Greenwash Of The Week: The Nature Conservancy and Corporate Donors [from The Good Human]

Unsuitablog:

From my friend David at The Good Human comes the opening gambit of a big investigation into The Nature Conservancy. This will be worth watching…

Seems The Nature Conservancy, an “enviro” org with billions of dollars in assets, has some very good rich friends who spend their days destroying the environment and our food supply. I was able to get access to their donor list from 2009, (which isn’t on their site, contrary to popular belief) and most of the list is a veritable who’s-who of planet destroyers:

Monsanto
Cargill
Shell
Chevron
ConocoPhillips
Altria
Nestle

And many, many more. The most awkward part, at least to me? The Nature Conservancy also has a “Leadership Council” which is, according to them, “one of the world’s leading corporate forums focusing on the challenges confronting biodiversity preservation, habitat conservation and natural resource management.” Who would you imagine would be on this council? Whomever you are thinking about, you are dead wrong. Because here are some names from the council list:

Altria Group [a.k.a. Philip Morris]
BP
Cargill
Chevron
The Dow Chemical Company
ExxonMobil Corporation
Monsanto Company
Nestlé Waters North America

Notice any similarities between the donor list and those listed on the council? Yea, me too. That’s some leadership council on environmental issues!

If you remember, The Nature Conservancy took a lot of heat back in May for the fact that they “gave BP a seat on its International Leadership Council and has accepted nearly $10 million in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated corporations over the years.” This is what got me interested in looking into their corporate donors in the first place. And while looking for that information, I have discovered other strange improprieties involving TNC – land donations, trustee land sales on the cheap, charges of drilling for gas under the breeding grounds of endangered birds, and assorted other stories that struck me as quite odd for an environmental organization to be involved in. Most of this stuff is easily found in the search engines, but it is going to take a while to put everything together that we are researching.

So, why am I doing this? Because I think it is important for people to know where some of these groups get their money from. Too often, we as environmentalists donate money to these orgs in hope that they are doing the right thing; but after seeing the millions that a company like Monsanto gives to TNC (while Monsanto hires Blackwater to spy on environmentalists), I have my doubts about just who is in charge here. Monsanto has been on a mission to turn all of our food into GMO’s that they own the rights to, and suing farmers who grow crops from accidentally blown-in seeds, and yet TNC takes their millions and seemingly remains quiet about just how bad Monsanto is – while the rest of us complain daily about Monsanto. Something stinks here.

That, my friends, is why I am interested in this. And I hope you will stay tuned for more info as we gather it and publish it, and please feel free to send along anything you find that fits into this story.

Read the original story at Unsuitablog