The Influence of Elite Philanthropy on NGO Development in China

Scholars have explained the rise of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in China since the period of reform and opening in terms of a changing political and economic environment, NGO policy, international non-governmental organisations (INGOs), and the influence of communications media and the Internet. This article proposes a new explanatory factor: the philanthropy of China’s new wealthy. Four cases are used to analyse the influences of the philanthropy of the wealthy on NGO development. The article proposes not only that the philanthropy of the wealthy provides funding and intellectual support for NGOs but also that the wealthy use their influence and social networks to increase the autonomy, capacity, sustainability and impact of NGOs in China.     

NGOs and Sustainable Development in Zimbabwe: No Magic Bullets

A number of case studies of NGO projects have suggested that NGOs may have an important role to play in addressing environmental problems in developing countries. Drawing on research conducted in Zimbabwe, this analysis seeks to broaden and contextualize the discussion of NGO involvement in sustainable development initiatives. It reviews the theoretical basis for the current emphasis on NGOs, assesses the environmental problems in Zimbabwe within their historical and social contexts, and summarizes the findings of recent research on the characteristics of the NGO sector in the country. The purpose is not to evaluate specific NGO environment projects, but rather to assess the mechanisms through which the NGO sector as a whole might make a significant contribution to sustainable development, and the problems in doing so. It is argued that one major obstacle faced by NGOs is the demand made upon them to find simple, neat and comprehensive solutions to complex development problems. The tendency on the part of donors and NGO supporters to expect success stories is called here the ‘magic bullet syndrome’, and it is argued that this emphasis on simplicity and on success is unrealistic and counterproductive.     

The student is not the fisherman: temporal displacement of young people's identities in Tanzania

This paper examines how young Tanzanians have their identities as environmental actors displaced into the future by local adults, teachers, educational institutions and teaching materials which seek to educate them about environmental sustainability and conservation. Whilst there has been considerable attention to young people's agency in reproducing their own identities, I argue here that the temporal displacement of young identities operates through a network of interlinked structures which act on young people's lives, including the identity work of young people themselves. Educational material produced by non-governmental organisations and the discursive work of adults both seek to position young people as having agency to act in and make decisions about the environment at an undetermined time in the future. Young people themselves can perform different identities within the space of the school and in the community or family, yet they may also understand their own identities as only having agency at a temporally distant point. The displacement of young identities has important implications for pedagogy which relates to environmental education, and for how the reproduction of young people's identities is conceptualised.     

Environmental Research and Education in US Geography

This article evaluates geography as an appropriate home for environmental education. First, it argues that many geographers have defined geography as a discipline with a major, if not primary, interest in human–environment interactions. Next, it reviews the recent statements by non-geographer, environmental scholars that, directly or indirectly, argue for strong participation by geographers in environmental science and sustainability studies. After a brief review of the status and the nature of environmental research programs and environmental curricula, the article offers reasons why more environmental education does not take place in geography. The lack of environmental education in the discipline and the conservative nature of the courses taught are attributed to geography's small size and low status and to the controversial nature of environmental issues in the United States. A broad definition of environmental education is used when searching for evidence of its existence or importance, but special attention is focused on courses or programs that incorporate sustainability or other topics that include a human dimension, in contrast with those that are confined to a narrow, natural-science or management conception.     

An Environmental Education Concept for Galtür,Austria

The Alps have always been of global interest and significance due to their natural and cultural diversity and are presently the number one tourist destination worldwide. Therefore, raising awareness of issues of global change and sustainability is most relevant in this region. Due to its integrative nature, geography can contribute substantially to disseminating knowledge about the Alps. This paper reports on the development of an environmental education concept for the community of Galtür. The concept is based on a thorough analysis of the Alpine environment, the recording of educational interest in the Alps, and the development of implementation strategies for environmental education programmes. The main goal of the concept is to contribute to a sustainable future for the Alps. The paper highlights the role of geographical research and education in promoting public awareness and understanding of sustainability issues.     

