied to various Republican or Tea Party ventures in the United States, ones where money and slick marketing are used to build an appearance of a grassroots network where, in fact, none truly exists. While there most certainly is such a grassroots network against the tar sands – and it is expanding globally – the astro-turfing of “demands” to go into the backroom negotiations is tailored to appear genuine. The manner it is done is to put forward a vague and almost completely uncontroversial call and ask people to sign on to some declaration.

As of late that has appeared to be towards the blight of the toxic tailings ponds littering the landscape by the vast open-pit mines. In recent months as well, Suncor (the original tar sands corporation, former property of Sunoco oil and largest energy company in Canada) announced they had developed “dry tailings technology” and that they planned over time to roll out and implement it. Considering that Suncor is openly partnered with the Canadian Boreal Initiative, it seems strangely convenient that the astroturfing campaign is now targeting tailings ponds – shortly after many of the more corporate environmental organizations and the largest players among tar sands operators were caught – trying to have a private, unreported meeting together.

The first attempt at such a meeting, last April, was spearheaded by the Pembina Institute. The Pembina is employed as consultants for Nexen, Suncor, TD Financial and many other industrial corporations and has partnered with the original tar sands giant Suncor Energy since 1982. That meeting was to be a “fireside chat” but it was cancelled when people got wind of it and it appeared first on the mediacoop.ca and later on in the Globe and Mail. Today, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Tides Foundation and others are calling for “dialogue.”

What Would a Tar Sands Partnership Agreement Look Like?

Based on the market trajectory of the Marx-led team, it will involve beyond promises on water and tailings – including carbon offsets, promised investments in “green” energy technology alongside perhaps some announcement on further research into carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).

Based on all previous deals in Canada and the United States, such a framework could only be announced as the “end to the war over tar sands” – to effectively give social license to tar sands operations permanently. This would then eliminate Tides based on all previous deals in Canada and the United States, such a framework could only be announced as the “end to the war over tar sands” – to effectively give social license to tar sands operations permanently. This would then eliminate Tides based anti-tar sands funding for all organizations in the NATSC. Certain groups such as Greenpeace, the Indigenous Environmental Network, Rainforest Action Network as well as several community initiatives have official positions to end tar sands development. The Pembina Institute, CBI, Tides, David Suzuki Foundation, Sierra Club, and near the totality of ENGO’s who receive NATSC funding in the United States do not call for the cessation of tar sands development, but mitigation of the “worst” impacts.

The breathtaking pace and size of tar sands development in Canada has not gone unnoticed to other would-be producers; many countries around the planet have deposits of bitumen that would require much the same technology. Those investors have been visiting Canada, learning, and heading elsewhere where bitumen beckons. A partial list of locations that are now threatened with tar sands extraction includes Trinidad and Tobago, The Republic of Congo, Madagascar, the US state of Utah, China, Russia and Jordan. There is also the country that may have even larger deposits than Canada – the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

With the exception of Venezuela, whose production is still but a fraction of Canada’s, none of these countries have gone into commercial production at this point. It will be nearly impossible to stop tar sands developments in Africa, Latin America Asia and elsewhere if all of our collective work in opposition to the development of tar sands is sacrificed to a “partnership deal” that allows for continued tar sands extraction. Corporations like France’s Total in Madagascar could then argue: “If this development is clean and responsible enough for Canada, why not so for Madagascar?” Such a dynamic must be avoided at all costs on many levels, not least of which is the remaining sliver of hope that the worst effects of climate change can be avoided, rather than simply managed or mitigated.

Climate justice organizing is, in part, an attempt to go beyond the counting of C02 emissions and to get to the heart of solutions to the climate crisis – solutions that involve the end of oppression of the communities that bear the brunt of the climate crisis, and do so in ways that respects their self-determination. Addressing the needs of these communities as they speak for the solutions they want cannot be a part of a backroom, anti-democratic model of development pushed forward with money from the very industries trying to eliminate them from history. It will take a global effort to hear and then amplify the voices – from Africa to Asia, and north to south in the Americas. None of these voices can be heard if someone closes a door to hold secret meetings with the financial powers whose assets already scream so loudly – as we edge ever closer to a point of no return.

MacDonald Stainsby is a social justice activist and journalist currently living in Edmonton and is the coordinator of http://oilsandstruth.org.

http://ecosocialismcanada.blogspot.com/2011/08/tar-sands-partnership-agreement-in.html

http://canadiandimension.com/

Environmental Colonialism in the Climate Struggle?

Environmental Colonialism in the Climate Struggle?

Cross-posted from Political Context

July 21, 2011

By Editor

What’s in a number? In the case of 330 ppm, a whole lot. “Imperialism, not human nature, has caused this global crisis; anti-imperialism and solidarity are the only paths out.”

by Macdonald Stainsby

Though the arguments made in this article appear to be about the numbers set as targets in parts per million [ppm] of carbon in the atmosphere, it is not the numbers alone that has made this debate necessary. It is, at the essence, how we come to the positions we do that says the most about what kind of organizing we are truly undertaking. It goes far beyond parts per million, even though the highlighted versions of the debate will often come in exactly the ppm debate, posted in a twitter-like condensed version that obscures instead of simplifies.

Evo Morales

Yes, 300ppm is the goal sought by the Bolivian government as well as many other south Pacific island states and social movements from all over the so-called developing world. Indeed, the call for a target of 300 ppm along with the need to calculate a form of climate debt mechanism that will not punish the Global South that has not constructed this crisis– the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced, and is already facing– and instead offers both development and possible survival. Imperialism, not human nature, has caused this global crisis; anti-imperialism and solidarity are the only paths out.

The number 300ppm is not arrived at in order to pose as “radical”. This number comes from a position of solidarity.

With 300ppm (and an accompanying one degree Celsius rise in global temperature averages) the survival of the water supplying glaciers in Bolivia are possible; the food producing agricultural regions of central Africa may yet produce again; the home supplying land of islands such as the Maldives may continue to exist. Solidarity by definition cannot make a target based on the destruction of some peoples, sacrificed for the expediency of ‘realpolitik’ for rich regions of the world. Yet the movement does not end there, and demands mechanisms that seriously curtail the emissions first of nation-states who created the crisis for their own narrow development while not punishing the (artificially) impoverished regions being decimated atmospherically.

Despite this, larger first world ENGO’s are setting targets that have nothing to do with the survival of people who are already watching their very homes disappear underwater. The concerns in North America are weaker and have nothing to do with power relations between Global North and South. If the need to immediately collapse any further c02 emissions into the atmosphere will mean a drastic reduction in energy use as a starting point– ending fossil fuel production– the “what is possible” arguments about “politically feasible” immediately must end. The arguments are not figuring out:

A) what has a scientific chance of success, but even more so

B) Ignoring the plight of the struggling Global South– already seeing droughts, floods and fires– is seen as ‘natural’ because the only constituency that apparently matters is an amalgam of all North American residents (themselves also seen as all “equal”).

In appeasing the American ‘birthright’ of over-development, concepts of a false “green shift” and “transition to a green economy” are regularly touted as the way forward for North American environmentalists. In fact, not one of the large and powerful environmental groups has ever challenged the notion of a capitalist led growth economy in a time when any growth is inherently suicidal for dealing with climate change– and genocidal in the implications of billions of human beings living with an already unbalanced atmosphere.

We have two major stumbling blocs on the path towards the goal of a green shift.

A): it is an economic non-starter. This green development would be based on the laws of capital accumulation and carried out under a market based economy. You cannot deliberately shrink such an economy without starting an economic freefall.

B): under basic capitalist laws of accumulation when any energy is added to the grid one actually expands the economy– which by the very rules of capitalist production also expands the demand for energy.

In the US and Canada we have the “just transition” version of the same “simultaneous growth and survival” model. This goal itself presupposes a static energy grid in the most unstable economic system, and in the most unstable economic decade in a century. Energy demand goes up when the economy recovers, and the least c02 producing versions of energy still increase the emissions into the air while they also facilitate the increase in more production of fossil fuels.

This campaign is one giant exercise in realpolitik that sacrifices reality in order to facilitate the chance of popular support for a plan of action that will fail. Sadly, the Global North ENGO definition of success is measured in public support not tangible environmental survival.

The approach taken in North America (far less than Europe) is based on consumption guilt, consumption legislation and the imaginary world where we simply stop buying gasoline and ride bikes everywhere with only good argumentation and eco-friendly bank sponsored picnics against climate change. The entire structure of North American society is constructed towards fossil fuels more than anywhere on the planet, while there is already a major shift in energy underway.

With pilot plants for coal to liquids under conceptualization in the US and continued investment into ways to produce oil shale into petroleum in several places (most notably Colorado) and the continued expansion of the largest industrial development in human history in the Albertan tar sands, the energy shift is taking place not at a point of consumption deliberately but in fact at the point of production.

