[IPSM] Secret Agreement in the Works Between ENGOs and Tar Sands Industry

[Dru Oja Jay]

http://montreal.mediacoop.ca/story/secret-agreement-works-between-engos-and-tar-sands-industry/5089
Secret Agreement in the Works Between ENGOs and Tar Sands Industry Will
environmentalists continue to allow foundation funding to dictate to the
movement? by Dru Oja
Jay<http://montreal.mediacoop.ca/category/author/dru-oja-jay>

A slew of recent articles have pointed to the likelihood that some
foundation-funded environmental groups and the tar sands extraction industry
are getting ready to make peace and sign a deal. The precedent, these
reports note, has been set with the Canadian Boreal Forest
Agreement<http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/3450>and the Great
Bear Rainforest Agreement <http://www.mediacoop.ca/blog/macdonald/1973>.
What the media coverage doesn't mention is the actual character of these
previous deals, and the unprecedented consolidation of funder influence in
the hands of one man that is driving environmental groups toward such an
agreement.

Things got started back in April, when a secret "fireside chat" was
planned<http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/3309>between oil industry
executive and ENGO leaders including former Great Bear
Rainforest Agreement negotiators Tzeporah Berman and Merran Smith, and
representatives from Tides Canada, World Wildlife Fund, Pembina Institute
and others. After word circulated about the "informal, beer in hand"
discussions, the meeting was called off--temporarily.

The idea hit the corporate media in September 2010, with reports that
Syncrude Chairman Marcel Coutu had solicited David
Suzuki<http://www2.canada.com/topics/technology/science/story.html?id=3562909>to
broker an agreement between environmentalists and tar sands operators.
Suzuki rebuffed him, saying that a dialogue was not possible while oil
companies were funding lies about their environmental impact.

But the idea didn't die--and neither did the lies. In October 2010, during a
major ad campaign from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers that
compared tar sands tailings to yogurt, the Edmonton Journal and Calgary
Herald published a report by Sheila Pratt entitled "Is an oilsands [sic]
truce possible?<http://www.edmontonjournal.com/technology/Caribou+still+risk+under+historic+forestry+deal/3042518/oilsands+truce+possible/3616360/story.html>
"

In this report, Pratt chronicles the Syncrude executive Marcel Coutu's
efforts to woo David Suzuki into brokering an agreement between
environmentalists and tar sands operators. Pratt interviews Avrim Lazar, CEO
of the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC), the group of logging
companies that signed an accord the with Greenpeace, the David Suzuki
Foundation, and several other Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations
(ENGOs). That was the "Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement" (CBFA).

(Pratt repeats the false claim that the agreement preserves 72 million
hectares of forest. In fact, the CBFA maintains the current rate of logging,
simply shifting a small portion (about the size of metro Toronto) to areas
outside of the caribou range. Furthermore, it requires ENGOs to defend the
logging companies that signed against criticism and help them market their
products.)

Of all of Pratt's interviewees, only Greenpeace's Mike Hudema states the
obvious: it not possible to green the tar sands.

On October 21, John Spears of the Toronto Star interviewed FPAC's Avrim
Lazar<http://www.thestar.com/business/companies/article/879091--oil-industry-eyes-forest-agreement>,
who told Spears of the calls he was fielding from oil company executives
curious about the logging companies' experience finding common ground with
environmental groups. Lazar said that an important precursor to an agreement
is for both parties to recognize that tar sands operations have an
environmental impact, but for environmentalists to "stop calling oil sands
extraction 'an abomination that has to be stopped'.

"Once you have those two, then you have something to talk about," Lazar was
quoted as saying. "You can go to problem-solving mode... It doesn’t become
easy, but it becomes possible."

Oil companies left no doubt about their interest in an agreement. What about
their ENGO partners?

They waited until October 23rd to express interest. Ross McMillan, CEO of
Tides Canada Foundation, wrote a
letter<http://www.financialpost.com/todays-paper/Nothing+nefarious+about+Tides/3715964/story.html>to
the Financial Post in response to a right
wing attack on foundation funding for anti-tar sands
work<http://opinion.financialpost.com/2010/10/14/u-s-foundations-against-the-oil-sands/#more-6315>published
on October 15.

"At Tides Canada we are working to bridge these two polarized camps," wrote
McMillan, referring to environmentalists and oil companies. McMillan went on
to cite Tides' role in the 2001 Great Bear Rainforest Agreement, which dealt
with a massive area of BC's central coast. When that agreement was signed,
ForestEthics negotiators emerged from secret negotiations with logging
companies to announce that they had signed a deal for 20 per cent
protection. That was less than half of what scientists said was the minimum
area that would need to be preserved to avoid damaging biodiversity, and it
violated protocol agreements they had signed with local ENGOs and First
Nations. None of that mattered to the signatories, who proclaimed themselves
victorious.

There are two key differences between agreements signed ten year ago, and
those anticipated today.

First, deals have become even more transparently meaningless. Greenpeace and
company literally declared that they had "saved the Boreal forest" by
signing an agreement that actually makes no net change in the amount of
logging. No CBFA signatory can say with a straight face that they have
protected an area the size of Germany, though press releases on their site
still make that claim. Even the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement completely
preserved 20 per cent of the vast forest. Though some activists say that
ENGOs subsequently turned a blind eye to clearcutting on Vancouver Island,
negating even those gains.

Second, and most crucially, funders have consolidated control of funding for
anti-tar sands campaigns to an unprecedented extent. Anyone who wants
foundation funding (which most ENGOs rely on to a large extent) for their
campaigns has to talk to Corporate Ethics founder Michael Marx. Marx and his
coordinators set funding priorities through the "Tar Sands Coalition," a
structure<http://s3.amazonaws.com/offsettingresistance/tarsandscoalition.pdf>that,
according to internal documents, is supposed to remain "invisible to
the outside."

All of the money for the Tar Sands Coalition comes through Tides Canada
Foundation. We know little about where it originates, though the bulk of it
comes from US mega-foundations like the Pew Charitable Trusts, which outed
itself as the architect of the CBFA after giving tens of millions to
environmental groups doing Boreal forest work. Other big donors include the
Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, William &
Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the David & Lucile Packard Foundation.

Together, they have given at least $4.3 million to tar sands campaigns since
2000. Together, they hold vast power to decide the fate of those campaigns.

Control over the vast majority of ENGO funding for tar sands work is firmly
in the hands of Michael Marx, on behalf of foundations with a taste for
collaborative agreements. Journalists seem willing to print claims about
"saving the Boreal forest" or "protecting an area the size of Germany"
without seeing any actual agreement.

Our future hinges on the tar sands. Will any level of environmental
destruction, loss of human life, or climate change be considered an
acceptable cost to continue consumption of fossil fuels? Or is there a limit
to the amount of destruction we will accept?

If a secret agreement is allowed to go forward, then those who cannot accept
ever-escalating destruction will have to fight other ENGOs in addition to
fighting the oil companies. Will the Tar Sands Greenwashing Accord continue
as planned?

*For more about ENGOs and the collaborative model, read the 2009
report Offsetting
Resistance: The effects of foundation funding from the Great Bear Rainforest
to the Athabasca River <http://www.offsettingresistance.ca/>, by Macdonald
Stainsby and Dru Oja Jay.*
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