New Report: WWF’s Failing Credibility

Melbourne, Australia – The pro-development NGO, World Growth, today released a new report, which concludes WWF is wholly out of touch with the real world. The report – Is WWF Delusional? – was released as part of World Growth’s “Road to Rio” series ahead of the Rio +20 Conference for Sustainable Development. The report argues that WWF wants the global economy shaped by ecology, not economics, and justifies this with models built on flights of fancy, not science, and numbers that are factually inaccurate.World Growth Chairman Ambassador Alan Oxley released the following statement:”While world leaders grapple with the biggest global economic crisis in 80 years, WWF seems to be living in another world, arguing that the world must reduce consumption and production. All this will do is make life more miserable for hundreds of millions of people and reduce the capacity of governments to address real environmental problems” said Ambassador Oxley.
Ambassador Oxley said the World Growth report shows WWF is following its long-standing practice of misrepresenting facts and producing supposedly technical reports to advance its broad environmental ambitions and political positions, not demonstrate environmental damage.He said it also shows WWF has shrugged off any pretence of being mainstream and has positioned itself with the radical ecological wing of the environment movement.“WWF has used unsupportable data to repackage in today’s language the Malthusian fear that over-population will deplete resources and food stocks, and the discredited assumption of the Club of Rome five decades ago that the world will run out of resources,” the World Growth report states.“The facts are that since 1992, global management of the environment has improved markedly. There has been a marked reduction of toxic effluents, major improvement in management of the environmental impacts of industrial and resource industries, adoption of sustainable management practices in agricultural and resource industries and a significant expansion of conservation reserves globally. To reduce poverty and to improve the environment, the world needs more prosperity, not less.”
World Growth is an international non-governmental organization established to expand the research, information, advocacy, and other resources to improve the economic conditions and living standards in developing and transitional countries. At World Growth, we embrace the age of globalization and the power of free trade to eradicate poverty and create jobs and opportunities. World Growth supports the production of palm oil and the use of forestry as a means to promote economic growth, reduce poverty and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. World Growth believes a robust cultivation of palm oil and forestry provides an effective means of environmental stewardship that can serve as the catalyst for increasing social and economic development. For more information on World Growth, visit http://www.worldgrowth.org.

WWF’s Tanzanian Travails: Time For Answers?

Tanzania 41 (Photo credit: al_green)

We usually read the UK’s Daily Telegraph for the excellent prose of James Delingpole, but we thoroughly enjoyed the piece that Christopher Booker has produced on WWF. Booker correctly points out that WWF has become a “strange body,” morphing away from its original roots concerned with animal protection to become something akin to a multi-national corporation: “the richest and most influential environmental lobbying organisation in the world.” We’d certainly agree that WWF clearly no longer has animal welfare at the top of its agenda. All the evidence shows that WWF is now acting as some kind of benign version of Greenpeace bent on reducing tr ade opportunities for the world’s poor through a conservation at all costs agenda.But we were also heartened to see Booker go to the core of WWF’s credibility, picking up the organization’s recent debacle in Tanzania, an issue the Consumers Alliance’s Andrew Langer recently wrote about in the Washington Times. As Booker correctly points out, not only did WWF fail to prevent widespread fraud and malfeasance in Tanzania, but the entire project it had been paid to undertake was nothing short of a catastrophe. And yet WWF still appears to have learned no lessons. Rather than ordering a speedy investigation, WWF claims that its findings from the Tanzania scandal will be released “in due course,” often an expression used by a tainted politician to kick an issue into the weeds. This is all very concerning. Given the amount of money that WWF receives from taxpayers, it’s nothing short of a scandal that the organization has failed to provide a comprehensive explanation into its Tanzanian travails.

The Panda and Kimberly Clark’s Free Pass from Greenpeace

WWF claims that halting “the degradation of the environment” is one of its primary objectives. Unfortunately it appears to have done very little – or nothing – to help Kimberly-Clark, one of WWF’s chief allies and one of the world’s leading producers of paper products, clean up its act in Washington state. Last year WWF and Kimberly-Clark agreed to expand the latter’s “membership in the Global Forest & Trade Network (GFTN), a WWF initiative to eliminate illegal logging and conserve the world’ s most valuable and threatened forests.” However, despite closing its facility in Snohomish County in Washington State, Kimberly-Clark is being heavily criticized for polluting a river with “toxic substances linked to cancer in humans at 15 times the level the state considers safe.” So much for protecting the environment. Looks like WWF is in bed with a business that’s guilty for, well, “the degradation of the environment.” But where on earth is Greenpeace in all of this? From Greenpeace’s history they are usually all over any business that is even suspected of releasing dioxins, let alone found to have been complicit in their release. Why is Kimberly-Clark getting a pass? According to FSC’s 2009 Annual Report, Kimberly Clark boasted that they were increasing their FSC-certified tissue fiber by some 70 percent from 2007 levels. Last year Kimberly-Clark entered into a partnership with WWF whereby the WWF panda logo would be used on the company’s materials. If competitor SCA Hygiene’s £10 million quid pro quo with WWF on the panda logo is any indication, this deal likely cost millions to Kimberly-Clark. Kimberly-Clark has also partnered with WWF on “identifying, mapping and monitoring high conservation value forests in Sumatra, Indonesia, and to develop best practices for plantation for estry in that nation,” a not so veiled attempt to render the forestry industry in that country uncompetitive. One can only presume that Kimberly-Clark’s relationship with WWF and FSC has provided them with cover from any potential blowback from Greenpeace or any other anti-development NGO. WWF and Greenpeace are again playing good cop/bad cop alliance – or in this case, dirty good cop/dirty bad cop. This just goes to show how these NGOs can be paid off, surrendering any semblance of concern about the state of the environment as long as the businesses are kowtowing to their agenda. But for how long?