Carbon taxes– even at the level that may actually have a tangible effect on emissions– undermine the need to reduce carbon emissions in a just fashion and rely instead on trying to use economics to deal with what is essentially a political problem. The notion of making the consumer of fossil fuels pay for consumption is a climate version of having you and I pay to ‘rescue’ the banks– when we did not make this mess in the first place. The strengths of the campaigns against developments like the tar sands are when the campaign focuses on the impacts on Fort Chipewyan immediately and across the planet ultimately. When people use arguments about “slowing down” production or how one can consume cosmetics to fight against climate chaos, the message is lost in feel good pointless solutions, or worse– diversion into consumer choices that have no effect but to make one falsely believe they did their part.

The real threat posed by the Albertan tar sands is starting to bleed across the planet and is locking all of humanity into a mode of production that utterly defeats any possibility of realistically tackling climate change. No matter how many “green energy alternatives” get built, if production of bitumen continues to expand in Canada and starts becomes a norm worldwide we have no chance to address the atmospheric levels. No other energy source simultaneously being built will slow that, but in fact speed up the destructive process. We must never call on corporations like BP and TOTAL to “invest in alternative energy”. They just might actually do it.

From Colombia to Scotland and parts of Canada the development of the least climate damaging energy supplies have been used to build new coal mines, power possible shale gas extraction as well as to greenwash energy giants like Suncor and even give them carbon credits to make their legal operation continue. The green shift may take away the only window left to tackle climate change.

Internationally the movement that came out of Cochabamba& Tiquipaya, Bolivia last April called for 300ppm as a target, but with the caveats of no false solutions and that the main needs were to both power down the industrial world and to provide mechanisms for the over-exploited mass of humanity to be able to develop a decent standard of living while tackling the odious task of protecting their own environments. Basically, it’s a global “you broke it, you bought it” to the imperialist countries of North America and Western Europe. But the real kicker is that it is a call that allows all of the human residents of the planet to be valued on the same level, and applies the principles of environmental justice to the international stage. Let’s be clear– the fight will be internationally won or lost.

When 350.org went to Cochabamba, they not only argued for their position of 350ppm despite that the Global South led, initiated and hosted conference had differing positions. They made the same tired arguments around what was “politically feasible”, what was “achievable” and that there was so little support for real action in the US and Canada that this path was at least tenable. In environmental circles, “politically feasible” and bad deals that allow business as usual for industry. Going well beyond parts per million, the people from Africa pointed out that such a call condemns their continent to permanent protectorate status, unable to feed itself and as a mass of humanity treated as a continental invalid. Countries from Southern Pacific Islands point out that the temperature rise associated with 350ppm would leave them underwater and permanent refugees as a modern day series of nations with Atlantis like status.

Let us, however, leave aside the numerical points and talk about what way a movement in the interests of environmental justice will operate. When a pipeline is being proposed the community next to it gets full messaging control and overwhelming precedence. The voices that must be amplified are those of the community whose traditional territory is under siege. Sadly, the history of environmental NGO organizing has been to use their struggle as a great fundraiser, to put some colour on the colourful brochures, to make posters with sayings from elders– sold and used to claim a profit for already well-financed ENGO’s. Now we must apply these principles to what came out of Cochabamba.

The plenaries heeded the voices of the Global South and agreed to endorse no false solutions, power down not power up, no trading the air and the land for carbon credits, and to take the voices of the already suffering as a unified voice to Cancun in December 2010. But what of 350.org? From places of using ‘facilitation’ of plenary sessions to try and manipulate demands downward to falsely taking notes [after the fact], trying (on two separate occasions) to change the text of the agreed upon declarations– and ultimately refusing to sign onto and agree to uphold the principles of the Peoples Agreement that came out of the conference. Instead we have reality distorting pictures of Bolivian children posted during their 10/10/10 “Global work party” with “350.org” painted on their faces.

Note that 350.org is funded by unaccountable foundations that have historical ties to industry, and that 350.org itself steadfastly refuses to list any solutions, but instead delivers solar panels to the White House for stunt effect.

Meanwhile Bolivia (and the social movements that built the People’s Agreement) were hung out to dry in Mexico at COP16. That didn’t happen overnight. At meetings in advance of Cancun, 350.org “backed” small island states into a corner, “helping” them once they dropped “silly” demands and adopted the 350.org platform (or lack of one). Among other ENGO’s at Cancun were the usual competing voices, all demanding different things from almost all the governments in the world. The declarations from the Peoples Agreement had already been delivered to the UN, and were being demanded by hundreds of social movements from all over the Global South and dozens of nation states to be presented for real discussion and legally binding enforcement on the global level. ENGO’s didn’t promote the agreement (many actively undermined such, with Greenpeace promoting REDD and the Mexican government) and such demands collapsed.

Silence on this dynamic runs counter to organizing an international resistance movement based on solidarity. Big money and slick advertising campaigns are trying to silence the voices emerging from all those gathered last April 2010 in the shadows of the melting glaciers of the Andes. It is the path to justice to fight to make certain that this legitimate voice for transformation is not turned into another prop of coloured peoples on a “professional” campaign. It is often accurately pointed out that this kind of division over the numbers 300 vs 350 is silly when we are almost at 400 already. That is agreed in the abstract, but this debate is not about the numbers. It is a struggle for recognition on a global scale– one that goes way, way beyond parts per million debates. It is pointed at a revolutionary approach.

Macdonald Stainsby is a social justice activist, journalist and professional hitchhiker looking for a ride to the better world. He is the coordinator of http://OilSandsTruth.org and can be reached at: mstainsby@resist.ca

http://politicalcontext.org/sci-tech/2011/07/environmental-colonialism-in-the-climate-struggle/

Shaky Foundations: Toxic Sources, Tainted Money

Shaky Foundations: Toxic Sources, Tainted Money

The Decline of Big Green, Part One
Shaky Foundations: Toxic Sources, Tainted Money
Weekend Edition
June 4 – 6, 2010
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Back at the start of the 20th century, John D. Rockefeller remarked that “not even God himself can keep me from giving my money to the University of Chicago.” The old bandit’s investments duly paid off, with platoons of Chicago economists and jurists all hymning the free market and invoking the inexorable laws requiring that some be rich and many be poor.

Philanthropy and its purposes haven’t changed much since Rockefeller millions were dispensed to winch the family name out of the mud, particularly after the Ludlow massacre when Rockefeller minions broke a strike by spraying with oil and then igniting tents filled with women and children.

Even before Ludlow, Rockefeller money was ladled out to the wildcatters in central Pennsylvania to absorb them into the many-tentacled Standard Oil Trust, with satisfactory results.

Nearly a century later, the environmental movement, supposedly big oil’s implacable foe, found itself on the receiving end of about $50 million a year from three oil conglomerates, operating through front groups politely described as private foundations. According to an analysis of financial reports from the Clinton years, the top givers were were the Sun Oil Company (Sunoco) and Oryx Energy, which controlled vast holdings of natural gas in Arkansas and across the oil patch. The Pew family once entirely controlled both Sunoco and Oryx, maintained large holdings in both, and was, in fact, sued for insider trading by Oryx shareholders.

In 1948 the family set up the Pew Charitable Trust, based in Philadelphia, with an endowment totaling nearly $4 billion in the year 2000. In its early days the foundation (a collection of seven separate trusts) was vociferously rightwing, with money going to the John Birch Society, to Billy Graham and to population control, always a preoccupation of the rich.

The utility of buying the loyalty of liberals impressed itself on the impressed itself on the family rather late, in the 1980s. But since then they have more than made up for lost time. By the beginning of the second Clinton term, the Pew Charitable Trusts represented one of the largest donors to the environmental movement, with about $250 million a year invested.

During Clintontime, the Pew environmental sector was headed by Joshua Reichert. Reichert and his subordinates, Tom Wathen and John Gilroy, not only allocated money to individual Pew projects, such as the Endangered Species Coalition, but they also helped direct the donations of other foundations mustered in the Environmental Grantmakers’ Association.

Pew rarely went it alone. It preferred to work in coalitions with those other foundations, which meant almost no radical opposition to their cautious environmental policies can get any money. There were some notable foundations that objected to Pew’s leveraged buyouts of environmental campaigns, notably the Levinson, Patagonia and Turner Foundations.

Still, Pew was the sort of Trust that John D. would have understood and admired.

But this did not tell the full story of coercion through money. One of the conditions attached to the receipt of Pew grant money was that attention be focused on government actions. Corporate wrongdoers were not to be pursued. With Pew money rolling their way, the environmental opposition became muted, judicious and finally disappeared. As long-time New Mexico environmentalist Sam Hitt put it: “Pew comes into a region like a Death Star, creating organizations that are all hype and no substance, run by those whose primary aim is merely to maintain access to foundation funding.”

