Unsubscribe [1]

View in your browser [2]

FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE                                                           
     DEC. 10, 2020 

CONTACT: TEL- 202-455-8665                         
                       
[email protected]  

-------------------------

BEZOS’ EARTH FUND IS AN UNNATURAL DISASTER 

An Avalanche of Inequity and Injustice to the Frontlines Does Nothing to
Curb Climate Change, while Real Solutions Remain Unfunded

NOW IS THE TIME FOR UNDENIABLY POWERFUL GRASSROOTS LEADERSHIP. If we’ve
learned anything this year from the brilliant, brave, bold, and beautiful
Black, Brown, Indigenous and other frontline communities and workers
fighting inequitable impacts of pandemics, pollution, poverty, climate
disaster and emboldened racism, it’s that real change happens at the
grassroots.

Yet, in a year when frontline leadership is clearly critical, Amazon CEO
Jeff Bezos (through his newly launched Earth Fund) has doubled down on
philanthropy’s inequitable modus operandi by funneling hundreds of
millions into outdated, ineffective, top-down strategies that attempt to
erase the frontlines. This thoughtless, status-quo, self-serving strategy
undermines the real systemic change we have been cultivating for decades in
this most monumental fight against climate change, and for the protection
of Mother Earth as we know her.

On Nov. 16, Jeff Bezos, whose personal wealth has grown by nearly $70
Billion [3] since the pandemic began, announced the first $791 million
_mis_-investment [4]from his $10 billion Earth Fund.

“Big green” environmental groups with majority-white leadership and
top-down structures - World Wildlife Fund, Natural Resources Defense
Council, World Resources Institute, Environmental Defense Fund and The
Nature Conservancy - received the lion’s share of the initial Earth Fund
grants despite already having a combined annual budget in the billions.
Added together, upwards of $600 million in grants will go to the world’s
wealthiest conservation and environmental organizations. Less than a
quarter of the first-round grants will go to intermediary funds that
support _thousands_ of grassroots communities cultivating solutions on the
frontlines of the climate emergency. The inequities couldn’t be more
striking.

Once again, corporate executives and the capitalist system they defend are
pitting our grassroots struggles against an elite cadre of international
policy groups wielding outdated, market-based strategies that fail to
confront the root causes of climate change, and continue to profit off of
sacrifice zones. If these big green recipients truly care about slowing the
worst effects of climate change, they must support systemic change
solutions by following the frontlines, environmental and climate justice
communities and movements, their alliances, and networks.

Perhaps Bezos thought the Earth Fund could absolve him and Amazon of the
injustice they continuously uphold. But no amount of greenwashing will
distract from the historical and current disenfranchisement of Amazon
workers, other frontline communities, and Mother Earth herself. AS
DEMONSTRATED WHEN THIS FUNDING WAS FIRST ANNOUNCED IN THE FIRST QUARTER OF
2020, CJA STEADFASTLY STANDS WITH AMAZON WORKERS [5] and impacted
communities, as they fight to realize basic dignity and human rights in the
workplace.

-------------------------

EQUITY & THE NEED FOR REDISTRIBUTION OF FUNDS

To forego any comprehensive consultation or advance notice and drop this
announcement on environmental justice communities just prior to
Thankstaking deepens wounds of colonialism, anti-Indigenism, racism, and
Black slavery -- wounds that have perpetuated the racialized disparities
and historic systems of oppression that underpin our interconnected
climate, racial, and economic crises. It also turns an insulting blind eye
to the fact that many Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities are also
fighting against a global pandemic, the rise of fascism, disproportionate
exposures to toxic chemicals and climate-causing greenhouse gas emissions,
other environmental contaminants, and the collapse of the global economy.

But Bezos is not the only one to blame. We are disheartened to see many of
the big green Earth Fund recipients continue their regular fundraising
campaigns despite having just received $100 million each! This is
particularly heartbreaking considering the public outpouring of solidarity
statements from these very groups quite recently, espousing commitments to
equity, environmental justice, and racial justice when it was popular to do
so.

