September 3 2010
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Why I growl at fatcat Non-Governmental Organisations

 

Pia Walter
I've always been one of those cynical people who distrust the sincerity of non-profit organisations, especially environmental ones. 
And although I adore the idea of raising money under superior motives, I believe translating this selfless and noble philosophy into practice, especially when the real money starts flowing, contradicts our very nature and generally leads to mal practice. However, my recent visit to the Cat Survival Trust based in Welwyn, Hertfordshire, just a pebbles throw from London, led me to question my generalised attitude towards charities.
I caught the 9am train from Kings Cross on a grey and drizzling morning in June, in the hope that Cat Survival Trust might give me a job. As the landscape began shaking off the tainted grubby streets of London, I embraced the change of scenery and fell into a daze gazing out at the gentle rolling hills of Hertfordshire, dotted with livestock. I began asking myself, ‘how on earth could a meagre charity based in this rural and rainy corner of England possibly help save a snow leopard in Nepal or a cheetah in Tanzania’.
Upon my arrival at sleepy little Welwyn station, I was collected by Dr. Terry Moore, genius and Honorary Director of the trust. I felt privileged to be guided around Cat Survival Trust’s more than humble farm accompanied by the enlightened commentary of Dr Moore. I felt myself opening up to his attitudes and ideas as he launched grenades into my wall of cynicism. I even got to cradle one of the Trust’s recently born and highly endangered snow leopard cubs.
But what struck me the most and which is the reason for this entry, is the shear simplicity and visible effectiveness of Dr Moore’s method to save the big cats – a method which seems even too obvious for most major environmental charities.
Cat Survival Trust buys land. More specifically, it buys up acres of habitat in which big cats move before other companies such as loggers or farmers can get their hands, or in this case chainsaws on it. The Cat Survival Trust uses the land for research purposes like studying the effects of climate change on the cats and their habitat, but the land and its inhabitants remains otherwise undisturbed.
In 1991, Dr Moore purchased 10,000 acres of land in Misiones, North east Argentina within which the number of big cats has multiplied from just 40 in 1991 to more than 70 today. They raised the 300,000 pounds in a matter of months and it came from just more than 2,400 individual. The Trust is aspiring to purchase another 30,000 acres in various countries in the near future. What I find inspiring here is how such a humble charity, which such limited resources and in the middle of know where can move so much.
Campaigns such as these which involve the purchase of virgin land are active ‘carbon credit project’ which will conserve carbon sinks, unlike the many schemes currently in existence which have huge overheads and/or are just an excuse to raise more general government taxation. Safeguarding land not only improves the chances of survival for big cats, it also protects all other species of both flora and fauna within the food chain, many of which may be endangered – so two birds with one stone.
Buying up habitat is the most simple and effective solution to most environmental problems and its straight forward successes do make me wonder why other environmental NGOs, who have millions in their bank accounts, have not followed suit. If all the major players – WWF, Greenpeace, Friend of the Earth, etc - invested just a percentage of their income in land purchase, just imagine how much rainforest could be spared and the future of its inhabitants secured.
The role of the millionaire NGOs is of course important because they have the capacity to reach huge audiences who might otherwise remain unfazed. However, rather than focusing on finding solutions to the problems about which they preach, they continually spread hopelessness by launching marathons of depressing campaigns which either guilt people into donations or causes them to turn away. 
I don’t know about you but I am sick and tired of feeling helpless in the shadow of our earth’s destruction? I am sick of hearing that the situation is generally hopeless but things could change if I donate a 10er.
I don’t want my donations to pay for some spoilt researcher’s 4star accommodation in Thailand or for extravagant office buildings in Geneva . Much of the money raised seems to be swallowed by these NGO’s expensive ‘overheads’ which no visible betterment to the problem. 
It is true administration costs need to be covered and research must be carried out, but most successful NGOs have gone overboard in their expenses and the people who run them have bowed to the pressure of making money for personal gain. The worst part is that we know there are better solutions out there and the habitat which is most at risk (in Brazil, India, Argentina, etc) is usually dirt cheap!
I know that I want my donations to DO something I can see! I want to know that I have directly made the difference and it’s possible. Cat Survival Trust has pioneered the solution – launching campaigns to raise money which will go directly towards land purchase and help secure vast expanses of habitat. Donations will simultaneously protect the predators at the top of the food chain, as well as any other monkey, newt, or orchid, living there, not to mention the carbon sinks. It is an all inclusive deal – so what is everyone waiting for?