Meanwhile, the endowed money held by these trusts was carefully invested in the very corporations that a vigorous environmental movement would be adamantly opposing. An examination of Pew’s portfolio in 1995 revealed that is money was invested in timber firms, mining companies, oil companies, arms manufacturers and chemical companies. The annual yield from these investments far exceeded the dispensations to environmental groups.

Take just one of the seven Pew trust funds: the Pew Memorial Trust. This enterprise made $205 million in “investment income” in 1993 from such stocks as Weyerhaeuser ($16 million), the mining concern Phelps-Dodge ($3.7 million), International Paper ($4.56 million) and Atlantic Richfield, which was pushing hard to open even more of the Arctic to oil drilling ($6.1 million). The annual income yield from rape-and-pillage companies accruing to Pew in this single trust was twice as large as it total grants, and six times as large as all of Pew’s environmental dispensations that year (about $20 million in 1993).

Next of the big three in environmental funding was an oil company known as Cities Services, which endowed the W. Alton Jones Foundation, based in Charlottesville, Virginia. (In the merger frenzy of the 1980s, Cities was ultimately taken over by Occidental Petroleum, in a move that saved Ivan Boesky from financial ruin. It was later parceled off to the Southland Corporation, owners of Seven Eleven, then finally, in 1990, it was sold to Petroleos de Venezuela.)

In the crucial Clinton years, Alton Jones maintained an endowment of $220 million and in 1994 handed out $15.8 million in grants. According to the charity’s charter, the purpose of the foundation was two-fold: preservation of biological diversity and elimination of the threat of nuclear war. Although Alton Jones doled out about $14 million a year to environmental causes during the Clinton years with the same engulf-and-neuter tactic of Pew, this apostle of peace maintained very large holdings in arms manufacturers, including Martin-Marietta ($3.26 million), Raytheon ($1.32 million), Boeing ($1.38 million), and GE ($1.4 million).

Alton Jones’ portfolio was also enhanced by income from bonds floated by Charles Hurwitz’s Scotia-Pacific Holdings Company, a subsidiary of Maxxam, which was at that very moment trying to cut down the Headwaters Grove, the largest patch of privately owned redwoods in the world. The charity’s annual statement to the Internal Revenue Service also disclosed a $1.4 million stake in Louisiana-Pacific, then the large purchaser of timber from publicly-owned federal forests. The company had been convicted of felony violations of federal environmental laws at its pulp mill in Ketchikan, Alaska, where L-P was butchering its way through the Tongass National Forest.

At the same time, Alton Jones maintained a position (just under $1 million in stock) in FMC, the big gold mining enterprise, who dousing of endangered salmon habitat in Idaho with cyanide at the Beartrack Mine was greased by Clinton’s Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. Picking up revenue from FMC’s salmon destruction with one hand, in 1993 the foundation gave about $600,000 with the other hand to supposedly protect salmon habitat in the same area. The grants went to the compliant and docile groups in the region, such as the Pacific Rivers Council.

At a crucial moment in January 1994, Pacific Rivers Council and the Wilderness Society–another recipient of W. Alton Jones cash—demanded that a federal judge suspend an injunction the groups had–to their great alarm—just won. The injunction had shut down FMC’s Beartrack Gold Mine, from which the company expected to make $300 million courtesy of the 1872 Mining Act, whose reform the Clinton administration carefully avoided. When the Wilderness Society’s attorneys asked Judge David Ezra to rescind the injunction, he was outraged but had no alternative but to comply. FMC’s stock promptly soared, yielding extra earning for Alton Jones’ holdings in the mining concern.

The last of the three big environmental foundations is the Rockefeller Family Fund. In the Clinton era, the RFF was run by ex-Naderite Donald Ross, who pulled down, according to IRS filings, $130,000 a year, plus another $23,000 in benefits. The relationship of the Family Fund to Rockefeller oil money scarcely needs stating. Though the Fund dispensed a relatively puny $2 million a year in grants, it exercises great influence by dint of the foundation’s leadership of the Environmental Grantmaker’s Association. The Fund also functioned as a kind of staff college for foundation executives. Pew’s John Gilroy and Tom Wathen both learned their trade under Ross’s tutelage.

In the 1980s, when the Multinational Monitor revealed that the ten largest foundations in America owned billions in stock of companies doing business in South Africa, Donald Ross lamented that many foundations “simply turn their portfolios over to a bank trust department or to outside managers and that’s the last they see of it.”

If the innuendo here was that conscientious foundations should keep an eye on their investments, Ross has some explaining to do. The Rockefeller Family Fund, in its 1993 IRS filing, held $3.5 million in oil and gas stocks, including Amerada Hess (one of the first companies to drill on Alaska’s North Slope and company convicted of price fixing), As an old Nader man, Ross should have presumably felt some embarrassment in the Fund’s extensive holdings in the Ten Worst Corporations, as listed by Multinational Monitor, a Nader operation.

The the Rockefeller Family Fund also maintained heft investments in mining companies, including ASARCO, an outfit with a distinctly noxious environmental rap sheet. Its activities have laid waste to western Montana, easily overwhelming the yelps of the Mineral Policy Center, which conducted a futile campaign against the company, partially funding by the RFF.

The Ross-run fund also invested money in FMC and Freeport-McMoRan, whose worldwide depredations were on the cutting edge not only of ecocide but–in Indonesia—of genocide as well. The Rockefeller Funds’ mineral and chemical companies holdings exceeded a million dollars in 1993.

In that same year, the RFF had a strong position in timber giant Weyerhaeuser, the largest private landowning company in North America. The potential for conflicts of interests endemic to all foundations with the ability to influence federal policy is sharply illustrated here. The Rockefeller Family Fund was one of the lead architects of the foundation-funded campaign to protect ancient forests on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest. Any reduction, actual or prospective, of timber available for logging on public lands drives up the value of privately-held timber tracts. The Fund was in a position to make a killing by buying Weyerhaeuser stock low and selling it high, before large-scale logging resumed on public lands.

The Family Fund was nicely covered because it also had holdings of $237,000 in Boise-Cascade, which at the time was the largest purchaser of federal timber sales in the Northwest. Indeed, in 1993 Boise-Cascade bought the rights to log the controversial Sugarloaf tract of 800-year-old Douglas fir trees in southern Oregon’s Siskiyou National Forest, courtesy of a released injunction engineered by a deal between the Clinton administration and environmental groups funded and closely supervised Ross’s organization. Ross also played a key role in the hiring of Democratic Party hack Bob Chlopak (another former Naderite) to oversee the conversion of a tough national grassroots movement to fight Clinton to the death over the permanent protection of old-growth forests into a supine national coalition that swiftly draped itself in the white flag of surrender.

Even after Donald Ross left the Rockefeller Family he continued to stride between two worlds. Ross formed a lobby / PR shop called M + R Strategic Services, where his clients, according to SourceWatch, included both environmental groups (the Nature Conservancy, NRDC, the National Wildlife Federation and Earth Justice) and environmental foundations (Hewlitt Foundation, Patagonia, Lazar Foundation, and Wilberforce—as well as the Rockefeller Family Fund). He didn’t forget the corporations either. In 2009, Ross became chairman of the board of a defanged GreenPeace.

All of these foundations had their bets nicely covered, both politically and financially. The once unruly grassroots green movement was brought under tight control through annual disbursements of funds, rewarded on the condition that these groups follow the dictates of the funders. At times this meant giving up hard-won legal injunctions. In other instances, it meant refraining from filing politically sensitive lawsuits to stop timber sales or gold mines and muting its public criticism of Democratic politicians.

With court injunctions lifted, there was only one way for environmentalists to confront illegal and ecologically destructive operations: civil disobedience. And that was a tactic the big foundations would never underwrite. Disobey these conditions and a group risked the annual renewal of its funding.

Precious few did.

Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book, Born Under a Bad Sky, is published by AK Press / CounterPunch books. He can be reached at: sitka.

(This article is excerpted from Green Scare: the New War on Environmentalism by Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank, forthcoming from Haymarket Books.)

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair06042010.html

http://oilsandstruth.org/shaky-foundations-toxic-sources-tainted-money

• Alberta (& Saskatchewan) Tar Sands
• International oil & gas
• Corruption
• Economics

The Climate Cartel: 1Sky, 350.org and Rockefeller Brothers | Stronger as One

The Climate Cartel:1Sky, 350.org and Rockefeller Brothers | Stronger as One

By Cory Morningstar

Published July 7th, 2011 by Political Context: http://bit.ly/n8FG5T and Canadians for Action on Climate Change: http://bit.ly/r1REJ0

“The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.” – David Rockefeller , the current patriarch of the Rockefeller family and only surviving grandchild of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil.

