Summary: The Foundation continued with the second of its 3 year programme to support the Friends of the Earth international climate change campaign through to 2012, with the publication of three further reports; contributed to the launch of follow-on to the FOE ‘Get Serious’ UK climate campaign – ‘Final Demand’; added to the breadth of supported activity; and was accepted in February as a member of the Network for Social Change (NSC).
– £20,000 (including Big Give matched funding) to Friends of the Earth to fund international climate change campaigning, and particularly research and publication of the Just Transition and Negatonnes (Sept 2011) and Reclaiming Power (Nov 2011) reports, in the run-up to COP17 in Durban (here and here). More here about the complete publication programme.
– £7,500 to Friends of the Earth (including BG) for the UK climate change campaign Final Demand (here and here as well) to influence the Government energy market reform process.
– £6,000 (including BG) to the Rainforest Foundation for a programme of activity in 2012 focussing on the Congo. In 2010 the Anthony Rae Foundation missed by just a month or so being able to support the RF’s McREDD How McKinsey ‘cost-curves’ are distorting REDD (which is a object lesson in ‘developing contacts’ and ‘spotting future opportunities’!); but in 2011 ARF did help fund Is REDD-readiness taking us in the right direction? Case studies from the Accra Caucus launched as part of Rainforest Foundation’s campaigning at Durban
– £2,000 to the New Economics Foundation ‘Great Transition’ economics analysis (as a contribution to already existing NSC major funding), a first measure of ARF funding of the necessary radical analysis of the fundamental ‘global economic growth driver’.
– £6,000 (including BG) split equally between: WWF for their Snow Leopards project; Fauna & Flora International – this year I have switched support to Madagascar after two year’s with the Gorilla conservation programme in the Congo; the Orangutan Foundation for their habitat and species protection in Central Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo; and RSPB Scotland for ‘Help tackle climate change and restore Scotland’s Flow Country’
– £1,000 to a range of projects receiving small grants from the Network for Social Change (and The Funding Network, a similar organisation) to UK Tar Sands Network, Free West Papua Campaign, BiofuelWatch, [+ 5 more]. The total sums received by these organisations from the collective giving of NSC and TFN will have been in the order of £30-40,000.
£1,250 ‘Season of Giving’ (some smaller donations, beyond the Foundation’s defined focus of activity and to round-off the annual programme): this year to Oxfam for their East Africa Appeal and Improve education for children in rural Mali
Total made available by the Foundation in 2011* (including matched funding and Gift Aid): around £43,750 – against a target of £40,000.
Conclusion: “Although my attention was distracted in 2011 as I completed my final year on the FOE board (including ‘negotiating’ with senior staff the detail of the new campaigns strategy) in fact the Foundation has made some further advances: four supported reports published; an expansion of the breadth of activity to better include biodiversity, and adding economics for the first time; membership of NSC; and a further increase in the total level of funding made available.” Anthony Rae
* The Foundation operates on calendar years, usefully crossing the usual April financial year boundary