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Published in Summer 2004
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A popular funding program comes to a close
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By Philip Fine
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Students from St-George, New Brunswick, share air monitoring techniques with youth in New Hampshire as part of a NAFEC grant in 2002. |
After handing out almost 200 grants since 1996 to community projects working in a variety of environmental areas, the North American Fund for Environmental Cooperation (NAFEC) was forced to pack it in this past fall.
The CEC decided that NAFEC could no longer be funded, given reductions to the organization's budget. That tough decision has disappointed many who bemoan the loss of the grassroots environmental fund, but may inspire greater capacity building in the core of the CEC's operations.
It's been a good run. NAFEC distributed C$9.6 million and leveraged almost C$5 million through grants or in-kind contributions. The grants went to community projects in Canada, Mexico and the United States to further the CEC's work in a number of areas, including designing renewable energy projects, promoting trade in eco-friendly goods, exploring the links between pollutants and health, and supporting biodiversity conservation. A majority of the groups received between C$40,000 and C$80,000 to fund their projects.
Laure Waridel, a fair-trade coffee advocate and NAFEC recipient, appreciated the fund's unique trinational character. It offered her the opportunity to connect many Canadian businesses that sell or roast coffee with Mexican farmers who grow and dry the beans. In turn, these links have put more money into the hands of small, sustainable-practicing farmers and given fair-trade coffee a business foothold in Canada.
Before Waridel's Montreal-based organization, Equiterre, received its two grants from the CEC to promote fair-trade coffee, the city had only two places selling fair-trade coffee. Now there are approximately 1,500 stores in Montreal that serve or sell fair-trade coffee, from the biggest supermarkets like Loblaws to small convenience stores.
The grants helped her to study successful European economic models, to sign on farmers in Mexico, namely the 2,600-member Union de Comunidades Indigenas de la Region del Istmo, and put together a business kit that she gave to interested Canadian roasters and coffee retailers.
Waridel said the NAFEC money helped bring about interest from those just waiting to be involved in a green economic issue like coffee. "Other organizations took up the cause. There was a real snowball effect," she says.
The program has left its mark across the continent. NAFEC awarded funding to help the grizzly bear habitat in a range that runs from Montana's Yellowstone to the Yukon Territories and other binational border ranges. It also awarded a series of grants that helped conserve habitat of migratory shorebirds. That shorebird work attracted dozens of media articles, linked schools in all three countries, improved Mexican ecotourism and helped hatch an international award-winning shorebird book and poster.
In Houston, a US$25,000 grant allowed ordinary citizens to put a chemical name to the strange smells in their neighborhoods along the city's shipping channel. Ordinary buckets, equipped with a plastic bag and a small vacuum, were placed near petrochemical plants and other suspected polluters and came up with almost 50 chemicals, including Freon-13, a chemical banned by the 1987 Montreal Protocol.
And two grants awarded to the Grupo Interdisciplinario de Tecnología Rural Apropiada in Patzcuaro, Michoacán, gave the nongovernmental organization the opportunity to raise awarness with ceramic artisans and their families about the health risks associated with the use of lead-based glazes.
"It's sad," says Waridel of the demise of the program. She says many community groups struggle to find funding and alternatives like NAFEC can make the difference. "The fund allocated money to small initiatives that were able to do a lot with a little money."
While he agrees the program made strides in capacity building, CEC Director of Programs Doug Wright says that the large rise in the Canadian dollar meant a de facto 20 percent budget cut for programs. "NAFEC was established with surplus funds as an element of the CEC program, subject to annual Council review. There is no longer a surplus. We're looking at a deficit." That left the organization, he says, with no choice but to make cuts to CEC programs, including the suspension of NAFEC.
Critics of the decision, made last fall during the development of the organization's operational plan, feel that NAFEC should, in fact, be seen as a vital component of the CEC. "It provided value for the whole organization," says Donna Tingley, chair of the Joint Public Advisory Committee (JPAC), which offers independent advice to the CEC. "It's good for the CEC to have immediate, positive effects. Since a lot of the work they do is long term, you want to have so-called ‘deliverables' to remind your constituencies that something is happening."
Last fall, JPAC wrote the three countries' environment ministers to relay the committee's unanimous support for the program. "NAFEC is a prime success story of the CEC," read the letter. It reminded the ministers of the program's positive effects, of how the grants increased capacity building, information exchange, public participation and generated positive media coverage.
There has not yet been a response from any of the three governments' environment ministries.
"I do see that the CEC is in a bind," admits Tingley. "The reality is that they have to continue to do what they do with a lot less money. But, she states, "If NAFEC were revived, people would be very happy."
Wright says that if the governments are willing to set up a separate funding envelope for NAFEC, the program could again be run through the CEC. But he adds, "It's up to the countries to evaluate that."
In the meantime, the CEC has asked JPAC to help the organization incorporate some of the NAFEC-style community support into its core operations. "We will look at how our current programs might be strengthened to do more capacity building," said Wright.
Regardless of new funding for community-based grants, it appears NAFEC may yet contribute a lasting legacy to the CEC.
NAFEC at a glance
Years in operation: 8
Requests for funding: 2,385
Number of grants allocated: 196
Total awarded: C$9.6 million
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