“Doublethink, a word coined by George Orwell in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, describes the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts. It is related to, but distinct from, hypocrisy and neutrality. Its opposite is cognitive dissonance, where the two beliefs cause conflict in one’s mind.” (source: Wikipedia)

[Doublethink is] “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself — that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.”

“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them….To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.” – George Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd, London, part 1, chapter 3, pp 32

Wikipedia: “Orwell explains that the Party could not protect its iron power without degrading its people with constant propaganda. Yet, knowledge of this brutal deception, even within the Inner Party itself, could lead to collapse of the state from within. Though Nineteen Eighty-Four is most famous for the Party’s pervasive surveillance of everyday life, this control means that the population of Oceaniaall of it, including the ruling elitecould be controlled and manipulated merely through the alteration of everyday thought and language. Newspeak is the method for controlling thought through language; doublethink is the method of directly controlling thought.

Moreover, doublethink’s self-deception allows the Party to maintain huge goals and realistic expectations.

Since 1949 (when Nineteen Eighty-Four was published), the word doublethink has become synonymous with relieving cognitive dissonance by ignoring the contradiction between two world viewsor even of deliberately seeking to relieve cognitive dissonance. Some schools of psychotherapy, such as cognitive therapy, encourage people to alter their own thoughts as a way of treating different psychological maladies.”

 

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Fair warning to those who continue to support “the new” 350.org

In April of this year, 1Sky and 350.org announced their “official” merger, even though they were already intertwined from the outset.

As documented in the expose Rockefellers 1Sky Unveils the New 350.org | More $ More Delusion,today, having possibly reached peak delusion, we now actually have the Rockefellers at the helm of our faux climate movement and even the most intelligent people have chosen to embrace it. Even anti-capitalist websites are promoting Bill McKibben’s latest piece asking for civil disobedience and signed by McKibben, Naomi Klein, Maude Barlow and others including prominent 1Sky members.

Make no mistake that civil disobedience is absolutely imperative and that yes, the tar sands must be considered a death knell to the planet in relation to climate change, which continues to escalate at a rapid rate. And yes this call to action is certainly orders of magnitude more important than anything that McKibben has demonstrated in the past.

The question is why globalist plutocrats, such as the Rockefellers, fund the majority of the mainstream environmental movement and establish an organization that now calls for civil disobedience and the halt of tar sands expansion into the US? If the true meaning of climate justice were in fact to be realized, it would mean nothing less than the stripping of wealth of these very families and corporate entities. The very system which ensures global monetary wealth and power stay securely in the hands of the privileged few today is absolutely dependent upon and cannot succeed without continuous expanding raping, pillaging and degradation to our Earth and relentless exploitation of those most vulnerable.

Since these families and corporate entities have come to fund the mainstream environmental movement, we can safely conclude that they do not fear it. The reason is simple the climate justice “movement” represents no real threat to the globe’s wealthiest and most powerful. The global elites including the dominant Rockefellers shape, define and ultimately control the movement itself. Yet these big names do lend credibility to an organization whose legitimacy is essentially non-existent.

The carefully worded “call out” from McKibben even places restrictions on the participants:

“We will do it in dignified fashion, demonstrating that in this case we are the conservatives, and that our foes who would change the composition of the atmosphere are dangerous radicals.”

Framing the term “radical” as dangerous (radical is derived from the Latin word rdclis – having roots, from Latin rdix – a root, designed to act on or eliminate the root or cause of a pathological process), McKibben exhorts would-be participants to wear business attire and show support for Obama:

“Come dressed as if for a business meeting this is, in fact, serious business. And another sartorial tip if you wore an Obama button during the 2008 campaign, why not wear it again? We very much still want to believe in the promise of that young Senator who told us that with his election the ‘rise of the oceans would begin to slow and the planet start to heal.’ We don’t understand what combination of bureaucratic obstinacy and insider dealing has derailed those efforts, but we remember his request that his supporters continue on after the election to pressure the government for change. We’ll do what we can.”

McKibben’s message on aggressive non-violence?

“One thing we don’t want is a smash up: if you can’t control your passions, this action is not for you.”

On 30 June 2011, Jeff Goodell wrote in the Rolling Stone article, Politics: Time For Climate Activists to Get Tough:

“Interestingly, organizers are asking demonstrators to ditch Birkenstocks, torn jeans and tie-dyed T-shirts for button-down, business attire. ‘We need to be able to get across to people who the conservatives are and who the radicals are,’ McKibben said. ‘People need to understand how radical it is to change the composition of the atmosphere.’ By marching in button-downs, rally organizers are clearly borrowing a page from the Mississippi Freedom Riders of the 1960s, who, by arriving in the South as well-dressed, respectable students and citizens, helped expose the moral savagery of the white power establishment.

It may be a shrewd and effective strategy, but inviting a comparison between climate activists and the Freedom Riders only underscores how tame the fight against global warming has been so far. The Freedom Riders proved the power of peaceful action, but they also showed astonishing courage and a willingness to risk their lives to change the world. Buses were firebombed. Some of them were attacked by police dogs. Others were beaten bloody, had bones broken, skulls cracked. But their suffering inspired people. ‘If those kids are wiling to lay all that on the line, I should be able to screw up at least a little courage in order to support the movement,’ one person says in Breach of Peace, Eric Etheridge’s excellent book of portraits of Freedom Riders.”

If people wish to delude themselves that 1 Sky/350.org/McKibben is our saviour that will help us avoid our own self-annihilation, I guess they can go ahead and do so. This will prove to be a massive mistake for those who claim to work towards climate justice and claim to be opposed to the commodification of Earth’s final remaining natural resources. This misguided trust will also prove to be lethal to future generations, including today’s children.

Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, spoke March 19, 2010 at Innovative Philanthropy for the 21st Century: Harnessing the Power of Impact Investing: In this second phase of philanthropic innovation, our Rockefeller Foundation predecessors helped establish the non-governmental organization sector as the missing middle between giving and direct impact. This included support for entities we call them RINGOS, Rockefeller Foundation Initiated NGOs.

1Sky was a Rockefeller-initiated NGO an incubator project so to speak. Although I have documented this relationship extensively, the majority of people are only willing to see and believe what they want to see and believe. Cognitive dissonance, denial and Orwells doublespeak has proven to be a most effective strategy in the co-opting of an entire movement. On the website post below written by 1Sky Garth Brooks it is stated unequivocally that Rockefeller Brothers is a 1Sky strategic partner.

From the 1Sky Website: Weekly Round-Up 8/6/10:

“It makes me feel better, but I suspect others feel differently. Some even questioned if there was a movement. In their Grist piece, authors Kelsey Wirth, Rockefeller Family Fund’s Larry Shapiro, and Greenpeace USA’s Philip Radford put it bluntly on why the grassroots failed to help deliver a strong bill(Note: Rockefeller Brothers is a 1Sky donor and strategic partner).”

Rockefeller Fund manages approximately US$1 billion for descendants of John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil Co., predecessor of U.S. oil giants Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips, all of which are tar sands developers.

For an imperative read see Offsetting Resistance and the secret structure of the tar sands coalition: “The emerging ‘North American Tar Sands Coalition,’ seeks to keep its decision-making body ‘invisible to the outside,’ while funnelling millions of dollars to its preferred groups.”

Such “campaigns” are superbly planned and executed using all tools available, with a heavy emphasis on distraction, language and manipulation using advanced and sophisticated psychology.

If the environmental movement and notable environmental leaders who speak out against capitalism (the root cause of climate change) and the fatal illusion of “green” capitalism believe that partnering and promoting an organization led by the Rockefellers, the Clintons, TckTckTck (supported/partnered with the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, which includes members such as Shell) is not insane … then we really are in for a FAR WORSE situation than we realize.

Many will have taken notice by now of the big greens pushing REDD REDD being just one of the many market mechanisms the Rockefellers, with the industrial machine, have worked towards and funded with many a big green NGO to assist.

“Rockefeller was a donor to colleges all over the country and helped found the University of Chicago. Huntington, of the Central Pacific, gave money to two Negro colleges, Hampton Institute and Tuskegee Institute. Carnegie gave money to colleges and to libraries. Johns Hopkins was founded by a millionaire merchant, and millionaires Cornelius Vanderbilt, Ezra Cornell, James Duke, and Leland Stanford created universities in their own names. The rich, giving part of their enormous earnings in this way, became known as philanthropists.

These educational institutions did not encourage dissent; they trained the middlemen in the American system-the teachers, doctors, lawyers, administrators, engineers, technicians, politicians- those who would be paid to keep the system going, to be loyal buffers against trouble.” Howard Zinn from the book History is a Weapon, A Peoples History of the United States, Chapter 11 Robber Barons and Rebels

The illusion of democracy and good will is breathtaking.

