The Nature Conservancy
The titan of green groups, the Nature Conservancy sits on nearly a billion dollars in assets and is awash in cash, thanks to a tidal wave of corporate donations, much of it from notorious polluters such as Arco, Archer-Daniels-Midland, British Petroleum, DuPont, Shell and Freeport-McMoRan.[1]
If the thought of The Nature Conservancy drilling for natural gas on the last known breeding ground of the Attwater prairie chicken strikes you as incongruous then you are behind the times.[2]
Corporate Donors
The list of TNC's nearly 2,000 corporate sponsors reads like a "who's who" of the U.S.' biggest industrial polluters.
For example:
ARCO, BHP, British Petroleum, Chevron, Chrysler, Coca-Cola, DowDuPont, ExxonMobil, General Electric, General Mills, General Motors, Georgia-Pacific, McDonald's, NBC, Pepsi-Cola, Procter and Gamble, Toyota and Pfizer.
Some of these companies, like Bayer-Monsanto, have played a direct role in governing the TNC through membership in its International Leadership Council.[3]
According to former TNC President & CEO John Sawhill: "Some people at the Conservancy think our customers are the plants and animals we're trying to save, but our real customers are the donors"[4]
Corporate Leadership
"The Conservancy brings in corporate board members who don't know much about conservation -- or even care that much about it," said Huey Johnson, the former head of the Conservancy's western U.S. operations and a founder of the Trust for Public Land.
Yet the Conservancy Board has long been made up of past and present executives and directors from many of the US' worst corporate polluters:
- John F. Smith Jr., chairman of General Motors, the world's largest car manufacturer;
- E. Linn Draper Jr., chairman of American Electric Power Co., the nation's largest electricity producer and #1 air polluter;
- A.D. "Pete" Correll, chairman of Georgia-Pacific Corp., the country's second-biggest tree-paper products business
- A.W. "Bill" Dahlberg, former chairman of Southern Co., another leading fossil power producer.[5]
Throughout the 1990s, the President and CEO of the Nature Conservancy with John Sawhill. After holding several high positions in the US Department of Energy under the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations, Sawhill went on to enjoy lucrative positions on the boards of major corporate polluters in fossil fuels & agriculture, including TNC donor Procter & Gamble[6], North American Coal Company, and Pacific Gas & Electric.[7]
In 2002, the Conservancy's Louisiana chapter gave donor DowDuPont its conservation leadership award, despite the pesticide manufacturer's record of genocide and ecocide.[8] In 2003, Anthony Cavalieri joined the Nature Conservancy as "Conservation Agriculture Advisor" following his departure from DowDuPont.[9]
Other positions filled by the directors of major corporate polluters include that of trustee - such as Paul W. Douglas, the former President & CEO of Freeport-McMoran and former Director of Phillip Morris.[10]
Conflicts of Interest
General Mills' Nature Valley granola bars have displayed the Conservancy logo since 1998. "There is nothing more environmentally friendly" about the product, Rangan said. "We have a big problem with that." There is also no disclosure on the snacks that, until last fall, a General Mills Inc. corporate director sat on the Conservancy's board.
Fossil Gas Drilling
After receiving a large donation of land from ExxonMobil in 1995 for the purposes of "preserving" the habitat of the endangered Attwater prairie chicken, the Nature Conservancy began "acting like an oil company" and drilled for fossil gas on the birds' last known breeding ground. In the following eight years the grouse's population declined by an additional 50%.[11][12]
Endangered Species Act
In 1996, the Nature Conservancy "violated its apolitical policy to concoct the compromise rewrite of the Endangered Species Act" along with a secret coalition of corporations including the Koch Brother's deforestation giant (and TNC donor) Georgia-Pacific.[13]
World Bank
After working for the World Bank in 1999, Dr. M.A. Sanjayan became the Lead Scientist for The Nature Conservancy[14][15]. He was also involved in the Natural Capital Project - a joint-venture of TNC, the WWF and Stanford University - as the poverty & conservation co-lead.[16]
The Nature Conservancy pledged $5 million to the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) when t hisWorld Bank scheme was launched in Bali in December 2007. In 2008, the Nature Conservancy was appointed to the governing board of the World Bank's FCPF.[17]
Deforestation
Zero Deforestation
The first “zero deforestation” commitment was launched in 2007 in Brazil by nine major conservation NGOs, including WWF, Conservation International (CI) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC). (1) Their objective: to reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon to zero by 2015. Curiously, they invited companies that destroy forests to join their initiative. These corporate-friendly NGOs claimed that companies could continue to expand their operations as long as the lands they use are not classified as forests and the companies occupied instead either deforested lands, so-called “degraded” forest lands, or other biomes with no forest cover. As a result, these NGOs created possibilities for corporations to continue their destructive expansion.[18]
Weyerhaeuser
In 2006, TNC received a $1 million gift from the timber behemoth Weyerhaeuser that included a statement that the two entities “agreed to work collaboratively to improve their understanding of managed forests.” [19]
From The Nature Conspiracy:
The Nature Conservancy spent over $2.6 million on lobbying in 2021 — much more than any other environmental group. As a member of the Forest Climate Working Group — along with wood-pellet giants Enviva and Drax; the nation’s top lumber producer, Weyerhaeuser; and other logging-related corporations and trade associations — The Nature Conservancy signed onto a platform urging Congress to “stimulate increased use of forest products;” that is, encourage chopping down more trees.[20]
Investigative Reports
From 2001-2003, the Washington Post published a series of 13 articles investigating the Nature Conservancy under the heading "Big Green"[21]
- ↑ https://lightparty.com/Economic/EnvMovement.html
- ↑ http://www.herinst.org/sbeder/envpolitics/stain.html
- ↑ http://www.herinst.org/sbeder/envpolitics/stain.html
- ↑ http://www.herinst.org/sbeder/envpolitics/stain.html
- ↑ https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-2003-05-18-0305170044-story.html
- ↑ https://www.globalcosmeticsnews.com/procter-gamble-unilever-and-colgate-palmolive-top-chart-as-worlds-worst-offenders-for-plastic-pollution/
- ↑ https://lightparty.com/Economic/EnvMovement.html
- ↑ https://seedfreedom.info/peoples-assembly-on-dow-dupont-crimes-of-genocide-and-ecocide/
- ↑ https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Anthony_Cavalieri
- ↑ https://www.nndb.com/people/576/000174054/
- ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/26/AR2007062600944.html
- ↑ http://www.herinst.org/sbeder/envpolitics/stain.html
- ↑ https://lightparty.com/Economic/EnvMovement.html
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20101003225950/http://www.nature.org/tncscience/scientists/misc/sanjayan.html
- ↑ http://theaposition.com/chrissantella/books/953/rocky-mountain-front-montana-recommended-by-m-a-sanjayan
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20090201115535/http://www.nature.org/tncscience/scientists/misc/sanjayan.html
- ↑ https://redd-monitor.org/2008/10/27/nature-conservancy-role-in-world-bank-redd-initiative-highlights-growing-us-ngo-isolation-on-forests-and-climate-policy/
- ↑ https://wrm.org.uy/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Communities-facing-Zero-Deforestation-pledges-case-Olam-Gabon.pdf
- ↑ https://grist.org/energy/logging-biomass-nature-conservancy/
- ↑ https://johnmuirproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/The-Nature-Conspiracy-Magazine.pdf
- ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2007/11/16/LI2007111600631.html