Pia Walter

Snow leopards: saved by small charitySnow leopards: saved by small charityI've always been one of those cynical people who distrust the sincerity of non-profit organisations, especially environmental ones.

submitted by Editor on August 23rd 2010

Daily Mail obsessions mapped out

 

Deborah Hobson

UK tabloid newspapers are commonly characterised by their pet hates as demonstrated in their loaded editorials, spewed out in their emotive headlines and typified in their published stories.

submitted by Newsdesk on July 24th 2010

Western leaders are too cowardly to save Mid-East lives

 

Robert Fisk: Western leaders are too cowardly to help save lives
It is a fact that it is ordinary people, activists, call them what you will, who now take decisions to change events
Has Israel lost it? Can the Gaza War of 2008-09 (1,300 dead) and the Lebanon War of 2006 (1,006 dead) and all the other wars and now yesterday's killings mean that the world will no longer accept Israel's rule?
Don't hold your breath.
You only have to read the gutless White House statement – that the Obama administration was "working to understand the circumstances surrounding the tragedy". Not a single word of condemnation. And that's it. Nine dead. Just another statistic to add to the Middle East's toll.
But it's not.
In 1948, our politicians – the Americans and the British – staged an airlift into Berlin. A starving population (our enemies only three years before) were surrounded by a brutal army, the Russians, who had erected a fence around the city. The Berlin airlift was one of the great moments in the Cold War. Our soldiers and our airmen risked and gave their lives for these starving Germans.
Incredible, isn't it? In those days, our politicians took decisions; our leaders took decisions to save lives. Messrs Attlee and Truman knew that Berlin was important in moral and human as well as political terms.
And today? It was people – ordinary people, Europeans, Americans, Holocaust survivors – yes, for heaven's sake, survivors of the Nazis – who took the decision to go to Gaza because their politicians and their statesmen had failed them.
Where were our politicians yesterday? Well, we had the ridiculous Ban Ki-moon, the White House's pathetic statement, and dear Mr Blair's expression of "deep regret and shock at the tragic loss of life". Where was Mr Cameron? Where was Mr Clegg?
Back in 1948, they would have ignored the Palestinians, of course. It is, after all, a terrible irony that the Berlin airlift coincided with the destruction of Arab Palestine.
But it is a fact that it is ordinary people, activists, call them what you will, who now take decisions to change events. Our politicians are too spineless, too cowardly, to take decisions to save lives. Why is this? Why didn't we hear courageous words from Messrs Cameron and Clegg yesterday?
For it is a fact, is it not, that had Europeans (and yes, the Turks are Europeans, are they not?) been gunned down by any other Middle Eastern army (which the Israeli army is, is it not?) there would have been waves of outrage.
And what does this say about Israel? Isn't Turkey a close ally of Israel? Is this what the Turks can expect? Now Israel's only ally in the Muslim world is saying this is a massacre – and Israel doesn't seem to care.
But then Israel didn't care when London and Canberra expelled Israeli diplomats after British and Australian passports were forged and then provided to the assassins of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. It didn't care when it announced new Jewish settlements on occupied land in East Jerusalem while Joe Biden, the Vice-President of its erstwhile ally, the United States, was in town. Why should Israel care now?
How did we get to this point? Maybe because we all grew used to seeing the Israelis kill Arabs, maybe the Israelis grew used to killing Arabs. Now they kill Turks. Or Europeans. Something has changed in the Middle East these past 24 hours – and the Israelis (given their extraordinarily stupid political response to the slaughter) don't seem to have grasped what has happened. The world is tired of these outrages. Only the politicians are silent.
Diplomatic storms
*Goldstone report, November 2009
Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 with the declared aim of halting rocket fire from Gaza into Israel. More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the three-week conflict along with 13 Israelis. The South African jurist Richard Goldstone's report into the conflict found both Israel and the Hamas movement that controls the Strip guilty of war crimes, but focused more on Israel. Israel refused to co-operate with Goldstone and described his report as distorted and biased.
* The al-Mabhouh assassination, January-May 2010
Britain and Australia expelled Israeli diplomats after concluding that Israel had forged British and Australian passports used by assassins to kill a Hamas commander in Dubai. Israel has neither confirmed or denied a role in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his hotel room in January. Britain said such misuse of British passports was "intolerable". Australia said it was not the behaviour of "a nation with whom we have had such a close, friendly and supportive relationship".
*Settlements row, March 2010
Israel announces plans, during visit by US Vice-President Joe Biden, to build 1,600 homes for Jews in an area of the West Bank annexed by Israel. The announcement triggers unusually harsh criticism from the United States. Washington said it damaged its efforts to revive the Middle East peace process. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the project was an insult. Netanyahu said he was blindsided by planning bureaucrats and apologised to Biden. Today's meeting with Barack Obama at the White House, called off by Mr Netanyahu so he could return home to deal with the flotilla crisis, was supposed to be another part of the fence-mending between the two allies.
*Nuclear secrecy, May 2010
Israel, widely assumed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, has faced renewed calls to sign a global treaty barring the spread of atomic weapons. Signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) last week called for a conference in 2012 to discuss banning weapons of mass destruction throughout the Middle East. The declaration was adopted by all 189 parties to the NPT, including the US. It urged Israel to sign the NPT and put its nuclear facilities under UN safeguards.

Killer Israeli commandos raid shipKiller Israeli commandos raid shipAward-winning Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk asks, has Israel lost it? Can the Gaza War of 2008-09 (1,300 dead) and the Lebanon War of 2006 (1,006 dead) and all the other wars and now yesterday's killings mean that the world will no longer accept Israel's rule?

submitted by Editor on June 1st 2010
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