Announcement on the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Website April 21, 2011

Written by Jessica Bailey (integral to the creation of 1Sky, Jessica Bailey is the Program Officer for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s Sustainable Development program, where she focuses on climate change. Bailey also serves on the board of directors for 1Sky):

1Sky and 350.org: Stronger as One

Posted on 04/21/2011 in Sustainable Development

By Jessica Bailey

This month marked the exciting marriage of 1Sky and 350.org two grantees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s Sustainable Development program. The announcement comes as environmental policy is hitting a new low in Washington: the House of Representatives just voted to deny the science of climate change; the recently passed federal budget cuts climate change-related programs by $49 million (including a ban on funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Service); the White House has opened up wide areas of the West for coal mining; and the environmental community is being forced to put everything it’s got into protecting the Clean Air Act a bill passed decades ago! These are challenging times for those of us working to advance solutions to climate change.

Despite the news coming from Washington, the announcement to merge 1Sky and 350.org two of the biggest movements on climate into a single organization under the banner of 350.org, gives me hope that we just might build a people-powered movement strong enough to protect this planet. 1Sky and 350.org were born around the same time and involved many of the same leaders. Bill McKibben, who has been a 1Sky board member and will chair the new 350.org board, once referred to 1Sky as the U.S. Embassy for 350.org and 350.org as 1Sky’s foreign legion. 1Sky was founded to support ambitious environmental action in the United States that would keep emissions targets to scientifically defendable levels, stop new coal-fired power plants, and build a green economy strong enough to create five million new green jobs. 350.org was founded to embed the concept of a wonky carbon emissions concept (350 ppm is the level of emissions in the atmosphere that scientists believe is safe) into the international negotiations in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate summit. While 1Sky didn’t deliver bold national policy and 350.org didn’t deliver a global treaty, both organizations have made significant progress in widening the tent of grassroots support for climate action. With the new political reality, it makes all the sense in the world to bring them together. Matching 350.org’s talent for mass mobilization and online action with 1Sky’s advocacy and field campaign experience is tremendously exciting. Mergers are tough, and I applaud the leaders in both organizations for recognizing they’d be stronger together.

The new 350.org has an aggressive plan to mobilize millions of people in a tech-savvy, citizen-driven movement that can finally build the support necessary for real climate action. The good news is they have a solid running start. The new campaign will have over 600,000 active supporters, thousands of volunteer community organizers in every state, and hundreds of partner organizations.

Let’s hope this happy union gives the climate movement the jumpstart it needs to compel our country to act on climate change before it’s too late.”

http://www.rbf.org/post/1sky-and-350org-stronger-one

“Some even believe we (the Rockefeller family) are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the USA characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” – David Rockefeller

In April 2011 congressman Ron Paul, sent a stark message this week to ruling elite “internationalists” attempting to expand globalism via the Western military industrial complex “you will fail”.

Will they fail?

Certainly not unless we finally make an uncompromised decision to face reality dead-on.

If you are in support of “green” capitalism meaning BAU (business as usual) and keeping the world’s monetary wealth and power in the hands of a select few the furthest thing from climate justice then just keep supporting the new 350.org/1Sky, along with the other corporate greens. It is so grossly blatant, it is difficult to accept that people are choosing to be blind to it. If you believe the Rockefellers (and the handful of other elites who control the globe) wish for a new global economy based on any kind of justice and a re-distribution of wealth and power, you’re in seriously dangerous denial.

We don’t need Rockefeller and corporate mouthpieces planning our actions, “training” us to be passive and obedient, and telling us what we can and cannot do, what is appropriate versus what is not. We need civil disobedience but it must come from the grassroots up, not from the plutocrats down.

Today’s youth, Indigenous peoples of the world, indeed all the men and women alive today, have every right to rebel against and destroy the current power structures that exist. This is necessary in order to salvage what is left of a raped and pillaged planet on the brink of ecological collapse. Martin Luther King once said that “you cannot commit an act of violence against a non-sentient object.” The real violence is what is being allowed to happen on a daily basis to our Earth Mother and global and local ecosystems, to which we have chosen to turn a blind eye. Today, police states and corporate-controlled governments protect property, corporate interests, and industrialized economic growth over life itself. Drastic times require drastic measures; thus, all peoples have the right to destroy the suicidal structures now threatening humanity. Echoing the words of Malcolm X, they must defend that right “by any means necessary.”

Refuse to be silenced. Go forward in self-defence. Do not negotiate life. Reject all compromise.

Reject all attempts for the industrial machine to smother, rehabilitate, co-opt, or psychologically marginalize our actions.

Attack the economic system as this is the only language those most powerful, who control the world’s monetary wealth, understand.

It is past time to start enacting civil disobedience on a massive scale. Knowledge is the weapon and it is time to arm the masses using all organizational tools in existence. This must be a united movement. Fuel distribution centres, pipelines, dams, roads, the industrial-military complex, banks, the stock exchange, politicians, CEOs: all must be targeted.

And for fuck’s sake, don’t wear a tie unless you really want to.

Cory Morningstar is climate justice activist whose recent writings can be found on Canadians for Action on Climate Change and The Art of Annihilation site where you can read her bio. You can follow her on Twitter: @elleprovocateur

Must Watch Interview with WWF doc maker in English | The Silence of the Panda

Interview with WWF doc maker in English:

http://www.toxicsoy.org/toxicsoy/news/Artikelen/2011/7/1_Interview_with_WWF_doc_maker_in_English.html

English subtitled interview with Wilfried Huismann, the maker of the documentary ‘The silence of the Pandas’, just before it was broadcasted on German TV. Contains some previews of the documentary and some extra items.

http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/13305-shock-documentary-wwf-and-industry-the-pact-with-the-panda?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Shock documentary: WWF and industry – The pact with the Panda

Tuesday, 05 July 2011

The article below summarises the contents of the recently broadcast German documentary ‘The silence of the Pandas’, which exposed WWF’s close ties with corporations, including Monsanto. The film has caused shockwaves in Germany and many donors have reportedly withdrawn their support for WWF.

An English-subtitled interview with Wilfried Huismann, the maker of the documentary ‘The silence of the Pandas’, is here.

EXCERPTS: since 2010 Monsanto’s genetically modified soybeans have been certified as “sustainable” by the “Round Table on Responsible Soy” (RTRS). The certification system was created at the initiative of the WWF.

Hartmut Vogtmann, head of the Deutscher Naturschutzring (German League for Nature Conservation and Environmental Protection), is clearly outraged at this. In an internal letter to Detlev Drenckhahn, president of the German WWF division, he warns insistently against participating in the “Round Table on Responsible Soy”. In the letter, obtained by sueddeutsche.de, Vogtmann argues that according to recent studies, through the cultivation of soy, the use of pesticides has “increased tremendously … because more and more weeds are becoming resistant to Roundup, which is used in the cultivation of soybeans”. Its active ingredient, glyphosate, “causes malformations in embryos and leads to higher rates of cancer,” he writes with respect to an investigation, and concludes: The Round Table, co-founded by the WWF, is “artificially keeping a failed system of agriculture alive”.

… Even before its initial screening, the film clearly stirred the German affiliate of the WWF. Attempts were made, through warnings and media attorneys, to influence the broadcast and to cancel interviews.

And what is one to think when the organization, in response to inquiries by the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, admits to having accepted donations from Monsanto? And of the fact that the promotion of genetic engineering by Jason Clay is termed an “individual opinion of an outsider”? In fact, he is not. He is the vice president of the WWF global organization.
—
—
Enquiries by WDR into the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)
WWF and Industry – the Pact with the Panda[1] By Lars Langenau[2] sueddeutsche.de
22 June 2011
[German original: http://bit.ly/SZPandaPakt]

How industry-friendly is the WWF? On the fiftieth anniversary of the organization’s founding, the German broadcaster WDR did some behind-the-scenes research on the renowned globally operating environmental organization. Its explosive documentary shows how deeply the organization has become entrenched in economic interests and their billions in profits.

Baby tigers, polar bear cubs, young orangutans – cute and cuddly and evoking sympathy with their big eyes and snub noses. They have the perfect look that appeals to children. There’s only one thing that tops them all: the panda, cuddliness personified.

The panda is the poster animal of the globally renowned World Wide Fund for Nature, also still known today by its former name, the World Wildlife Fund. According to market research, the most powerful nature conservation organization in the world has one of the most credible images in the world. For 50 years it has stood for climate protection, sustainability, and the maintenance of the earth’s biological diversity.

And it is always in search of donors – in the service of nature. Children will not hesitate to raid their piggy banks; they collect animal pictures that the supermarket giant Rewe, in cooperation with the WWF, was until recently giving away with purchases, setting off a collection frenzy (“Animals – adventure. Discover all of them!”). Donors are made to feel as though they are buying a little piece of an ideal world.

But reality, at least in part, looks in fact quite different.

