Opinion Page: Environmental NGOs In The Global South: Saviors Of Humanity Or Predatory Special Interests?
From Forbes, May 23, 2023
On Friday, the Moscow Times announced the closure of Greenpeace Russia following the government authorities’ decision to label it “undesirable,” a designation that renders all its activities illegal. It is no surprise that the green chattering classes of the West will cast this event as yet another example of Putin’s autocratic government riding roughshod over an organization that speaks on behalf of ordinary people in Russia. Alas were it that simple.
Western-Funded Environmental NGOs in the Third World
Greenpeace is headquartered in Amsterdam, has a large budget with contributions from rich foundations such as the Rockefeller Family Fund. It controls huge lobbying and litigation resources, often exceeding government finances available to many small developing countries. Well-funded NGOs such as Greenpeace represent large bureaucracies with interests in creating environmental scares to maximize income, salaries and perks of its staff and key executives. The classic example of Greenpeace raising cash via bogus alarmist reports relates to polar bears that are allegedly facing extinction.
Are Western-funded environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace operating in the Global South the moral arbiters of environmental issues affecting the poor and the marginalized? Are they the “global salvationists” giving succour to the “wretched of the earth”, promoting “sustainable development” in the face of predatory capitalists and their governmental supporters? As the late classical economist Deepak Lal asked in an opinion piece on the foreign-funded NGO ban, “what are we to make of their local representatives who seek to influence their countries’ public policy to the agenda of their foreign sponsors”?
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.”
The Western-funded environmental NGOs, the moral busybodies, may yet be the worst enemies of the poor and the marginal of the third world.
darryll jones