The Dominion - NGOs

COP16 already Changing the Climate in Mexico

Moira Peters — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:55:07 +0000

An interview with Gustavo Castro Soto on environmentalism in Mexico, popular education, and the futility of profit-driven solutions

In November 2010, Mexico will play host to a Copenhagen Climate Summit follow-up. Activists around the country are already preparing for the 16th Conference of Parties (COP) summit, in Cancun.

I spoke with Gustavo Castro Soto, an activist, agitator and organizer based in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas. Castro is a founding member of Otros Mundos, an NGO that works on popular education and developing alternatives to capitalism, as well as with the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining (REMA). He is one of many who plan to be in the streets of Cancun in November, so I caught up with him to ask him about how he sees climate organizing playing out in Mexico over the next eight months.

Gustav Castro Soto, on the potential of COP16 in Cancun

"We are convinced that after 16 sessions of COP, things are not going to change. Governments and corporations have done everything possible to not make commitments. Rather, they’ve looked for a way to sort out all of the demands and difficulties, and begun incorporating new legislation and new ideas to continue doing the same thing, including making a business out of the climate change they’re generating.

"I think the opportunity for us is to generate political awareness in the population, and this is our big chance. We know there is going to be this conference, we want to be there, and this mobilization creates awareness. I think this is the biggest benefit we’re going to get; the fact that it’s here in Mexico obliges us to understand, to educate ourselves, to learn and reflect.

"The meeting itself requires us to put on the accelerator, so we can have an active presence there, a presence with a knowledge and understanding of why we’re there. If it wasn’t here in Mexico, in reality, I think this process would be much slower."

On awareness about climate change in Mexico

"There is not much information, not even among NGOs, with the exception of environmental NGOs, official and business NGOs, of what a Clean Development Mechanism is, what the Kyoto Protocol is, even what climate change means.

"I think there is, little by little, a developing interest in learning what [climate change] means. As we learn about what climate change is, we can see the links between these diverse projects, how they contribute to climate change.

"We as an organization, Otros Mundos, in workshops over the last six months, have been insisting on [making] the links not just between mining projects and climate change, but also with the other projects the government is implementing, such as dams, mines, bio-fuels and monocultures such as the African palm. All of these things are linked to climate change.

"Little by little, in the last workshops we’ve done, there have been 300 to 500 peasants and Indigenous people from many communities, and we have other workshops planned over the next weeks, where we will emphasize climate change."

"The people are demanding to know, 'What is this, and how does it work?

"This implies a long and sometimes complicated process of formation and education, to understand in a simple way what [climate change] is, and what it implies. The next step is people deciding, "We’re going to organize, we’re going to do something, we’re going to stop this," and the next step, an even bigger step, is, [people asking], 'What is the alternative?'"

On market solutions to climate change

"Our political position is very clear: clean development mechanisms don’t work.

"With them, the appropriation of Indigenous and peasant territories is justified, deforestation is justified, and as well, the very projects transnational companies are carrying out for profits are justified.

"These projects include eco-tourism, highways, forest plantations, bio-fuels, hydroelectric dams and mining. They just keep looking for justifications, and not just legal justifications through free trade agreements, but justification related to climate change [legislation].

"Our position is very clear. Bio-fuels, large monoculture plantations, dams, and mines don’t fight climate change. They significantly accelerate it.

"Here in the state [of Chiapas] we’re seeing how peasants and Indigenous people are getting in the way, and so they are being displaced by these megaprojects. The state of Chiapas has created a bio-fuels division; they call it the reconversion of production, which means peasant farmers and Indigenous peoples shouldn’t plant corn because it’s not profitable in economic terms.

"Instead, they are invited in a multitude of ways, including being convinced through trickery, to accept projects that benefit transnational companies."

On working with environmental organizations who accept market solutions to climate change

"It’s very difficult to work with them, and it’s actually quite a strong confrontation. We’ve been invited to have a dialogue about these mechanisms, and, for example, about environmental services.

"But we think accepting this dialogue implies accepting a discussion about, for example, whether or not they will pay Indigenous people and peasants well to render an environmental service, and if they pay them poorly, [they'll say] maybe they can pay them a little more. That’s not the root problem. We’d fall in a trap if we discussed these things.

"At the root, their framing and their mechanisms are false. They are false solutions to climate change. Quite simply they should not be used.

"We don’t want to discuss if they’ll give us more or less, or if, by way of example, they’ll pay producers of African palm well for their product or for their work. That’s not the main theme. It’s the mechanism itself that’s a false mechanism of clean development.