According to research by the WDR, the influential environmental organization WWF with its annual donations of around 500 million euro, its 4,000 employees, and affiliates in more than 100 countries, has become entwined in industry interests – the report raises the question whether the work of the organization can be reconciled with the slogan “For a living Planet”.

In the WDR documentary “The Pact with the Panda”, which was broadcast by ARD[3] last Wednesday at 11:30 PM, Wilfried Huismann, the recipient of several Grimme [media] awards, suggests that donors’ credulity is in some cases stretched rather thin for interests that scarcely serve the preservation of the planet.

Journey around the globe

Huismann documents that the WWF is clearly helping dubious companies obtain “sustainability certificates”. The organization cooperates in “roundtables” with GMO companies such as the agricultural giant Monsanto and the multinational Wilmar Group – and then certifies that they produce soy and palm oil “sustainably”.

In the film, the nature conservation organization justifies such close cooperation as a “non-ideological” course that “accomplishes a great deal more than consistent rejection”. Huismann, through his research, shows what consequences this cooperation with industry can have.

Displacement of one million aboriginal inhabitants for the tiger

Among other things, he cites the massive, often forced displacement of native peoples in India and Indonesia, who had coexisted for centuries with the wild animals that they venerate as holy. Huismann traveled to India, where one million aboriginal inhabitants are to be displaced, allegedly for the protection of tigers. But local activists say this is nonsense. WWF’s Tiger Project has been in existence since 1974, when there were still 5000 tigers. If it had been successful, then at least 8000 should be living there now, says an environmental activist, but there are clearly far fewer. And these few big cats are followed around their tiger reserve for eight hours a day by eco-tourists brought in by the WWF’s own travel company in its 155 jeeps. According to research, the well-heeled guests must pay about $10,000 for the privilege, while local activists complain that in the name of eco-tourism the original forest is being destroyed.

In Argentina the issue is genetically modified monocultures that place stress on humans and the environment. Huismann traveled in the northern part of the country, in the Gran Chaco, once the largest savannah in the world. Nowadays half of it has been cut down and taken over by a monoculture of soybeans which is spreading to adjoining land and is alleged to make people sick. The WWF’s attitude? “As of today, the soy wasteland in South America covers an area twice the size of Germany,” says the narrator in the film. “And the acreage is scheduled to double. The Argentinian WWF supports the project because the forests here, in its opinion, are of ‘low value’, and have been ‘degraded’ by human use”. Of the original forest stock, nothing more is to be seen.

The tightrope act of an environmental protection organization

Huismann also traveled to Borneo, where slash-and-burn clearing for the monoculture of palms to produce palm oil has been advancing at a rapid pace. In return, those in charge are locally creating a token forest for precisely two orangutans. But even these are threatened with starvation due to the minimal size of the reserve, says Huismann: “80 hectares on a 14,000-hectare plantation, that’s 0.5 percent. Is that a success, when 99.5 percent is wiped out?” In one of the most powerful scenes in the film, Doerte Bieler, the WWF’s specialist for biomass, is confronted with this question and responds laconically: “Now, if the 80 hectares were no longer there, that would mean absolutely certain death. Then they would be dead already.”

When Bieler is asked by Huismann to give an example of successful cooperation with industry, she is unable to find an answer. What’s important to her is that the WWF as a non-governmental organization (NGO) is “not just to be ridiculed, but to be accepted as a competent discussion partner.”

In Indonesia Huismann is visiting a plantation, one that research shows has just been certified as “sustainable” with the help of the WWF, and in which unfiltered wastewater seeps in to the ground. With this certificate “the company can cash in on subsidies ‘for regenerative energy’,” says the film’s narrator, and adds: “And the WWF gets a fee for having advised the company in ‘sustainability’ issues. For both sides, this is a good deal.”

According to Huismann, one major bank alone is forking over $100 million for a “climate partnership” with the WWF. But meanwhile, in Indonesia, that very financial institution is financing clear cutting by palm oil companies, to which large parts of the rain forest have already fallen victim. Despite that, the WWF sits down with the major players in the food industry at a “Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil” (RSPO). Other NGOs, such as Friends of the Earth or Greenpeace, are distancing themselves, have left this round, or were never part of it.

Married to aristocracy – of blood or of money

The film also documents the involvement of aristocracy, whether of blood or of money, in the WWF. Its honorary president is Prince Philip. In an exclusive interview with the WDR he justifies hunting wild animals this way: “A balance among the species must be created. This can’t be left to nature. By decimating predators, you protect the animals.” The 90-year-old consort of the Queen of England defends his own shooting of a tiger in 1961 by noting that, after all, it was only one.

The secret “Club of 1001”

The WWF was co-founded largely by members of European aristocratic families. Huismann speculates that the organization was established only because, in the era of decolonization, the higher nobility were afraid of losing their hunting preserves. Their motto was still that of colonialism: “Nature is the absence of people – or at least of locals,” says Huismann to Süddeutsche Zeitung (sueddeutsche.de), one of Germany’s largest dailies.

Over the last few decades, hardly any donation, and hardly any donor, was objectionable to the WWF, from Dow Chemical and Shell all the way to – at least for WWF USA – Monsanto itself.

Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, the organization’s first president, also founded the “Club of 1001”, a sort of “Friends of the WWF”, in which the western elite meets to this day. Its members are primarily from industry. In the early days even leading figures in the South African apartheid regime belonged to the Club, along with members of the Argentine junta and state terrorists such as Zaire’s dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

Membership in this green country club is still secret. Only a few prominent members have left, mainly members of the aristocracy, says Huismann. According to his research, at least during the mid-eighties, many major figures from the German industrial elite were also members, from the bankers Robert von Pferdmenges and Hermann Abs to Friedrich Flick and Bertold Beitz.

Inhuman broadcasting time

That is a thing of the past, as the film’s narrator also says. But today, too, the WWF does not have many reservations. Thus, since 2010 Monsanto’s genetically modified soybeans have been certified as “sustainable” by the “Round Table on Responsible Soy” (RTRS). The certification system was created at the initiative of the WWF.

Hartmut Vogtmann, head of the Deutscher Naturschutzring (German League for Nature Conservation and Environmental Protection), is clearly outraged at this. In an internal letter to Detlev Drenckhahn, president of the German WWF division, he warns insistently against participating in the “Round Table on Responsible Soy”. In the letter, obtained by sueddeutsche.de, Vogtmann argues that according to recent studies, through the cultivation of soy, the use of pesticides has “increased tremendously … because more and more weeds are becoming resistant to Roundup, which is used in the cultivation of soybeans”. Its active ingredient, glyphosate, “causes malformations in embryos and leads to higher rates of cancer,” he writes with respect to an investigation, and concludes: The Round Table, co-founded by the WWF, is “artificially keeping a failed system of agriculture alive”.

The WWF Germany wrote to sueddeutsche.de on this issue: “We are continuing to cooperate with the RTRS because we want more GM-free soy, and in general, we want to minimize the environmental damage caused by soy cultivation, such as the destruction of forests.”

Meanwhile, the WWF has published a “fact check” on its website, stating, among other things: “We reject genetic engineering. We will do so until it is proven that genetically modified plants are completely harmless for the environment, for biodiversity and for us humans. This position of the WWF International applies to all WWF national organizations.” However, it is conceded that, at the level of “individual national organizations, there are also employees whose opinion does not conform to the official WWF position. This is particularly true for countries in which the share of genetically engineered crops in agriculture is already very high, such as the USA und Argentina”.

Even before its initial screening, the film clearly stirred the German affiliate of the WWF. Attempts were made, through warnings and media attorneys, to influence the broadcast and to cancel interviews.

And what is one to think when the organization, in response to inquiries by the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, admits to having accepted donations from Monsanto? And of the fact that the promotion of genetic engineering by Jason Clay is termed an “individual opinion of an outsider”? In fact, he is not. He is the vice president of the WWF global organization.

Copyright 2011 © sueddeutsche.de GmbH / Süddeutsche Zeitung GmbH

Notes
1. This article was posted on the homepage of sueddeutsche.de at 7:00 PM on 22 June 2011 where it remained in the top position for over 24 hours when it was moved further down to make room for more pressing news. It remained on the homepage until the evening of 24 June, the day a different article on the same issue was published in the print version of Süddeutsche Zeitung (p. 19 – Im Namen des Pandas: Der WDR dokumentiert die Verstrickung des Naturschutzverbandes mit Industrie und Lobbyisten.) In that second article the paper focuses more on the events that occurred immediately after the TV documentary was broadcast.
2. Translation from the original article in German by Larrass Translations, Ottawa
3. May be viewed online from the official ARD website media archive at http://bit.ly/ARDPandaPakt

http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/13305-shock-documentary-wwf-and-industry-the-pact-with-the-panda?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Greenpeace forest team works hard toward REDD – A False Solution Opposed by Indigenous Around the World

Forest Code becomes real at UNFCCC climate discussions

Blogpost by John Bowler – June 16, 2011 at 11:14

Bonn jour :-) and "hi" from the UNFCCC climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany where the Greenpeace forest team is working hard to secure a good REDD deal. The REDD concept is fairly simple: rich, developed countries provide funding to help developing countries protect their forests and invest in clean, green development). But we are not just listening, lobbying and negotiating. We are also campaigning. Last week we held a side event focused on the consultancy company McKinsey. I’m not going to get into that here so if you want to know more about that go to David’s blog. What I want to let you know about is a spoof presidential decree from Brazil’s President Dilma that we distributed yesterday morning.

