Liberal Foundations and the Environmental Movement

Liberal Foundations and the Environmental Movement have depended upon each other for decades, especially since the first Earth Day in 1970 which is often recognized as the birth of the modern environmental movement. Scores of foundations provide hundreds of millions of dollars a year to non-profit tax-exempt environmental organizations. The philanthropists and staffmembers of these foundations have formed a myriad of inter-locked "key funder groups" that include the following:


 * Health and Environmental Funders Network,
 * The Consultative Group on Biological Diversity, HEFN's parent organization
 * The Environmental Grantmakers Association,
 * The Funders Network on Smart Growth and Livable Communities,
 * The Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders,
 * Grantmakers In Health,
 * Funders Network on Trade and Globalization,
 * The Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption,
 * The Funders Network on Population, Reproductive Health and Rights,

Books

 * Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2005 [1993])
 * Mark Dowie, Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995).
 * Brian Tokar, Earth for Sale: Reclaiming Ecology in the Age of Corporate Greenwash (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1997).
 * Mikael Nyberg, The Green Capitalists: A Report about Large Corporations and the Environment (Friends of the Earth, Sweden, 1998).
 * Mark Dowie, American Foundations: An Investigative History, 2002.
 * Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003).
 * Robert J. Brulle, Agency, Democracy, and Nature: The U.S. Environmental Movement from a Critical Theory Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000)
 * Daniel Faber and Deborah McCarthy, (eds.), Foundations for Social Change: Critical Perspectives on Philanthropy and Popular Movements (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005)

Online

 * Tammy L. Lewis, "Foundation Funding for the Global Environmental Movement" 2005.
 * Robert J. Brulle and Beth Schaefer Caniglia, "Money for Nature: A Network Analysis of Foundations and U.S. Environmental Groups", University of Notre Dame', Working Paper and Technical Report Series, Number 2000-01.
 * Robert J. Brulle and J. Craig Jenkins, "Foundations and the Environmental Movement: Priorities, Strategies and Impact", Draft Book Chapter.
 * Robert J. Brulle and J. Craig Jenkins, "The U.S. Environmental Movement: Crisis or Transition?", Draft Book Chapter.
 * Andrew J. Hoffman, "Deconstructing the Environmental Movement: Field Level Structure, Identity and Image", Rough Draft, May 2006.
 * Tim Bartley, "How Foundations Shape Social Movements: The Construction of an Organizational Field and the Rise of Forest Certification", Social Problems, 54(3):229-255., 2007.
 * Michael Barker, "Capital-driven Civil Society", State of Nature, May 18, 2008.
 * Michael Barker, "The Liberal Foundations of Environmentalism: Revisiting the Rockefeller-Ford Connection", Capitalism Nature Socialism, 19 (2), pp. 15-42. (For full paper email author)
 * Joan Roelofs, "The Philanthropies and the Economic Crisis: Where Were the Foundations?", Counterpunch, May 28, 2009.
 * Michael Barker, "Co-opting Greens: The Environmental Foundations of Capitalism", New Left Project, August 1, 2010.
 * Curtis White, "The Philanthropic Complex", Jacobin, Spring 2012.
 * The Insider, "Manufacturing Dissent: Inconvenient Truths About Tar Sands Action", Counterpunch, April 24, 2012.

Related Sourcewatch

 * Donald Fisher