"That puts us up against some organizations that are implementing these mechanisms and the push for them, including some universities here. Even ECOSUR, Conservation International, Pronatura and Greenpeace are in favor of these mechanisms, and they’re also seeing how to implement them together with the state government. They know there is lots of money behind this. They know that this means administering resources and funds, and playing the investment game with the big transnational companies."

On Mexican organizing in the lead-up to COP16

"I think it’s going to be a big accomplishment to try to coordinate ourselves as a Mexican platform, to offer coordination to many networks coming from all over the world that have among them fundamentally contradictory positions.

"It seems there is an initial willingness, a political willingness, to coordinate ourselves and create a Mexican platform that helps and facilitates the arrival of many delegations from around the world, that facilitates coordination.

"But, it’s probable that as time goes on, these political differences will become more obvious, and there could even be splits, as there has been on other occasions, and that each group will define their position and their activities on their own.

"Hopefully it doesn’t end up that way, in the sense that we hope we could, given the sometimes radical political differences, offer a collective, coordinated space to receive the distinct positions that exist."

Dawn Paley is a Vancouver-based journalist.

A version of this article was previously published on Upside Down World.

Dawn COP16

Funding Axe Sharpened by Foreign Policy

Moira Peters — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:49:54 +0000

Cuts to NGOs in line with Canada’s stance on Palestine

TORONTO—An internal struggle over funding human rights groups that are critical of Israel was waged behind closed doors at the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, commonly known as Rights and Democracy (R&D).

After a January 7 board meeting, that battle was thrust into the public eye.

A newly appointed member of the board, David Matas, who is also legal counsel for right-wing B'nai B'rith Canada, brought forward a motion to repudiate the funding to one Israeli and two Palestinian human rights groups.

“These organizations were all on the same side: critical of Israel,” he told The Dominion.

Remy Beauregard, President of R&D, had previously supported these grants, but at the meeting he switched his position and the vote passed unanimously, with one abstention.

That night Beauregard died of a heart attack. His widow would blame his death on stress and the “harassment” he suffered at the hands of the board. Four days after his death, nearly the entire staff of the organization wrote a letter demanding that three members of the board resign.

“Your complete misunderstanding of your role as directors of Rights and Democracy makes you unfit to remain on the board of directors," they said. The letter was addressed to the same members of the board who were pushing to have Beauregard removed as president of R&D, and who had written an unfavourable performance review of Beauregard in the Spring of 2009.

While R&D is often perceived as a non-governmental organization (NGO), the federal government funds the group and makes appointments to the Board of Directors. In November, the feds appointed Matas and Michael Van Pelt to the board. This shifted the composition of the board, weighting it in opposition of R&D’s funding to groups in Israel and Palestine.

Warren Allmand, a former president of R&D, believes the Conservatives were stacking the board.

“If you want to effect that kind of change at a place like Rights and Democracy, you look for people who have that point of view. You don't give them instructions; you know what they stand for already,” he said.

The January 7 board meeting was the first since the new government appointments. Different versions of what happened at the meeting emerged: Canadian Press called the meeting “vitriolic,” while Matas, who was at the meeting, called it “calm, polite [and] orderly,” noting the only thing that was “unusual was that two [board members] quit and walked out. ”

Matas said he believes when Beauregard voted in favour of repudiating the grants to the three human rights groups he had genuinely changed his mind.

“When Beauregard went to bed the night, he died with the realization that those three grants which he had spent so much time and effort defending...were wrongly made.” He also suggested a more cynical explanation might be that “Beauregard changed his views because of the shifting composition and majority in the board.”

R&D received over $11 million from the federal government in 2009, and spends millions of dollars on grants and overseas charitable programs. The three grants at the centre of the controversy were for $10,000 each to B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group with programs in Occupied Palestinian Terriories, and to Palestinian human rights groups Al Haq, based in the West Bank, and Al Mezan, based in Gaza. These groups all write reports on human rights abuses in Israel and Palestine. B'Tselem recently won an award for its program to facilitate citizen journalism by providing video cameras for Palestinians to document rights abuses and post those videos on YouTube.

All three groups have been criticized by NGO Monitor, an organization whose purpose is to expose the “anti-Israel agendas” of other NGOs. It was originally a joint project of B’nai B'rith International and the Institute for Contemporary Affairs, but Monitor is now an independent NGO.

