Behind the story of the impact that fortress conservation has had on indigenous people lies an age-old question that has haunted the nonprofit sector for a century or more. Does size matter? Are vast international organizations like the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Nature Conservancy – with their massive brick-and-mortar and transportation infrastructures, huge professional staffs, power-and-celebrity boards, six-figure executives, in-house PR firms, and offices in 50 or more countries – more productive than 50 local organizations with the same basic mission? It’s not an easy answer.
Proponents of global conservation institutions say that only large, prestigious organizations with strong ties to multilateral banks, powerful political leaders, large foundations, and transnational corporations can effectively work the crowd that needs to be worked to protect the world’s remaining natural environments. Grassroots advocates, on the other hand, argue that without the flexibility, innovation, cultural familiarity, and commitment to place that are best found in homegrown organizations, alliances with indigenous communities can never be formed.
Both arguments are compelling and both contain some truth. But the financial imbalance that leaves grassroots groups starved for resources and politically weak, while large, Northern Hemisphere institutions set the conservation agenda, leaves a vital resource out of the whole planning process – indigenous people. At best, large conservation organizations include indigenous people as “stakeholders.” At worst, they are ignored or evacuated, which goes a long way toward explaining why the San Bushmen in Botswana, the Karen in Thailand, and the Mursi, Surma, and Nyangatom in Ethiopia continue to be displaced to create or expand national parks at the behest of these very same conservation organizations.
Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel Corp. and chief benefactor of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, clearly believes that size matters. The bigger the better. Moore’s foundation has in recent years granted close to $300 million to Washington, D.C.-based Conservation International (CI), without question the richest single foundation grant in history to a conservation organization that was already the third largest of its kind in the world.
The jury is still out on whether a nine-figure grant is healthy for any organization, particularly coming from a foundation that has minimal experience with conservation or environmental philanthropy. (It is interesting to note that despite the Moore Foundation’s lack of experience in conservation, Gordon Moore was offered and accepted the chair of CI’s powerful executive committee.) It will take the 10-year life of this grant to measure its effectiveness. Meanwhile, philanthropists and conservationists will be watching closely.
Still, one has to wonder what would have been the result if Moore had given half of his grant to CI, and used the other half of his grant to fund 150 small, effective, grassroots conservation projects to the tune of $1 million each. Might he have received a lot more conservation bang for his bucks, even if some of them failed?
It would be an interesting experiment for another venture philanthropist to conduct. Of course, Moore could begin the experiment today by insisting that half of the money he granted to CI pass directly to indigenous communities and local conservation NGOs.
Read more stories by Mark Dowie.