To
be honest, we probably didn’t need last month’s
concert to get the British discussing climate change; after
all, we do love to talk about the weather. The real test of
its effectiveness will be in the months and years to come,
as we see how – and how many – people change their
habits in response to the global campaign Live Earth hoped
to kick off.
But it’s not just the public who are being targeted
by the green campaigners. Businesses and the voluntary sector
are also being pushed to make changes. In fact, the voluntary
sector has found itself in the curious position of being lobbied
by the government.
A year ago minister David Miliband launched Every Action Counts
to encourage the sector to lead the green revolution by example,
and last month he was at it again – this time with his
brother Ed calling on charities to sign up to the Third Sector
Declaration on Climate Change.
However, the evidence that the third sector might play a key
role in combating climate change is less convincing than one
might expect. This is true among fundraising charities (environmental
groups account for only 25 of CAF’s top 500), but it
is perhaps most apparent among trusts, which according to
a report in May from the Environmental Funders Network (EFN)
give only a tiny percentage of their money to green causes.
Where The Green Grants Went provides an overview
of 176 trusts that gave environmental grants of £10,000
a year or more in 2004/05. These grants totalled over £33.6
million – a figure that sounds impressive until set
against the £2.04 billion given across all causes by
the 498 largest grant making trusts in the UK. In fact, even
as a percentage of the money given by those in the survey
(which only includes trusts that give to green projects),
environmental grants made up just 11 per cent.
Furthermore, of the 11 per cent given to the environment,
only a fraction went to the sorts of issues most bothering
the stars at Live Earth. A detailed analysis of the 97 trusts
in the survey that gave more than £40,000 in the year
showed just 2.3 per cent of their environmental funding going
to work on the climate and atmosphere, rising to 8.3 per cent
if the related issues of energy and transport are included
– or just £2.67 million in total.
For report author Jon Cracknell, the findings are worrying.
“What I really find disturbing is that a healthy environment
underpins many of the other concerns that people have when
it comes to philanthropy,” he says. “It seems
really short sighted if people are not investing money in
issues that provide the underpinning for so much other work.”
He hopes to update the figures this summer to take account
of the most recent available financial reports, but the suspicion
is that there will be no dramatic changes. “Trusts just
don’t seem to have caught up with the fact that these
issues are now of increasing public and political concern,”
he says.
Those on the receiving end seem to agree. Flora and Fauna
International is a major recipient of grant funding, thanks
in part to the popularity among trusts of biodiversity and
species preservation projects, which received a quarter of
the environmental grants in the sample. When it comes to climate
change, though, Fiona Riggall, the charity’s trust fundraising
manager, says it’s a different story.
“Climate change is very much in the public eye now,
but we haven’t seen many new sources of income for that
area yet,” she says.
Looking back
In some ways the report’s findings are easy to explain.
For instance, much of the apparent antipathy to environmental
causes on the part of trusts is simply down to their heritage.
Many of the trusts around today – particularly the
larger ones – have deeds dating back decades or more,
when the environment simply wasn’t a big issue.
“They reflect the priorities that were around when
they were set up, not necessarily the priorities we have
today,” argues Matt Shardlow, a director at Buglife.
It has to be said that trusts do tend to be cautious about
refocusing their work, even where they have the flexibility
to do so, but whether this is a weakness depends on your
point of view. Certainly Shardlow would like to see more
money going to the environment:
“There’s not a lot out there,” he remarks.
On the other hand, he is grateful that trust money has stuck
to biodiversity rather than chasing more headlines. Trusts’
funding, he says, gives the organisation some security,
unlike government money, which follows ever-changing political
priorities.
It’s a responsibility many trustees feel keenly. “If
you want to fund something like climate change then you
have to stop funding something else,” points out Harriet
Gillett, chair of the Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation
(which helped fund the EFN report). “Ultimately, the
money is finite.”
For the climate change campaigners, though, the result is
doubly frustrating. Not only does it seem that there is
little money going into funding environmental causes, but
they argue that the continuing focus on biodiversity means
that it is also failing to go where it is needed most.
The report, for instance, sites the work of US expert Dr
Robert J. Brulle at Drexel University, in Philadelphia,
who found essentially the same pattern of funding among
American foundations. He is not convinced it can ever be
effective.
