Funding conservation without costing the Earth
Red Kites have been a conservation success story in the UK thanks to major funding and effort. A new philanthropic model for financing nature conservation is urgently needed if many less iconic but even more threatened species are to avoid extinction. Photo credit: Peter Harris
The history of philanthropy is full of systemic dysfunction. North Star Transition’s concern to accelerate systemic change immediately stumbles when the fundamental system, in this case wealth creation, militates against the secondary outcome, which is philanthropy. The system is quite simply broken. Peter Harris investigates.
Funny thing, generosity.
It seems so simple to dig into our pockets if we see people are in need, or if we like what they are doing. Of course we want to help and we truly see the need. Covid-19 has amplified many already desperate situations on every side and in every part of the world, and there are so many calls on our generosity. But as time passes, it is only too clear that impulsive first instincts soon have to turn into more sustainable and thoughtfully generous plans. This is the experience of all of us who want to do good in the world, and the wealthy among us face particular challenges with their generosity. Traditionally generous people and families of means have established foundations and equally traditionally a lot of the work that is given to the staff of those organisations has focussed on due diligence. Is the money going where it was intended, and has it had the impact that was hoped for? Curiously however, relatively little attention has been given to ensuring that the wealth that supports the foundation is earned in a way that is coherent with the causes to which some of it is then given away.
Dysfunction
The history of philanthropy is full of systemic dysfunction, from the well-known ruthlessness of Henry Clay Frick whose benevolence established the exquisite art collection that bears his name, to the equally ruthless contemporary investment strategies of foundations which prioritise financial returns over any other consideration. I personally have talked with those responsible for administering church pension funds that amount to billions of dollars who have patiently explained that if they were to invest for anything else than financial gain it would be irresponsible and potentially even illegal. North Star Transition’s concern to accelerate change immediately stumbles when the fundamental system, in this case wealth creation, militates against the secondary outcome, which is philanthropy. The obvious logical consequence of trying to grow the foundation by greater wealth creation on this model is more social and environmental distress. It should be no consolation that there might be greater financial means available to clear up the mess. The system is quite simply broken.
The dilemmas and dysfunction are particularly acute when it comes to investments which damage biodiversity, although fortunately it seems that rapid change may be coming. While social bad practice can be straightforward to establish, it has been relatively easy for philanthropic investors to keep the impacts of their wealth creation on global ecosystems and species quite opaque. Ironically, a lot of the attention that has rightly been focussed in recent years on climate change and more narrowly carbon emissions has served to mask the precipitous and catastrophic loss of life on earth across all taxa. Many apparent ecological mitigations have focussed on proposed climate gains and yet the accounting of loss (of species populations) and gain (carbon reductions) is tendentious at best.
Resources for change
The ecological crises that frequently lie behind social and political upheavals often escape the headlines but are nonetheless urgent and real. Furthermore it is generally agreed that the level of funding currently directed towards meeting them is entirely insufficient. Simon Stuart, former Chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission that tracks the threats to species world wide, has written: “The total global spending on nature conservation is probably a few tens of billions of US$ annually, which is almost negligible in terms of the global economy. Compared with expenditure on defence, trade, agriculture, health or social security, it is practically invisible. The amount spent each year through government subsidies to destroy nature massively outweighs the amount spent to conserve it. Given all of this, it is remarkable how much positive impact the tiny conservation investment actually has. If we paid what it really takes to stop extinctions (perhaps a 100-fold increase in expenditure, which would still be very small in global economic terms), we would certainly see dramatic gains. Scientists have shown that the total amount of funding required to meet globally agreed targets for mitigating biodiversity loss is less than 20 per cent of annual global consumer spending on soft drinks.” (Stuart, S. 2014. Coming Back from the Brink. In: Goodman, G. (ed.). Biophilia. Synchronicity Earth, London, pp. 48-57)
The message is that conservation works, and it would cost relatively little to make a massive difference. North Star’s systemic approach would suggest that there are gains to be made that are not just on the spend side of the equation. If major investment funds adopted rigorous criteria for wealth creation that shunned doing damage to life on earth in the first place, then the overall impact for good would be rapidly greater. Happily, there are now finance and business opportunities for determined impact investors to consider.
Funding the solutions to rapid biodiversity loss, or supporting good work that cares for nature which sustains us all, takes thought and expertise, as well as wise generosity. However, those solutions are far better developed in the area of relieving human poverty than tackling biodiversity loss. So, in the short term at least, philanthropy in its multiple and various forms seems to be the most effective answer.
Beyond generosity in both business and personal culture, it would seem that the one obvious thing that can be done is simply to resolve to create our wealth, and steward our savings, in ways that join up with our intentions of generosity. We need to step back outside the broken model and stop making money in ways that deplete nature, and even at times impoverish human communities. Then the surplus can by all means be given away according to quite different, and more benevolent, values, and it would be a double gain.
So, it all makes good sense and we have to ask why it happens relatively rarely?
The simple answer, fit for a blog post, seems to be that short-term expediency, and financial profit, defeat both common sense and also our good intentions to live not by our rhetoric, but by what we believe. We seem prepared, quite literally, to risk the world we live in ourselves, let alone that of our grandchildrens’ generation, for a calculation based of a quarterly return or a two year political cycle. So those who really do believe that some things matter more than short-term profit or immediate shareholder value, whether in finance, business, legal, or political worlds, need our support so they have courage and creativity to design better ways forward.
As multiple ecological crises continue to impact our hearts, minds and imaginations, we must hope that we are given grace to change and to find greater wisdom. Few of the good causes that philanthropists support have much future unless they can find a home on a living planet.