The decree was about Brazil’s Forest Code and although not under discussion here we believe it to be of such importance that we could not let the negotiations end without bringing the problem to the attention of the world’s governments represented here.

Brazil is seen as a leader in reducing rainforest destruction so it is all the more important and urgent to let the international community know what is going on with the Forest Code. The new proposed version of the Forest Code is a dismal affair. It will weaken what in fact is a good law: it will grant amnesty to those who have deforested; reduce the areas to be protected; and lessen the responsibility of the government.

The new Forest Code, if it ever becomes law, will drastically reduce forest protection and kill the government’s goal to achieve an 80% reduction in Amazonian deforestation.

So yesterday morning a small team gathered inside the venue lobby and distributed the spoof decree to delegates as they entered for their early morning meetings. The response was good. Many of those reading it could be seen smiling once they realised that it was not true but a smart Greenpeace communication on what is required to protect Brazil’s rainforests. Simple, and let’s hope effective in initiating international support for President Dilma to deliver on her pre-election promises.

(John Bowler is Greenpeace Forest campaigner, from the UNFCCC Intersessionals in Bonn)

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/forest-code-becomes-real-at-unfccc-climate-di/blog/35310

WWF documentary leads to huge row in Germany: GM support and money taken from Monsanto

Der Pakt mit dem Panda

The docmentary Der Pakt mit dem Panda (English version The silence of the Pandas is on its way) has been broadcasted on German TV Wednesday late. It was seen by some 900.000 viewers, despite the late hour. Since yesteday it has been viewed 12.000 times on youtube so far and the sending will be repeated twice. (Today 21.00 EinsExtra). You can watch it on the ARD site:

www.ardmediathek.de/ard/servlet/content/3517136?documentId=7495082

Next broadcast Friday 24 Juni 2011, um 21 Uhr bei EinsExtra.

The doc shows a clear picture of WWF’s sell out . Jason Clay – WWF int Vice president – clearly takes a pro-GM stance. The doc covers destruction of rainforest for palm oil (working with Wilmar) and the soy – RTRS- poison story (working with Monsanto etc).

The leading Südduitsche Zeitung has published great articles and WWF had to admit that they have taken money from Monsanto. Der Spiegel online has published about it and there is a huge discussion in Germany. Many German WWF spenders seem to have come to second thoughts.

Comment today in the Südduitsche Zeitung

"Now it has become a PR disaster. WWF Germany is responding with a 23 points factsheet, and say some accusations are false. For they do criticise partners, ‘when necessary’. "The panda is not muzzled", so they say. But what to think about the fact that – when asked by ou redaction – WWF admits they have taken money from Monsanto? And about the statement that the very clear ‘yes’ to gene technology from Jason Clay in the film comes from ‘an individual outsider’. Clay is not an outsider. He is Vice-president of WWF-international."

A huge article today in Sueddeutsche Zeitung, copied below.

Here’s some links in German:

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/medien/wdr-recherchen-ueber-den-world-wide-fund-for-nature-wwf-am-tisch-mit-monsanto-1.1111269

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,770184,00.html

http://www.news.de/gesellschaft/855194474/aufruhr-an-der-spendenfront/1/

also interesting: Greenpeace Germany talking about ‘ behind the green facade’ …..

http://www.greenpeace-magazin.de/index.php?id=5020&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=113833&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=23&cHash=a1f8fd05fac8f7ac1e08b57cad3826b0

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WDR-Recherchen über den World Wide Fund For NatureWWF und die Industrie – der Pakt mit dem Panda

22.06.2011, 19:00

Von Lars Langenau

Wie industriefreundlich ist der WWF? Zum 50. Gründungsjubiläum der Organisation hat der WDR hinter den Kulissen des renommierten, weltweit agierenden Umweltverbandes recherchiert. Seine brisante Dokumentation zeigt, wie tief sich der Verband in Interessenssphären der Wirtschaft und ihrer Milliardengewinne verstrickt hat.

Tigerbabys, Eisbärenkinder, Orang-Utan-Jungen – sie sehen mitleidig aus, süß, und kuschelig, mit ihren großen Augen und den Stupsnasen. Passt perfekt ins Kindchenschema. Es gibt nur noch eine Steigerung: der Panda, das Kindchenschema schlechthin.

Kratzer am guten Image des WWF: Der WDR zeigt eine kritische Dokumentation über den Naturschutzverband (Archiv: Aktion des WWF in Paris, 2008) (© AFP)

Der Panda ist das Wappentier des global bekannten World Wide Fund For Nature, der auch heute noch bei seinem früheren Namen World Wildlife Fund genannt wird. Der mächtigste Naturschutzverband der Welt hat Marktforschern zufolge eines der glaubwürdigsten Images der Welt. Er steht für Klimaschutz, Nachhaltigkeit, den Erhalt der biologischen Vielfalt der Erde, seit nunmehr 50 Jahren.

Und ist er ständig auf der Suche nach Spendern. Im Dienste der Natur. Kinder plündern schon mal ihr Sparschwein, sammeln Tierbildchen, die der Supermarktriese Rewe in Kooperation mit dem WWF bis vor kurzem beim Einkaufen verschenkte und einen Sammelhype auslöste ("Tier-Abenteuer – Entdecke sie alle!"). Den Spendern wird suggeriert, sie kauften sich ein Stückchen heile Welt.

Doch sieht die Realität in Teilen ganz anders aus?

Die einflussreiche Umweltorganisation WWF mit ihren jährlich etwa 500 Millionen Euro an Spenden, rund 4000 Mitarbeitern und Gliederungen in mehr als 100 Ländern hat sich nach WDR-Recherchen in Interessenslagen der Industrie verstrickt – der Bericht wirft die Frage auf, ob die Arbeit des Verbands mit dem Slogan "For a living Planet" ("Für einen lebendigen Planeten") vereinbar ist.

In der WDR-Dokumentation "Der Pakt mit dem Panda", die die ARD vergangenen Mittwoch um 23.30 Uhr ausgestrahlt hat, legt der mehrfache Grimme-Preisträger Wilfried Huismann nahe, dass die Gutgläubigkeit der Spender stellenweise gehörig strapaziert wird für Interessen, die kaum der Bewahrung des Planeten dienen.

Reise um den Globus

Huismann dokumentiert, dass der WWF offenbar zweifelhaften Unternehmen zu "Nachhaltigkeitszertifikaten" verhilft. Der Verband arbeitet an "runden Tischen" mit Gentechnikunternehmen wie dem Agrargiganten Monsanto und dem multinationalen Konzern Wilmar zusammen – und bestätigt ihnen demnach, dass sie "nachhaltig" Soja und Palmöl produzieren.

Die Naturschutzorganisation rechtfertigt in dem Film solch enge Zusammenarbeit mit einem "unideologischen" Kurs, der viel mehr bringe als konsequente Ablehnung. Huismann zeigt mit seinen Recherchen, welche Folgen diese Zusammenarbeit mit der Industrie haben kann.

Vertreibung von einer Million Ureinwohner für den Tiger

Er führt unter anderem die massenhafte, oft gewalttätige Vertreibung von Naturvölkern in Indien und Indonesien an, die seit Jahrhunderten mit als heilig verehrten Wildtieren zusammengelebt hatten. Huismann reiste nach Indien, wo derzeit eine Million Ureinwohner vertrieben werden sollten, angeblich zum Schutz des Tigers – doch lokale Aktivisten halten das für Blödsinn. Das Tigerprojekt des WWF bestehe seit 1974, da habe es noch 5000 Tiger gegeben. Wäre es erfolgreich, müssten dort jetzt mindestens 8000 Tiger leben, sagt ein Umweltaktivist, doch es sind offenbar viel weniger. Und diese wenigen Raubkatzen werden täglich acht Stunden von Ökotouristen des WWF-eigenen Reiseunternehmens und von 155 Jeeps in einem Tigerreservat verfolgt, zum Anschauen. Die betuchten Gäste müssen den Recherchen zufolge rund 10.000 Dollar dafür bezahlen – lokale Aktivisten beklagen, im Namen des Ökotourismus werde der ursprüngliche Wald zerstört.