WWF “Misrepresents” Data On Singapore

Singapore and surroundings (Photo credit: The Shifted Librarian)

For years Singapore has either topped or finished in the top three of the Heritage Foundation’s ‘Index of Economic Freedom.’ Not only is Singapore one of the global leaders for attracting investment, but it’s Economic Miracle has naturally made it a target for greens who despise innovation, aspiration and wealth creation. It therefore came as little surprise that Singapore would be targeted b y WWF. Despite Singapore’s stellar environmental reputation, WWF released a report claiming that the country was the highest emitter in the Asia-Pacific region, pinning the majority of the blame on business and industry. Do we need any more evidence of WWF’s real objectives? However, the government in Singapore shot back at WWF, with the prime minister claiming that WWF’s report “seriously misrepresents the situation.” The main issue of contention pertains to WWF’s methodology, with the government claiming that the organization had compiled its report using flawed data. In their report, WWF “counts emissions from goods that a country imports as attributed to that country.” However, the government of Singapore, which uses a methodology endorsed by the United Nations, only counts emissions that “are attributed to the country producing those goods.” So what has WWF done? They are effectively double-counting emissions, attributing the same emissions from production to both exporting and importing countries. What better way to prove a political point by distorting facts? And following similar, legislative efforts by the EU to impose distortive emissions assessments on imported products and services, this reflects a rising trend from protectionists to manipulate environmental criteria to justify trade barriers. Thus, WWF has done its utmost to create a fresh methodology that creates a skewed outcome and obfuscates Singapore’s real emissions. This lends a whole new meaning to the adage, “the ends justify the means.” Nice try WWF.

WWF strategy – markets controlled, not market driven

Voluntary certification systems have been touted for a long time by WWF to demonstrate that they were pro-market & market-friendly. So far none of the WWW sponsored systems have won market support. Consumers will not pay the cost of the “sustainability premium”. The WWF strategy now is to capture and direct the markets and dictate to consumers and producers; and to pressure governments to regulate compliance with their systems.
As in the climate change debate, it became a mantra in WWF marketing to business to emphasis it relied on market instruments to advance its sustainability goals. It was always bogus. At the heart of every WWF strategy lay the determination to regulate compliance with environmental goals.WWF used to argue that its forestry certification system, the genesis of RSPO and other systems, would assist producers because environmentally aware consumers would pay premium for products endorsed as sustainable. This has not happened and today WWF has dropped this line.The uptake of its certification systems, despite the marketing hype, has been poor. The biggest system, the Forest Stewardship Council, only certifies half the forestry of the world’s leading system the Program for Evaluation of Forest Certification. That system, unlike FSC, is not controlled by NGOs.
Companies which join the WWF sponsored certification systems are either pressured into joining or, once in, find themselves overtime pressured to adopt tougher and tougher standards to which they did not originally subscribe. Some, like Unilever in the case of RSPO, have become activist partners with WWF. Others are encouraged to go along, regularly being presented with attacks on brand names of competitors by other NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, the clear implication being they are at risk of the same thing.RSPO is not financially viable. The current strategy is to use funding from the sale to some of its business members of palm oil certificates to mount a PR campaign, the aim of which from the distance appears to be to pressure corporate members to buy more certified palm oil. (Currently half of the pool of certified oil remains unpurchased).
Now WWF and Unilever are pressuring European Governments to urge the European Commission to lower tariffs on RSPO certified palm oil. The Unilever President of the RSPO has even stated publically that since the market won’t deliver, governments should.
EC trade officials in Brussels will not want to venture into that territory. They will find themselves under challenge in the WTO. Unilever would have understood that once. It was once the leading advocate of free trade in Europe. Today it is advocating “sustainable trade”. This is the talk of aspiring monopolist. No wonder it feels comfortable with the WWF strategy to capture markets.

Festa Oasi Wwf

Roma 5 maggio Ore 11.00 Sala A  viale Mazzini, 14 Presentazione di Festa Oasi Wwf   Interverranno: On. Stefania Prestigiacomo, Ministro per l’Ambiente Fulco Pratesi, Presidente Onorario WWF Italia Stefano Leoni, Presidente WWF Italia Antonio Canu, Direttore scientifico Oasi WWF Carlo Romeo, Responsabile Segretariato Sociale Rai Marco Presta e Antonello Dose de “Il Ruggito del coniglio” Radio2