Environmental Funders Network considers change at weekend retreat

Any philanthropist who wants to change the world, wants to know how change happens. Great change is going to be needed to create a low-carbon, sustainable world, and ‘How Change Happens’ was the theme of the 3^rd annual environmental funders retreat, held in the Cotswolds this January. Thirty-seven delegates including individual philanthropists, and staff and trustees of grant-giving foundations, attended.

Three external speakers tackled the 'change question' in each of three domains – public engagement, private business, and government policy.

The theme of diversity was woven through the session led by Ann Finlayson, Sustainable Development Commissioner, on public engagement. Ann demonstrated that seemingly homogeneous groups, whether civil servants, business leaders, or even environmental funders, operate on the basis of a spectrum of beliefs and values. She encouraged us to avoid chasing after elusive ‘silver bullets’ for changing public opinions and behaviours, but to use a range of tools and methods to help people engage and learn. Philanthropy can facilitate unusual conversations, new experiences and other forms of ‘dissonance’ that disrupt ‘business as usual’, and lead to more creative solutions.

Peter Jones drew on his extensive experience in the waste and energy industries to explore the complex way that public policy shapes the economic landscape within which the private sector takes decisions. NGO campaigning can also change the cost / benefit calculations of companies, especially in prompting a company towards up-front investment for long-term gains in sustainability. High-value, carbon intensive, high-volume brands are particularly sensitive to such influences.

Michael Jacobs, former advisor to Gordon Brown on climate change, gave a riveting account of the successful campaign to halt new coal-fired power stations in the UK, from his perspective at the heart of the government of the day.  In an intriguing twist, the session was introduced and chaired by Matt Phillips of the European Climate Foundation, a leading player in the very same campaign. Key factors in the campaign success included excellent policy analysis, media attention gained by direct action protests, presentation of credible alternatives, and a broad coalition of support.

Michael set this effective, focused campaign against a background of a much longer-term social change, built up through innumerable green initiatives by individuals and institutions. In recent years, political polling shows that the environment is now seen by the public as part of the civic space - it is something on which the public expect their government to act. It is this ongoing social change which gives weight to environmental campaigning, and gives government political space in which to respond. Michael wondered whether there could be even greater social and political leverage from local environmental action.

Rather than a single answer, the retreat gave multiple insights to how change happens, and encouragement to many different models of change.