Scaling up Civil Society: Donor Money,NGOs and the Pastoralist Land Rights Movement in Tanzania

Tanzania's pastoralist land rights movement began with local resistance to the alienation of traditional grazing lands in Maasai and Barabaig communities. While these community–based social movements were conducted through institutions and relationships that local people knew and understood, they were not co–ordinated in a comprehensive fashion and their initial effectiveness was limited. With the advent of liberalization in the mid–1980s, they began to gain institutional legitimacy through the registration of pastoralist Non–Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Registered NGOs provided community leaders with a formal mechanism for co–ordinating local land movements and for advocating for land rights at the international level. The connections of pastoralist NGOs to disenfranchised communities, and their incorporation of traditional cultural institutions into modern institutional structures, resonated with the desires of international donors to support civil society and to create an effective public sphere in Tanzania, making these NGOs an attractive focus for donor funding. In spite of their good intentions, however, donors frequently overlooked the institutional impacts of their assistance on the pastoralist land rights movement and the formation of civil society in pastoralist communities. NGO leaders have become less accountable to their constituent communities, and the movement itself has lost momentum as its energies have been diverted into activities that can be justified in donor funding reports. A political movement geared towards specific outcomes has been transformed into group of apolitical institutions geared toward the process of donor funding cycles.     

Who does the work in sustainable households? A time and gender analysis in New South Wales,Australia

Households in the affluent West have become an important target of government and NGO campaigns to encourage more environmentally sustainable behaviours, but there has been little research into the gender implications of such policies. This article investigates the role of gender and time in the sustainability practices of six heterosexual households with young children, committed participants in the Sustainable Illawarra Super Challenge programme in 2009. Women spent more total time on sustainable practices, and did so more often. Men's contributions related mostly to gardening and transport, in longer blocks of time. In these households, sustainability became a highly gendered practice because of the different roles in homemaking. Women resisted constructions of themselves as being closer to nature, and shouldered expectations of sustainability as part of their roles as mothers and household managers. They experienced time as overlapping and fragmented, with no distinction between work and leisure. Men contributed to sustainable practices mainly through activities understood as leisure, in longer blocks of time. Our temporality lens also illustrates the gendered ways that old practices become deroutinised and new practices reroutinised. While men were often responsible for the labour and upfront time required to start or research a project, the responsibility of everyday implementation and habit-changing commonly fell to women. These findings illustrate how gendered analyses help identify both opportunities for, and constraints against, change towards sustainability. Opportunities include the strong connections between both mothers' and fathers' understanding of good parenting and the importance they attach to household sustainability. Constraints include the temporal challenges faced by households, and how these interact with wider structural and labour roles.     

One 6 and nine 0's

This article reports the proceedings of two population meetings: the UN meeting in New York and the Youth Forum. Representatives of UN Member States and 24 accredited nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) attended the 5-year review and appraisal of the Cairo Conference of 1994. A consensus on sex education was reached in the Special Summit. However, not all participants agreed on the relevance of the consensus in the summit for reasons that it is time-consuming and that there are more meaningful matters to be attended to. Meanwhile, in the Youth Forum held just before The Hague Forum of Governments, young people from all over the world were given the opportunity to express their opinions and say what they considered important to create a sustainable population and development. Their views were presented in a report to their national delegations and NGOs who will attend in The Hague. In the report, the youth stated that they hope their needs would be translated into practical national policies and legislation supporting young people's development and rights.     

Being NGO girls: gender,subjectivities and everyday life in Kolkata

This article discusses the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as a cultural and political force in shaping the gendered and classed subjectivities of young women growing up in ‘red-light areas’ in Kolkata, India. It foregrounds the flexible deployment of NGO gender narratives by ‘subjects’ of NGO development to improve their everyday lives. Drawing on debates of NGOization, post-colonial urban Indian femininities and intersectionality, it demonstrates how several young women who grew up as ‘subjects’ of NGO development mobilize, reject and improvise contested NGO-inspired femininities for their everyday gain. At the same time, it illustrates how NGO gender narratives that are useful to some young women in their renegotiation of gender norms are deemed ineffective, if not obstructive, by other young women, particularly those whose lives remain entangled in multiple marginalities.     

Common Counsel,Common Policy: Healthcare,Missions and the Rise of the ‘Voluntary Sector’ in Colonial Tanzania

Analysis of the voluntary sector in sub‐Saharan Africa has tended to focus on the role of the NGO, and the types of relationships this institution establishes and maintains with donors, national governments and the communities with which they work. The voluntary sector in Africa is therefore usually defined through, and often treated as synonymous with, the institution of the NGO. As a result, the boundaries of understandings of the ‘third sector’ space occupied by the vast number of NGOs — its origins, the nature of the relationship of voluntary sector actors to the state, the types of organizations that characterize the sector — have tended to reflect a narrow concern with the NGO type and its experiences. This article suggests that this view is too narrow in its gaze. The voluntary sector was not a creation of a post‐colonial (and especially post‐1970s) development crisis. It emerged from an evolving relationship between colonial‐era non‐state (voluntary) actors and governments determined to demonstrate that they were meeting their commitments to the welfare of Africans under their charge. Missions and mission welfare services, expanding across much of rural sub‐Saharan Africa by the beginnings of the twentieth century, and increasingly coordinated from the late 1920s and early 1930s, created the foundations for the emergence of sub‐Saharan Africa's formal voluntary sector as it exists today. This matters for more than just historical accuracy. To understand the constraints, challenges and opportunities faced by NGOs, we need to move beyond a narrow focus on the institution of the NGO itself, and look in addition to the environment in which it operates: its history, its evolution and the shifts that created those conditions.     