The repudiation of the three grants took place in the context of a series of events since the Gaza War, a conflict which began in December 2008 and lasted three weeks. During that time, over 1,000 rockets were fired into Israel and numerous airstrikes, missiles and ground troops attacked the Gaza Strip. All sides agree that 13 Israelis and over 1,000 Palestinians died.

After a ceasefire, many groups believed Gaza was suffering a humanitarian crisis. In February 2009, R&D approved the grants to B'Tselem, Al Haq, and Al Mezan. Allmand claims that before dispersing these funds the staff at R&D checked and found the groups “had also received money over the last few years from CIDA [the Canadian International Development Agency] and the Department of Foreign Affairs.”

The United Nations launched a fact-finding mission on the conflict in Gaza in April 2009, and in September it released the Goldstone Report. Human rights groups had contributed much testimony to the report, which accused Israel of war crimes.

NGO Monitor was one of many groups that criticized the report for relying on the testimony from NGOs they consider biased against Israel. Im Tirtzu, an Israeli ultra-nationalist group, recently placed a controversial ad in the Jerusalem Post which targeted the New Israel Fund (NIF), a group that fundraises in the West for human rights groups operating inside Israel, including B'Tselem.

The Israeli government is also cracking down on human rights groups. The Israeli newspaper Haartz reported in January that the Interior Ministry has stopped issuing work visas to foreign nationals who work in NGOs.

In an August 2009 story in US magazine Counterpunch, Jonathan Cook wrote, “Israel's foreign ministry...has issued instructions to all its embassies abroad to question their host governments about whether they fund such activities.”

The Israeli Embassy in Canada refused to comment on this statement.

Other shifts in the funding of Canadian NGOs have taken place. Alternatives—a left-leaning NGO based in Montreal—and KAIROS—a church-based NGO that promotes social justice—have not had their CIDA funding renewed. While Minister of International Cooperation Bev Oda claimed the groups did not meet CIDA's new priorities, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney had a different explanation.

On a trip to Israel in December he explained how the Canadian government was combating anti-Semitism.

“We have defunded organizations, most recently KAIROS, who have been taking a leading role in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] Campaign.”

Mary Corkery, Executive Director of KAIROS, said KAIROS is not a leader of the BDS Campaign, and that the group's stance supports some ideas behind the campaign and not others.

“It needs to be taken back,” she said, referring to Kenney's remarks. “The real issue for us is that he said the way he is combating anti-Semitism is by cutting our funding.” KAIROS has asked Kenney for a retraction of his statements. So far none has been made.

“In conversations that we have had with other NGOs it has of course created a chill,” said Corkery. “There is fear of being in support of Palestinian people and groups, who essentially are struggling for land and livelihood.”

Asked which groups were feeling this pressure, she responded, “The chill is such that people don't want to be named.”

“The policy of the Canadian government in terms of Israel and Palestine has changed but there hasn't been a public discussion about that,” said Corkery, referring to the strong pro-Israel stances the Harper government has taken since being elected.

“That has definitely affected [R&D],” she said.

While the controversy at R&D swirls around funding to groups in the Middle East, it remains unclear if this signals an attempt by the Canadian government to align all international NGO funding with government policy.

“I think they are quite open about that; my understanding is that the government wants to align volunteer sector aid ... [with] defence and trade,” said Corkery.

Solidarity activists in Haiti have already seen R&D as advancing Canadian foreign policy agendas. R&D supported and legitimized the 2004 coup that overthrew Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. However, activists in solidarity with Colombia have noted R&D supports groups that denounce both President Uribe and the proposed Canada–Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

Matas said he believes the dispute at R&D is specifically about the group's role in the Middle East. “Elsewhere in the world I can't see any change as a result of this controversy. ”

However, with respect to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon—which were led by foreign-funded NGOs—he acknowledged the political objectives of R&D.

“The notion that Canada might be seen to be independent of NGOs it finances through an arm's length organization has become illusory in light of the heightened suspicion of that sort of funding. The political objective of appearance of non-interference intended by the arm's length relationship is no longer attainable through a structure like Rights and Democracy,” he said.

Allmand sees the dispute at R&D as part of the Conservative Government's broader approach.

“Either by refusing or cutting funding, stacking boards, or refusing to cooperate, they’re cutting back on organizations that are supposed to be arm's length,” he said. “They're using these oganizations in partisan ways.”

Tim Groves is an investigative researcher and journalist based in Toronto.

Carmelle Wolfson provided files for this story. Wolfson is a Canadian journalist based in Israel/Palestine and an editor at The Daily Nuisance.

Funding Axe