“You can preserve all the land you want,” says
Brulle, “but if you don’t stop global climate
change it won’t matter.” In any case, he argues,
there is probably never going to be enough money to save
the planet one plot of land at a time.
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Where to start?
However, it’s not just inertia stopping trusts putting
money into this area. There are also a number of other factors
that dissuade trusts from putting money into tackling climate
change.
One of these is a reluctance to fund the campaigning work
that is often involved. Partly, there are practical obstacles.
Some trusts, for instance, can only fund registered charities
which, given the legal problems around the charitable status
of campaigning organisations, can limit the projects available
to them. The charitable status of environmental work, too,
has been ambiguous in the past, even if it is not so now.
And even for those that have no legal qualms, there are
two major hurdles. The first is that the results of campaigning
work can be difficult to measure, and perhaps even more
so when it comes to climate change. As Barry Supple, an
academic adviser at major conservation funder Arcadia (formerly
the Lisbet Rausing Charitable Fund) puts it, climate change
is a long-term problem.
“If you’re interested in helping deprived children
you know that the money you give today will be useful tomorrow,”
he says. “With this, it’s a long-run proposition
if you’re interested in seeing concrete results.”
There is, however, another more profound problem: Trustees
don’t know how they can make a difference. Partly
this is a result of the fact that public awareness already
seems to be high, and partly it’s the fault of the
climate change campaigners themselves.
Larry Lohmann at Corner House, one of the myriad of small
campaigning groups that work in the field, for instance,
reckons the heavy scientific discourse and the array of
“near-incomprehensible” climate actions undertaken
by the UN, governments and the private sector have left
many trusts baffled.
Mostly, however, it is simply a problem of finding appropriate
projects. In fact, a number of UK trusts, including the
Baring Foundation and Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust are
looking at their approach to environmental projects. As
the latter’s trust secretary Stephen Pittam puts it:
“We always felt that we couldn’t really take
on the environment because it was another big issue, but
climate change is so important and its effects on our other
streams so significant that we cannot ignore it. It’s
no longer just an environmental issue.” For many,
though, it is precisely the scale of the problem that stops
them acting.
As Cracknell explains, it’s the same sense of powerlessness
that we all feel. “It’s that question, ‘what
can I do?’,” he says. “The scale of the
problem seems to be out of all proportion for individuals
to take action to affect it, and I suspect trustees are
similarly daunted by the scale of the task.”
It’s a feeling that Gillett knows only too well. “We
would like to focus on climate change, but it’s not
at all clear to me what we would fund,” she says.
“For us a big grant is perhaps £10,000, and
on a global scale that isn’t really big at all.”
And yet Gillett’s foundation, which concentrates on
funding small groups, was once an early funder of both Forum
for the Future and the New Economics Foundation. These groups
have gone on to have a significant impact on the sustainability
debate, and the trust now intends to look back at its past
grants to see what lessons it can draw from such successes.
In fact, it just might be – as the green groups always
try to persuade us – that even small actions can end
up making a big difference after all.
Looking the other way
Another reason sometimes cited for trusts’ reluctance
to fund environmental causes is that other sources are available
– government funding is the most obvious example.
EFN reports from previous years have estimated public funding
for the environment to be close to £200 million –
six times that of the trusts.
However, while this year’s report did not look at
these funds in detail, it found widespread concern among
charities about declining state support.
The other great hope often held out for environmental causes
is private philanthropy.
Arcadia’s Supple, for instance, points to the £12
million donation from investment manager Jeremy Grantham
to establish the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at
Imperial College London (although, in fact, it is being
made through his foundation).
Supple reckons there will be considerable potential for
environmental causes given their increased profile, as those
in private equity and hedge funds increasingly turn their
minds to philanthropy. “I think things are beginning
to stir,” he says.
At Buglife, Shardlow is not so optimistic though. “Everyone’s
touted private philanthropy as being the thing that’s
going to step up to the plate and start to fill some of
the gaps in funding,” he says. “Unfortunately,
I don’t see any immediate evidence that’s happening.”
The problem is that – as ever – everyone expects
other parties to do the hard work. “People always
expect someone else to foot the bill,” he says.
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