Time is running out for them to save the integrity of their statements, as
well as the agreements, protocols, and initiatives they have committed to
over the past several decades, including The 17 Principles of Environmental
Justice [6], the Jemez Principles of Democratic Organizing [7], and the
Building Equity & Alignment for Impact Initiative [8]. The world is burning
-- literally and metaphorically -- and we cannot believe we have to take
precious time away from the fight of our lives to explain, yet again, the
racism, elitism and plain obtuseness of the environmental sector. HERE IS
JUST A PARTIAL LIST OF LETTERS [9] ADDRESSING POWER AND FUNDING DISPARITIES
AND THE HARM INFLICTED FAR TOO OFTEN BY PHILANTHROPY AND BIG GREEN
ORGANIZATIONS THAT SPAN MANY DECADES.
-------------------------

A Super-Sized Order of False Solutions for Climate & Communities

This sizable funding from the Earth Fund, supported in part by Amazon’s
refusal to pay taxes and other despicable practices [10] that abuse workers
and the planet, purports to “_preserve and protect the natural world_”
from the “_biggest threat to our planet”_. [11] However, it fails to
acknowledge its wealth has been built off the backs of the very communities
that are leading the struggle to stop the root causes of climate change.
Despite being chronically and severely underfunded, these communities are
creating innovative climate solutions while protecting our lands, waters,
air, and ways of life, and showing the world sustainable paths to
successfully navigate the storms, floods, fires, and droughts headed our
way.

Meanwhile, the environmental organizations receiving over 80% of this
funding, along with other big greens, continue to collaborate with the very
corporate leaders driving and benefiting from the fossil fuel economy and
causing this existential crisis. (One recent example of this is the push
for the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI) in the Northeast,
organized in close coordination with British Petroleum. [12]) Through
ineffective policy solutions like this that further subsidize polluting
industries including fracked gas, nuclear power, biomass, waste
incineration energy, and biofuels, they enable investment capital to
continue profiteering from the pollution and other harms they cause in
frontline communities. In fact, some of the first grants being doled out
are going to support major investments in risky and dangerous
geoengineering experiments [13] and carbon market mechanisms, such as
offsets and carbon pricing regimes [14], that will not stop climate change
nor reduce emissions at source. Instead, they will put frontline
communities and ecosystems on a fast track to becoming new sacrifice zones,
rather than on a road to Just Transitions.

In fact, according to the REDD Monitor [15], Bezos is pouring millions into
so-called “nature-based solutions” -- a new name for the rebranding of
REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation). Also known
as “natural climate solutions,” nature-based solutions are false
solutions to climate change in the form of carbon offsets [16] with entire
ecosystems. These so-called “solutions” [17]do not reduce emissions
[18], are slated for half the world’s land, may result in a planetary
land grab within mechanisms of privatization, and could adversely impact a
billion people. REDD Monitor reports that all five of the big green
beneficiaries “mention natural climate solutions [19] in their press
releases about receiving money from Bezos.” In effect, these
environmental and conservation groups, as well as myriad polluting
corporations, create and participate in mechanisms that give way to the
financialization of nature. These practices separate and quantify the
earth’s cycles and functions – such as carbon, water, soils and
biodiversity – by turning them into “units” to be sold in financial
and speculative markets.
-------------------------

OUR VALUES MUST GUIDE OUR SOLUTIONS

No one will save us but ourselves. Following the lead of the frontlines is
paramount to our very survival. We know the ability to protect the
earth’s living capacity now and in the future hinges on our ability to
repair, renew, and right our relationships with her and each other. This
involves centering the grassroots climate justice movement, which
understands the need for humanity to protect the territorial integrity of
Mother Earth and Father Sky, following the teachings of Indigenous sisters
and brothers and land-based cultures. We can only undertake such global
efforts to remediate and restore ecological balance if we redistribute the
wealth accrued from stolen lands, stolen lives, and stolen labor to those
from whom it was taken and who continue to be most impacted by pollution,
poverty, racism, state violence, and pandemic around the world.