The Nick-Squared Test for Indigenous Education’s “Goodness of Fit” with Environmental Education in Canada

This article explores the personal experiences using a currere model of two new academics and their investigations into the relationships between Indigenous education and environmental education. It outlines the challenges of Indigenous education within the contexts of higher education in the Coast Salish region with a specific focus on the Canadian role in Indigenizing education. We suggest that an intervention in our current practices is necessary in light of the ongoing violations of the Universal Declaration of Human rights and the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We provide language and insights into cultural schizophrenia, authenticity, and the complexities of Indigenization.     

Thai Labour NGOs during the ‘Modern Slavery’ Reforms: NGO Transitions in a Post-aid World

This article explores how domestic NGOs responded to new opportunities that emerged during the 2015–2020 ‘modern slavery’ labour reforms in Thailand's seafood sector. The analysis takes place against the background of civil society transitions in a ‘post-aid’ setting. Like NGOs in other middle-income countries, the Thai NGO sector has struggled to remain relevant and financially viable in recent decades, as international donors have withdrawn from countries with steadily declining poverty rates. As a result of the ‘developmental successes’ of Thailand, the NGO sector needed to rethink its strategies. Examining the modern slavery labour reform process provides an opportunity to understand the strategic choices available to NGOs in the face of several important phenomena: the emergence of new actors such as international philanthropic donors; the growing influence of the private sector in governance matters; and the need for NGOs to balance multiple strategic alliances. The article draws on in-depth interviews to explore narratives of Thai labour NGO adjustments during the period of the modern slavery reform. The study contributes to a better understanding of how NGOs in post-aid countries transition and adapt to changing circumstances by embracing new roles as ‘sub-contractors’ for emerging global philanthropic donors and as ‘partners’ of private corporations.     

Performing refugeeness in the Czech Republic: gendered depoliticisation through NGO assistance

The article examines the gender micropolitics of non-governmental assistance to refugees in the Czech Republic – a post-socialist society which is becoming a country of immigration. It critically examines relations of power between refugees and local non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These NGOs act as mediators between refugees and the state, media, wider public and academic production of knowledge. It is argued that despite the important roles they play in securing refugees' access to rights, their assistance is often perceived as problematic by refugees. The article analyses these relations in a wider context of the institutions of the refugee system where the state has increasing power in defining the conditions under which NGO assistance to refugees is provided. The study is based on qualitative research among recognised refugees from the former Soviet Union living in the Czech Republic and local NGOs assisting them with integration into society. I demonstrate how particular forms of assistance and public representation depoliticise refugees in a sense of fostering rather than challenging unequal power relations that lock refugees in a position of clients lacking political means of influencing their place in a receiving society. This is done by conceptualising ‘a refugee’ as a performative identity that is being produced and enacted in feminised NGO spaces. The analysis highlights refugees' critical reflections on their position in the relations of assistance.     

Fostering Global Citizenship – tree planting as a connective practice

Education for Global Citizenship is about living as though the future mattered. This evaluates learner reactions to a tree-planting exercise that invites reflection upon hopes for the world, personal responsibilities and acting locally while thinking globally. Participant hopes concerned: environmental sustainability, peace on earth, then the welfare of future generations and personal wellbeing. Global citizenship concerns included sustainability, social justice, interdependencies and personal responsibilities. Some participants envisaged exercise outcomes to be mainly practical, others personal, such as reflection on lifestyle choices. Off-campus sessions generated higher grades, more concern for giving back to/defining a role in nature and volunteering.     

