Corporate sponsorships cause blues among greens

OF THE major green groups, the two that accept money from business supporters are the same two that endorsed the Federal Government's emissions trading scheme revisions in May.

Coincidence? Maybe not.

In 2007-08 WWF took 9 per cent of its $20.7 million in revenue or $1.9 million from donors such as AGL, ANZ, Telstra, Country Energy and forestry company Integrated Tree Cropping.

The Australian Conservation Foundation got 3 per cent of its $13.1 million in revenue about $390,000 from business supporters including NAB, Origin Energy, Pratt Industries, Virgin Blue and Westpac.

Neither Greenpeace, which took in $20.1 million in calendar 2008, nor the Wilderness Society, which took in $14.5 million, accept money from corporates.

Friends of the Earth has a looser branch structure and smaller revenue base. National revenue was just $422,000 in 2007-08.

FoE campaigner Cam Walker explained the organisation had a "red" list of companies it would never take money from those involved in fossil fuels or destruction of old-growth forests a "yellow" list of companies that would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and a "green" list of companies like The Body Shop, that are acceptable.

Every now and then we'll collaborate with a company, says Walker. Last year, for example, FoE took about $40,000 from a small ecotourist outfit, Intrepid Travel, to

part-fund its Stop the Melt campaign involving a trek in the Himalayas.

Walker singles out WWF for giving its business partners a veneer of environmental acceptability often just when they are under pressure from other green groups.

Particularly with WWF, it's not really discernible where the corporations end and the organisation starts, he says. "They sell out the movement.

"They took money from Rio Tinto for Frogwatch all during the Jabiluka years."

WWF's partners offshore have included quarrying giant Lafarge and loggers like Boise Cascade and Timberland.

Bob Burton, author of Inside Spin, says environment groups should not take money from business at all. "Sponsorship deals change the thinking on who the environment group should be talking to

"They talk about it as good cop/bad cop, but I think it's a false analogy. Their role is to be independent and judge companies on their merits, not to take money from them."

As well as being distracting, Burton says corporate sponsorship is often fickle and that green groups find themselves vulnerable to a change in strategy or management. He also thinks corporations have less respect for non-government organisations that partner with them. The green groups, he says, "tend to think of it as true love but for the company it's like hiring a prostitute".

WWF chief executive Greg Bourne, former regional president of BP, disagrees. Having worked on both sides of the fence, Bourne says business ignores green groups that harp only on the negatives.

WWF was founded in the early 1960s to work with government and business to find solutions to environmental issues, Bourne says, and it has stuck to its roots and charter.

WWF has a sponsorship protocol (it is not available online though) and does "deep" due diligence on potential partners. "The key thing is, can people pull you off your strategy and your values," he asks. "Absolutely not."

Bourne says it is naive to expect all green groups to be the same.

So, where would he draw the line? Bourne is highly critical of what he calls an "extremely destructive lobbying effort" by business interests that would like to see absolutely nothing happen on climate change, including Xstrata, Woodside, BlueScope Steel and the Minerals Council of Australia.

"How they can sleep in their beds I have no idea," he says.

But Bourne has no regrets about supporting the revised carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) in May. He is a strong backer of carbon capture and storage as part of the solution to climate change, and is a member of the carbon sequestration taskforce, reporting to Energy and Resources Minister Martin Ferguson's Clean Coal Council.

He bristles at the idea WWF is rewarded for a softer stance, with appointments to such bodies. But good access is definitely part of the strategy.

"Certainly, if you don't have access to governments and business, you're on the outer. Waving from the sidelines and being in the stands is waving from the sidelines and being in the stands. You've got to be on the pitch to play."

In fact Bourne probably the environmental leader best plugged into the business community doesn't call himself a greenie at all, because of the negative connotations.

Somewhere in between WWF and Greenpeace lie groups like the Climate Institute funded by a $10 million grant from Mark Wootton's Poola Foundation, derived from the Murdoch fortune and the ACF, both of which supported the May revisions to the CPRS.

The ACF won plaudits for its corporate engagement in 2006 under a hostile Howard government when it launched its Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change with support from BP, IAG, Origin, Swiss Re, Visy and Westpac.

Walker says the May endorsement of the revised CPRS by WWF, ACF and the Climate Institute was "very unhelpful towards getting serious (emissions reductions) targets" and "the last straw for a lot of people". "The gloves are off now. People have let go of solidarity to a degree."