Across CJA's members and allies, we have a multitude of Just Transition
projects – real, scalable climate solutions that move us toward
regenerative economies, such as: Black women-led food sovereignty projects
[20] in the MidAtlantic [21] and on the West Coast [22]; Latinx
farmworker-led medicinal plant projects [23] in the Southeast; BIPOC
people-to-people mutual aid networks [24] in the Gulf South; a
community-owned solar project [25] in the Northeast; Latinx-led feminist
economy projects [26] in the Southwest; emerging worker-owner cooperative
models, such as a Black-owned natural building company [27] in the
MidAtlantic and an Indigenous-owned cooperative farm [28] in the Pacific
Northwest; Indigenous-led renewable energy companies [29]; BIPOC-led
non-extractive finance models [30]; and a new project by the Reinvest In
Our Power Campaign [31] to move $100 million to local living economies that
work in harmony with Mother Earth. This is just a glimpse of solutions
already happening on the ground.

As revealed in 2010 [32], later in 2012 [33], and yet again in 2020 [34],
we know it is much more effective for philanthropy to fund the grassroots
than the big greens, if they truly want to forge real change that actually
tackles the climate crisis and the multitudinal impacts it has on us all.

AT THIS MOMENT IN HISTORY, WE MUST STAND TOGETHER AS A MOVEMENT TO DEFEND
OUR RIGHT TO SPEAK FOR OURSELVES AND OUR COMMUNITIES, AND TO SELF-GOVERN.
After all, this is not the first time our movement has had to stand up to
racialized funding disparities [35]. Over the last few decades, we have had
to develop our own initiatives, organizing with allied funders and other
national green groups, to have our voices heard. Since the First National
People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit [36] in 1991 in Washington,
D.C., our communities have been demanding equity from philanthropy and big
greens, noting that funding disparities stem from existing cultures of
white supremacy and elite privilege.

This moment can make or break our ability to stop the worst effects of
climate change, and we will not stand in silence while those who are not
amongst the first and most impacted try to define it -- let alone those who
just jumped into climate funding as a way to whitewash despicable labor
practices. It is unacceptable that such enormous funds be redistributed and
re-invested in ways that will not only divide our movements, but also
dismantle progress greens and grassroots have made together, and set back
our efforts to tackle accelerating impacts of the climate crisis and
biodiversity loss.

We need to leave behind this era of racialized philanthropic practice and
inequitable terms of engagement. We must foster meaningful pathways forward
to confront the inextricably linked racial, economic, and climate crises by
embracing and centering traditional Indigenous knowledge; investing in
workers and the placed-based leadership of urban and rural frontline
communities; and expanding democratic collaboration on Just Transition
strategies to combat climate change and build sustaining and living
economies.
-------------------------

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BEZOS, BIG GREENS AND ALLIED FUNDERS

AT THIS PIVOTAL MOMENT IN TIME, FIRST, we call on Jeff Bezos to pay his
fair share of corporate taxes, pay his workers a living wage, stop
surveilling labor, social justice and environmental groups, and put money
into the communities being impacted by industrial pollution and other
harmful impacts caused by Amazon distribution centers.

SECOND, we call on all big green organizations receiving grants from the
Earth Fund to follow and respect the leadership of the frontlines and their
solutions, which meet both the challenge of climate change and the
interconnected racist, anti-Indigenist, classist and undemocratic systems
that created it, and move us toward regenerative economies. Immediately,
these organizations can:

* TAKE LEADERSHIP FROM THE GRASSROOTS AND REDIRECT AT LEAST 10-25% OR MORE
OF EARTH FUND MONIES RECEIVED to a pooled Fund for Frontlines governed by
and for the grassroots organizing sector. Grassroots leaders should decide
how those funds are allocated to support the grassroots organizing sector,
not greens.
* DON’T CHOOSE FOR THE GRASSROOTS. For those greens like Natural
Resources Defense Council, and Union of Concerned Scientists who have been
engaged in the Building Equity and Alignment for Impact [37]and other
initiatives and platforms over decades to ensure more transparency and
accountability in resourcing, this is the time to visibly demonstrate that
you abide by the principles and protocols you have signed onto. As greens,
it is not your role to convene the grassroots, speak for environmental
justice groups, or set up your own mechanisms to fund us. Now is the time
for you to engage in principled action that supports grassroots leadership
and use these vehicles and the Jemez Principles to support the frontlines.

