As the debate over the federal budget continues to gain steam in Washington, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced recently that it will be dolling out the first grants tied to its Tropical Forests Conservation Act. The TFCA is an agreement USAID has signed with a host of developing countries that offers debt relief for environmental conservation commitments. This initial funding will go to five environmental non-profits operating on the ground in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s most populous nation. The TFCA was signed with Indonesia in 2009, and it’s been slated specifically for supposed forest preservation in Sumatra. And the price tag for this first phase of the TFCA agreement? 30 million dollars.
Now this seems just like a drop in the bucket compared to USAID’s latest budget request for $1.74 billion or the whopping $3.7 trillion President Obama proposed last month for the federal government’s operations next year. But foreign aid to Southeast Asia is indeed a noble expenditure. This aid, however, must be used as it has been historically, namely for providing health care, building roads and supplying clean water. It must not be leveraged to meet political goals.
That said there is a bigger, less obvious problem with USAID’s endowment to these groups. While these monies are being handed over to environmental groups working to, as Mongabay.com reports, “conserve and better manage forests and peatlands”, CAGP believes that an anti-development agenda is quietly being fueled via this foreign aid, masquerading as environmental protection.
Let’s take a look at just one of the five groups USAID will be funding. One of them is Institute Green Aceh. This organization is receiving American taxpayer money to boost protection of the Linge Isac Hunting Reserve in Aceh, a special territory on the northern tip of Sumatra. Upon first glance, it seems like a worthwhile goal to me.
But a closer examination of the institute’s priorities sheds much-needed light on what this NGO may actually be trying to accomplish. On its website, it lays out its issue priorities, eight of them to be exact. In the mix, among others, are “green economic development”, “climate change adaptation” and “environmental governance” (still trying to figure out what this one means!). Can you guess what is last on the list? Yes, “poverty reduction”.
USAID, though, prides itself on being “the principal U.S. agency to extend assistance to countries recovering from disaster, trying to escape poverty, and engaging in democratic reforms”. The agency has no business leveraging environmental policies detrimental to development. That’s a pretty blatant contradiction right there.
U.S. foreign aid should always be geared toward helping those in the developing world realize a better life and increasing their standards of living. Sadly, Institute Green Aceh doesn’t think too highly of this goal. Thus, why is USAID providing money to groups like this, funds that will most likely be used to fill a biased, environmental agenda at the expense of jobs, community investment and broader economic development?
What’s even more alarming is that, after failing to enact radical environmental policies in the U.S., the president is clearly tasking his lead aid agency to push for the same kind of misguided, Green policies in the developing world. This is evidenced here in Indonesia. That’s shameful. And even if we had hoped there would be some sort of legitimate accountability for this USAID funding, look at who is party to the seven-member oversight committee governing these programs: Conservation International. Not exactly a neutral actor when it comes to issues of the environment and development.
Policymakers in Washington must reject misguided foreign aid packages such as TFCA that misuse taxpayer dollars. Let us hope that USAID will soon better fulfill its pledge to help countries escape poverty, rather than partnering with predisposed local organizations whose suspicious conservation efforts smack of anti-development advocacy.