Diary style blog by John Burton, CEO of the World Land Trust about what WLT has to do to achieve conservation, as it actually happens.

Green Diary

You are viewing the archived pages, return to the current posts here.

Green Diary posts on this page:

Monday, March 29, 2010:

Celebs and charities: Are endorsements important? 

A survey of what the public thought made a charity trustworthy recently was very revealing. Only 4% thought that the fact it was supported by a celebrity gave it credibility.

One of the most important factors (39%) was the fact that the supporter had had contact with the charity. We are glad, because we rate that very highly ourselves, and try to organise occasional meetings where supporters can meet with us, but more importantly we have tried to create a web presence that is very open and transparent, so that our supporters feel they can interact with us.

This blog is part of that network, as is our Facebook presence, and the fact that a person (yes a real person) answers the phone.

I also believe that celebrity is not helpful. In this instance I define a celebrity as someone who is famous for being famous. But being famous for something relevant to the charity is another matter -- which is why we are so honoured to have Sir David Attenborough associated with the World Land Trust. The person most famous for all he has done to promote interest in wildlife and the natural world.

Our other Patron is David Gower, famous as a cricketer, but he also grew up in East Africa, and has a personal interest in wildlife, taking time out to see it whenever he can. And in fact the WLT does have a large number of extremely well known people supporting it: Bill Oddie, Mark Carwardine, Ken Livingstone, Tony Hawks and Antonio Carluccio are just a few.

I would be very interested to know why you, our readers and supporters, support a charity (not just WLT). What are your criteria? And do you think celeb endorsement is important?

Posted by John Monday, March 29, 2010
| Permanent location of this post | Read comments (3) |

Share this post with your friends

Thursday, March 18, 2010:

Saving the rainforest - or just generating more paper? 

At the World Land Trust, we have always emphasised the need for conservation action, as opposed to yet more discussions, reports and research. With limited funds to spend on conservation, the Trust feels that it is better to use available funds primarily to protect as much wildlife habitat as possible before it is too late.

A new report, "Saving the Rainforests: Civil Society Mapping - A project for the UK Environmental Funders Network" (PDF document, 817KB, opens in new window) by Harriet Williams and Jon Cracknell made me wonder what value this might have to conservation.

The authors have done a huge amount of work compiling all the data, but I haven't a clue what it all shows. One very significant piece of data omitted entirely is the financial resources expended on each of the activities identified (such as "Peoples Heroes", "Finance Pioneers", "Brand Attackers", or "Voluntary Carbon Offsets"), and without that information it is absolutely impossible to compare like with like. Like so many academic studies, it seems of very little use to the actual practitioners in the field.

The World Land Trust is listed in the report, and its activities categorised, but quite how they were delineated and compared with other organisations is entirely unclear to me. Organisations significantly smaller than the WLT according to the analysis, appear to be active in a very wide range of activities -- but since there is no indication of what resources are devoted, it does not really reflect what's happening on the ground.

The fact on the ground can often be very different to what appears from a superficial reading of an annual report and accounts. For instance, the WLT probably has far more interaction with indigenous peoples than most of the organisations listed as active, yet WLT is not listed at all, because a) we do not give it a high profile in our publicity, and b) as a proportion of our overall budget it is not large. But an organisation spending 50% of a small budget on work with indigenous peoples is spending much less than WLT spending 5% of its total budget.

If you read this report and disagree with me, please can you show me how it can benefit the operation of conservation? Clearly a lot of work went into it, but I don't see how it advances rainforest conservation.

Posted by John Thursday, March 18, 2010
| Permanent location of this post | Read comments (2) |

Share this post with your friends