Post 5: Environmental Non-Profits

Before I even begin responding to the readings I’ll point out that I’m super excited about this weeks’ classes. My college path started on the Environmental Studies track. One of the main reasons I came to Oregon was the ENVS department to be completely honest, and then I slowly realized that I wanted to learn a skill set to apply my environmental background, which led me to the PPPM department. I’ve always been a large proponent of wilderness, although contrary to popular belief I don’t consider myself the most ‘wildery’ of persons. Regardless I’m stoked to finally be learning about the non-profit sector in terms of a professional field that I’m have a genuine desire to join. I only hope that my following ideas reflect this passion.

Mackenzie Watershed Council (Annual Report & Website)

Watershed Councils are genius! They represent a perfect mixture (at least in theory) of people with a passion for protecting the natural environment and skills in how to protect the environment. Plus there’s the added benefit of people that know how engage the public and incorporate their opinions and relationship with the local environment into the management practices. The only other aspect of watershed councils I’ll touch on is the difficulty in collaborating with private sector businesses, government, and other public sector organizations. I feel like so much discourse can occur at watershed council meetings, and if that discourse inhibits a council’s ability to function, then the environment and the public will be the losers of that debate. I’ll try not to bring in too much hippie-dippie theory into my post, but a very common theme of environmental studies courses is that humans most often view our relationship with nature in a utilitarian sense, which I believe leads to very short sighted methods for managing the lands that we rely on for our existence.

Paul Hawken’s Commencement Address

“YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING.” My response is...here’s a copy of my resume and I’d be happy to provide a cover letter. In all seriousness, though, I wish someone would say this to me every day. Moreover I wish each one of my professors would say this to my classmates every once in a while.

I’ve always enjoyed Paul Hawken’s writings, and I keep meaning to read Ecology of Commerce. Hawken writes and speaks in a manner that I wish to learn from. His thoughts reflect a deep passion for the environment, yet he attempts to put his thoughts into a context that the greater society understands. He wants to create a better world for us to live in and he understands that will require activating a feeling of environmental stewardship in a wide variety of people. Protecting the environment is an impossible task for policy makers, economists, and non-profit leaders alone. It’s an impossible task for anyone alone. Instead it will require a fundamental change in human attitudes towards nature, because all of our actions are directly representations of our ideas.

A Guide to Environmental Non-Profits

I guess the first thing I should say is thank you for providing this detailed list of organizations that I should apply for jobs with after I graduate. Awesome! I’ve already applied with the Environmental Defense Fund, but have yet to hear anything back from them. I’m in the process of filling out an application with the Sierra Club because they’re based in San Francisco, which is near my hometown, and I’ll look into some others on the list. Although I’m curious as to why the authors chose so many marine and marine wildlife conservation organizations. Unfortunately, I’m not too interested in marine organizations, nor do I want to be in the global environmental field. I’m more interested in the local, terrestrial side of the environmental equation.

One organization that I noticed was left out of the list is The Nature Conservancy, which I’ve always thought up very highly. I remember hearing recently that the Nature Conservancy owns more land than any other single organization in the world, which is a pretty astounding statistic. The organization started in 1951 when a group of neighbors wanted to save 60 acres of forest. Now they help protect over 119 million acres of land across all 50 states in America and a total of 30 countries worldwide. I guess you have a lot to live up to when your web URL is www.nature.org. I stumbled across this video that highlights the Conservancy’s conservation efforts in the past year:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sooLoui1F-A

One final word about this article, I’m really glad they made a point of highlight the anti-environmental groups that give off a false veneer of environmentalism. There are more of these groups than most people realize, or want to realize, and there are numerous organizations that believe they are helping the environment, when in fact they are doing it a tremendous disservice.

Saving the Environment for a Profit

This in an interesting topic and one to which I haven’t given much personal thought. It’s become more clear through this class that non profits have the passion and private companies have the power. The question raised at the end of the article –“Will advocacy be the comparative advantage of the nonprofit, and action the comparative advantage of the market?” – is definitely thought provoking, but my one argument is that this question is assumes that nonprofits and private businesses have the capacity or desire to collaborate on behalf of the environment.


P.S. to our GTFs –

I don’t think this will matter much, but I feel like this is the perfect amount of material to read and still be able to generate a meaningful blog/response within the given word limit. I’ve noticed that my group members and I have a tendency to write in depth about the first articles and then we feel pressured to adhere to the limit that we then discount the last article or two. Obviously, we can just completely disregard the word limit, but at the same time I we can all agree that there’s a limit to how much meaningful information we can process by reading these responses just like there is a limit to how much meaningful information we can produce as writers.