In Argentinien geht es um genmanipulierte Monokulturen, die Mensch und Umwelt belasten. Huismann reiste in den Norden des Landes, in den Gran Chaco, einst der größte Savannenwald der Erde. Inzwischen ist er zur Hälfte gerodet und von einer Soja-Monokultur überzogen, die sich auf die Nachbarländer ausbreitet und angeblich Menschen krankmacht. Die Haltung des WWF? "Schon heute ist die Soja-Wüste in Südamerika doppelt so groß wie die Fläche Deutschlands", sagt der Sprecher in dem Film. "Eine Verdopplung ist geplant – der WWF Argentinien unterstützt das Vorhaben, weil die Wälder hier, so der WWF ‘minderwertig’ sind – und durch menschliche Nutzung ‘degradiert’". Von dem ursprünglichen Waldbestand ist nichts mehr zu sehen.

Die Gratwanderung eines Umweltschutzverbandes

Huismann war auch auf Borneo unterwegs, wo die Brandrodung für den monokulturellen Anbau von Palmen zur Gewinnung von Palmöl weit fortgeschritten ist. Im Gegenzug schaffen die Verantwortlichen hier ein Alibiwäldchen für genau noch zwei Orang-Utans – aber selbst diese drohen wegen der minimalen Größe des Reservates zu verhungern, sagt Huismann: "80 Hektar auf einer Plantage von 14.000 Hektar, 0,5 Prozent. Ist das ein Erfolg, wenn 99,5 Prozent vernichtet werden?" Dörte Bieler, die im WWF für Biomasse zuständig ist, wird in einer der eindrücklichsten Szenen des Films mit dieser Frage konfrontiert und antwortet lakonisch: "Also, der sehr sichere Tod wäre ja, wenn die 80 Hektar jetzt nicht mehr wären. Dann wären sie jetzt schon tot."

Ein Beispiel für eine erfolgreiche Zusammenarbeit mit der Industrie nennt Bieler auf Nachfragen von Huismann auf Anhieb nicht. Ihr sei einfach wichtig, als Nichtregierungsorganisation (NGO) "nicht nur belächelt zu werden, sondern als kompetenter Gesprächspartner akzeptiert zu werden."

In Indonesien besucht Huismann eine Plantage, in der ungefilterte Abwässer im Boden versickern – sie wird den Recherchen zufolge gerade mit Hilfe des WWF als "nachhaltig" zertifiziert. Mit diesem Zertifikat "kann das Unternehmen in Europa den Zuschuss für ‘regenerative Energie’ kassieren", sagt der Sprecher im Film und ergänzt: "Und der WWF bekommt ein Honorar dafür, dass er das Unternehmen in Sachen ‘Nachhaltigkeit’ berät. Für beide Seiten ein lohnendes Geschäft."

Allein eine Großbank lässt laut Huismann 100 Millionen Dollar für eine "Klima-Partnerschaft" mit dem WWF springen. Doch in Indonesien finanziere eben dieses Geldinstitut die Abholzung durch Palmölkonzerne, der inzwischen große Teile des Regenwalds zum Opfer gefallen sind. Trotzdem sitze der WWF mit den Großen aus der Lebensmittelindustrie am "Runden Tisch für nachhaltiges Palmöl" (RSPO). Andere NGOs wie Friends of the Earth oder Greenpeace distanzieren sich, sind aus dieser Runde ausgetreten oder waren nie dabei.

Verquickt mit Geld- und Blutadel

Der Film dokumentiert auch die Verquickung von Geld- und Blutadel mit dem WWF. Ehrenpräsident ist Prinz Philip. Er rechtfertigt im exklusiven Interview mit dem WDR die Jagd auf Tiere so: "Es muss ein Gleichgewicht zwischen den Arten hergestellt werden. Das kann man nicht der Natur überlassen. In dem man Raubtiere dezimiert, schützt man die Tiere." Seinen persönlichen Tigerabschuss 1961 verteidigt der 90 Jahre alte Gemahl der britischen Königin damit, dass es schließlich nur einer gewesen sei.

Der geheime "Club der 1001"

Mitbegründet wurde der WWF einst maßgeblich von Mitgliedern der europäischen Adelshäuser. Huismann mutmaßt, dass der Verband nur entstand, weil der Großadel in Zeiten der Entkolonialisierung um seine Jagdgebiete fürchtete – ihr Motto sei noch das des Kolonialismus: "Natur ist Abwesenheit des Menschen – jedenfalls des Einheimischen", sagt Huismann zu sueddeutsche.de.

Kaum eine Spende, kaum ein Spender sei dem WWF in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten unangenehm gewesen, von Dow Chemical über Shell bis – zumindest für den WWF USA – auch Monsanto.

Prinz Bernhard der Niederlande, der erste Verbandspräsident, gründete auch den "Club der 1001", ein Art WWF-Förderverein, in dem sich noch heute die Eliten des Westens treffen. Dessen Mitglieder sind überwiegend Industrielle. Früher gehörten zum Club auch führende Figuren des südafrikanischen Apartheitsregimes, der argentinischen Junta und Staatsterroristen wie Zaires Diktator Mobutu Sese Seko.

Dabei ist die Mitgliedschaft in diesem grünen Country-Club noch immer geheim. Nur einige prominente Mitglieder haben sich geoutet, vor allem Adelige, sagt Huismann. Seinen Recherchen zufolge gehörten zumindest Mitte der achtziger Jahre auch viele Persönlichkeiten aus der deutschen Wirtschaftselite dazu, von den Bankiers Robert von Pferdmenges und Hermann Abs über Friedrich Flick bis Bertold Beitz.

Unmenschliche Sendezeit

Das ist Vergangenheit – sagt auch der Sprecher im Film. Doch auch heute hat der WWF wenig Berührungsängste. So wird seit 2010 Monsantos genmanipuliertes Soja vom "Runden Tisch für verantwortungsvolle Sojaproduktion" (RTRS) als "nachhaltig" zertifiziert. Das Zertifizierungssystem ist auf WWF-Initiative entstanden.

Hartmut Vogtmann, Chef des Deutschen Naturschutzrings, empört sich offensichtlich darüber. In einem internen Brief an Detlev Drenckhahn, den Präsidenten der deutschen WWF-Sektion, warnt er eindringlich vor der Teilnahme am "Runden Tisch für verantwortungsvolle Sojaproduktion". In dem Brief, der sueddeutsche.de vorliegt, argumentiert Vogtmann, laut neuer Studien sei durch den Anbau von Soja der Verbrauch von Spritzmitteln "enorm gestiegen" – "denn immer mehr Unkräuter werden resistent gegen das in den Sojakulturen eingesetzte Roundup". Dessen Wirkstoff Glyphostat "verursacht Fehlbildung bei Embryonen und lässt die Krebsrate in die Höhe schnellen", schreibt er weiter in Bezug auf eine Untersuchung und folgert: Der vom WWF mitbegründete runde Tisch "hält ein gescheitertes System von Landwirtschaft künstlich am Leben".

Der WWF Deutschland schreibt sueddeutsche.de zu diesem Thema: "Wir arbeiten weiter am RTRS mit, weil wir mehr gentechnikfreies Soja wollen und die Umweltschäden des Sojaanbaus generell minimieren wollen, wie die Zerstörung der Wälder." Inzwischen hat der WWF auf seiner Webside einen "Faktencheck" veröffentlicht und schreibt da unter anderem: "Wir lehnen Gentechnik ab. Dies werden wir so lange tun, bis bewiesen ist, dass gentechnisch veränderte Pflanzen absolut unbedenklich für Umwelt, Biodiversität und uns Menschen sind. Diese Position des WWF International gilt für alle WWF-Länderorganisationen." Allerdings gebe es bei "einzelnen Länderorganisationen auch Mitarbeiter, deren Meinung sich nicht mit der offiziellen WWF-Position deckt. Dies gilt insbesondere für Staaten, in denen der Anteil der Gentechnik in der Landwirtschaft bereits sehr hoch ist, etwa die USA und Argentinien".

Der Film hat die deutsche Sektion des WWF offensichtlich schon vor der Erstausstrahlung bewegt. Es wurde versucht, mit Abmahnungen durch Medienanwälte die Sendung zu beeinflussen und Interviews platzen zu lassen.

Und was soll man davon halten, wenn der Verband auf SZ-Nachfragen eingesteht, Spenden von Monsanto entgegengenommen zu haben? Und davon, dass die Befürwortung der Gentechnologie durch Jason Clay eine "einzelne Außenseitermeinung" sei? Doch das ist er nicht. Er ist Vize-Präsidenten des WWF-Weltverbandes.

Die ARD sendete den 45-minütigen Film spätabends – und wird damit immerhin dem Auftrag gerecht, Kinder und Jugendliche vor 23 Uhr vor verstörendem Programm zu verschonen.