Accountability and Inaction: NGOs and Resource Lodging in Development

From the late 1980s, research on NGOs had a normative focus and was vulnerable to changing donor preoccupations. This article contributes a new conceptual approach, analysing the practices through which relationships and resources are translated into programmes and projects. The theoretical justification for this move combines the new ethnography of development practice with a re‐agency approach to transactions across time and space. The study is based on data including thirty hours of video ethnography involving interviews and field visits with Kenyan NGOs in a variety of sectors. The analysis focuses on the problem of accountability that emerged through the interactions of donors and state corruption. We argue that NGOs operating in capital cities often provide organizational solutions to this problem. Depending on donor preferences, varying amounts of resources become ‘lodged’ or absorbed in ‘capital NGOs’ as they provide accounts of programmes that satisfy donors. However, no matter the donor preferences, capital NGOs provide accountability independently of increased action with communities or increased resources transferred to them. We conclude that the institutionalization of the NGO field as a well‐grounded specialization depends in part on the degree to which researchers can sideline the stories generated in inter‐organizational contexts such as workshops and policy meetings, and substitute understandings based on accounting practices, resource flows and social ties.     

The politics of repressing environmentalists as agents of foreign influence

Theoretically, this article reveals the long-term risk for local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) of participating in transnational advocacy networks (TANs), accepting money from foreign sources and throwing ‘boomerangs’ internationally—a strategy used by local NGOs to seek international allies to pressure repressive and unresponsive states at home. Focusing primarily on the suppression of environmental NGOs that oppose natural-resource extraction, this article examines three cases—Russia, India and Australia—to illuminate the consequences of this trend for local civil society and TANs. It also documents a global trend towards states depicting local NGOs with international linkages as subversive agents of foreign interests, justifying legal crackdowns and the severing of foreign funding and ties. State framing of NGOs as agents of foreign interests is repressing local environmental activism, depoliticising civil society and weakening international NGO alliances—a conclusion with far-reaching consequences for the future of TANs, local NGOs and environmental activism.     

Scaling up Participatory Watershed Development in India

‘Participation’ is widely accepted as a prerequisite to successful watershed development in India, but there is no shared understanding of its meaning, nor of how to make it operational. Meaningful participation, in which communities work collectively, help make decisions and share costs, is limited primarily to projects implemented by non‐governmental organizations (NGOs). Participation in government projects is more superficial because staff lack the skills and incentive to engage in meaningful participation. Strategies to scale up meaningful participation require a large number of NGOs. However, the number of NGOs with the necessary skills and values is limited, so a realistic strategy must seek to improve the capabilities and incentives of government agencies. Their performance may improve by making them accountable through transparent processes and participatory monitoring and evaluation. NGO‐facilitated access to information for communities can potentially change power relations and initiate political processes that make both community leaders and government agencies more accountable to communities.     

Marginality and the New Geography of Domestic Violence Policy in Post-Communist Poland

The article explores the spatial distribution and institutional geography of domestic violence service provision in post-communist Poland. A new institutional geography providing services to victims of domestic violence is emerging in Poland as a result of NGO activism and new pro-woman policies implemented by the state. NGOs, often in partnership with local governments, are the most vital means of service provision in large and medium size cities, while in rural areas, public agencies predominate in the institutional geography of service provision. The assumption that NGOs will emerge to address the needs of victims of domestic violence is not realistic in rural areas. While urban Poland is developing an institutional geography to address domestic violence, state and NGO activists must focus on shrinking the rural margins of Poland's institutional geography.     

Environmental interpretation is flowering in Denmark

Abstract

Environmental interpretation is flowering in Denmark. In 1986 it was decided to carry out a three‐year experimental project with 14 environmental interpreters. Today the number of environmental interpreters has grown to 230. The inspiration came from abroad, but the project is established according to Danish cultural and democratic traditions. Some Environmental Interpreters are employed by the State in the National Forests, others by counties, local authorities, museums or ‘green associations’, but they are all linked together in the Environmental Interpreter Service with secretariat in The National Forest and Nature Agency. A modern organisation provides training courses for the interpreters and has developed a series of active interpretation methods in order to make experiencing nature an important tool in modern Danish environmental management and inspire a positive attitude to the future—to sustainable development and management. The aim of setting up an Environmental Interpreter Service was to give people interesting experiences in and knowledge of the countryside and thereby a greater understanding of the complexity of nature, the conditions for agriculture and perhaps an increased environmental consciousness. It was also the hope that if people had a greater understanding of nature, they will love and care for it better. The Brundtland Report ‘Our Common Future, the conference in Rio in 1992 and Agenda 21 has changed the Environmental Interpreters’ work. We have recognised, that it is important to use live Interpreters and not only technical media in this important work. People respond best to personal, face‐to‐face interpretation. The interpreters try to create a love of nature, and at the same time, create an understanding of local and global environmental conditions.