Green NGO’s and the Crisis of Co-operation

Many perceive large fossil fuel and car companies as being in direct competition with each other. Whilst this is true there is also a remarkable amount of co-operation that goes on behind the scenes, especially in regard to lobbying for favourable laws and regulations.

Can the environmental NGO movement boast the same united power? The matter is debatable. I am having a hard time thinking of a time when the heads of NRDC, Sierra Club, Global Green, Alliance for Climate Protection, 1Sky and Rocky Mountain Institute all got together and formed a powerful single voice. The problem is funding.  Green NGO’s are forced to compete for small pots of cash progressive philanthropists, foundations and corporate sponsors. But is this competition actually weakening the movement’s power?

Paul Hawken’s book Blessed Unrest catalog’s the rise of tens of thousand of green and other civil society groups and organizations. But are thousands of small, under funded, competiting groups better than one or two large, unified, well funded green NGOs? Locally many small groups makes sense, but if we are to make the big changes needed to combat climate change, we need federal legislation.

We need to learn from the real competition, the fossil fuel lobby. But ask any green NGO that they need to forsake some diversity in order to create a united and stronger voice in Washington and you’ll likely get a luke warm response. The fossil fuel lobby are incentivised to cooperate because they have a common goal, more money. A green NGO loses money if it cooperates with a larger one as funders would see less point in funding two orgs doing the same thing. Fossil fuel lobby has one objective, profit. Green NGOs all have their own version of saving the world, often radically different.

We need a solution to this dilemma if the green movement is ever going to overcome the fossil fuel lobby.