* INSTITUTE A MORATORIUM on new fundraising while you are a grantee of the
Earth Fund to do your part to balance the disproportionate inequity this
funding contributes to with already only 1% going to grassroots in key
areas like the Midwest and the Gulf South for example and overall.

THIRD, we call on the allied funding community and the larger
climate/environment philanthropic community to:

* INSTITUTE A MORATORIUM ON GRANTS TO EARTH FUND RECIPIENTS and direct
those dollars instead to a pooled Fund for Frontlines to help ensure equity
in philanthropy.
* PRESSURE BIG GREENS’ BOARD MEMBERS AND STAFF TO MOVE MONEY DIRECTLY TO
THE GRASSROOTS via a pooled grassroots-governed Fund for Frontlines, as
soon as possible using resources, communication campaigns, and direct
conversations.
* PRESSURE YOUR FUNDER COLLEAGUES TO MOVE MONEY DIRECTLY TO THE GRASSROOTS
through a pooled Fund for the Frontlines.
* CALL FOR SOLIDARITY FROM ALL THE GRASSROOTS INTERMEDIARY FUND RECIPIENTS
of Bezos funding by asking them to also contribute a percentage of the
total grant they received TO A POOLED FUND FOR FRONTLINES GOVERNED FOR AND
BY THE GRASSROOTS.
* INVITE GRASSROOTS LEADERS to engage in a long-term evaluative process to
integrate an equity lens into your grantmaking practices.

We stand firm and united to continue our grassroots struggles against the
settler-colonial-capitalist system that has created the climate crisis and
entrenches racism, corporate destruction of the earth, and market-based
agendas that serve to ravage our bodies, our communities, and the planet.

As we usher in a new and transformative era, we call on Bezos, big green
organizations, and funders alike to put their money where their mouth is,
live their espoused values, and support the leadership of the frontlines
with the words, deeds, and resources we need to lead us all through a
beautiful multiplicity of Just Transitions. Taking swift action on the
above clear steps is a solid way to start.

###

Climate Justice Alliance is a member-led organization of 70+ urban and
rural frontline communities, organizations and support networks in the
climate justice movement.

Climate Justice Alliance

Checks payable to Movement Strategy Center (CJA in memo)
PO BOX 10202
Berkeley, CA 94709
United States


Unsubscribe [38] | Opt out of all bulk emails [39]

[40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45]



Links:
------
[1] /[link removed]
[2] /[link removed]
[3] [link removed]
[4] [link removed]
[5] [link removed]
[6] [link removed]
[7] [link removed]
[8] [link removed]
[9] [link removed]
[10] [link removed]
[11] [link removed]
[12] [link removed]
[13] [link removed]
[14] [link removed]
[15] [link removed]
[16] [link removed]
[17] [link removed]
[18] [link removed]
[19] [link removed]
[20] [link removed]
[21] [link removed]
[22] [link removed]
[23] [link removed]
[24] [link removed]
[25] [link removed]
[26] [link removed]
[27] [link removed]
[28] [link removed]
[29] [link removed]
[30] [link removed]
[31] [link removed]
[32] [link removed]
[33] [link removed]
[34] [link removed]
[35] [link removed]
[36] [link removed]
[37] [link removed]
[38] [link removed]
[39] [link removed]
[40] [link removed]
[41] [link removed]
[42] [link removed]
[43] [link removed]
[44] [link removed]
[45] [link removed]