Germany: environmental challenge for ngos

As a East German national, who was born, grew up and lived in the former GDR until the wall came down in 1989, I had only one dream: to work with an independent efficient and effective NGO, driven by the compassion and based on professional skills of highly motivated staff and volunteers. There was no NGO in my country, which could offer such a chance. There was even no chance to found such a group, as the non-profit organizations of the former GDR were purely State-founded and State governed. In fact, one could not name any of the former mass organizations a NGO. Though some of them were based on voluntary membership, most of them were financed by the State and thus controlled by the State. Only in the late 80th, as many of you remember, some environmental and peace initiatives came on stage, mainly supported and hosted by the East German churches. These promoted a ?different? ? what meant a better ? GDR, where people would have the freedom of opinion, the freedom of choice in terms of political leadership, the freedom of travel, and the freedom to learn about the state of the environment and to influence it to a better, thus were highly politized and had to work ?under cover?. As a result of the difficult conditions these initiatives have not been well organized or structured, hidden agents of the East German Secret Service, the Stasi, undermined many of them. There was almost no way for me, a mother of three, to become active in these organizations. It would have been too risky, and there was only a little chance to change the system that way. In 1988, 2 years after the Chernobyl disaster, the East German Ministry of Transport and Traffic, where I was employed as a project manager, created the new position of an ?environment officer? who should overlook all environment-related affairs of the sector. I applied, and was rejected ? as I wasn?t a member of the communist party what was a pre-condition for the successful candidate. I got quite frustrated and wrote a letter to Greenpeace in West Germany to apply as a member. This action happened right after Greenpeace had carried out an exciting environmental action by sending salt of the highly devastated East German river Werra ? caused by theEast German chemical industry and polluting West German rivers ? back to the GDR. Greenpeace used a balloon that crossed the wall back to East Germany ? a wonderful action widely reported in West Germany and ? of course – damned in the GDR. From the bottom of my heart, I wanted to be a member of this organization. I admired the brave campaigners who fought a battle against politicians and companies, which did not care about the environment. Of course, Greenpeace could not accept my application ? I learnt later that the NGO accepts only a handful of members ? but started to send the organization?s monthly magazine, which I received regularly. From that time I clearly knew that I want to be an active member of the environmental movement once the chance would be there. Getting more and more frustrated with my job at he Ministry I was working with (but this is another story), I quit my job in the early 1989 and started a carrier as a tram diver. I was the only graduated physicist in the GDR who worked as a tram driver. In November 1989 the wall came down. I still worked with the East Berlin State traffic company, the ?Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe?. Life started to change. The green groups left the churches and organized themselves as a Green Party or as diverse environmental organizations. I began to make contacts. First to the newly founded Green Party where I almost became one of the first green members of the Berlin Senate, later to the green groups and initiatives. I assisted developing the first Independent Institute for Environmental concerns (the UfU) in 1990 that celebrated its 15. Anniversary last year. At the same time I made a contact to Greenpeace Germany that opened an office in East Berlin in spring 1990. Finally, I got the chance to join Greenpeace. This was the only reason why I rejected the carrier as a Parliamentarian at the Berlin Senate. Tired by the East German politics, I did not believe in the power of the new political groups to make an impact, so trusted NGOs such as Greenpeace, which worked ?outside of the establishment?. When I was offered the Head position of the East Berlin Greenpeace office end of 1990, I thought to have reached the top of my dreams. I quickly realized that Greenpeace in the former GDR had to choose a different campaign approach than Greenpeace in the ?developed? western world. People from my country were tired to learn only about problems and to see fights between activists and causal agents. Living in a country where environmental information was a State secret, we first had to learn what, in fact, has happened before we could think how to answer with Greenpeace-like tools. My staff, therefore, focused on research and information, and on advocacy of environmental legislation taken over from West Germany. Another working approach – totally new to Greenpeace and probably introduced in the organization?s activity portfolio by us – was to develop solutions. This caused a general debate in the German Greenpeace office: Would it not just enough to show the problems and attack those who are in charge? Why should solutions matter? Should not those who have created the problems, think of resolving them? Whilst many of the West German Greenpeace campaigners were in favor of the simple identification of ?who is guilty and make this public?, we from East Germany introduced our way of acting to give the people concerned an idea of how to get rid of the problem ? give hope and show there is a solution. We also realized very quickly that we had to ?translate? Greenpeace Germany´s campaign topics to what is relevant to the former GDR. For example, nuclear power was not the main topic ? the GDR ran only 2 small reactors, the one declared as a scientific reactor, but drinking water was a problem. So was air pollution. Against some resistance of our German colleagues in Hamburg, the Greenpeace branch office GDR focused on water and air pollution by the Chemical industry and on environmental education. The Greenkid program ? intended to make children aware of environmental problems and give them some tools for solution ? was a story of success. Besides some new leadership skills ? how to lead and develop a bunch of motivated young people to a high-performance team ? I learnt that the activities of a NGO should respond to a special need and/or should create awareness and motivation to assist change based on the life experience of the people concerned. 15 years later, up to today, I am trying to communicate this basic truth to everyone I am working with. In 1993 the East German office merged almost totally with the West German office ? a fact that frustrated us quite a bit, as we, being the David, and the Hamburg office, being the Goliath, had to compete about focus and direction of the work in an quite unequal way. In this time, I learnt that Greenpeace International (GPI) was looking for a new CEE/CIS regional coordinator. The former coordinators ? an Austrian national and a US colleague ? resigned. I ? being the first East German person in GPI, was considered to be more ?sensitive? to the special situation of the people in Russia, Ukraine, Czech Republic, and Slovakia, hence I was hired in this position. I quickly realized why my predecessors had to fail. Being both very smart guys and lovely colleagues, their life reality and experience was light-years away from the reality of the people in these countries who had to undergo a transition where no-one knew the outcome. Probably my East-German origin and my experiences from the last 3 years helped to build trust. After being only one year in my new position, the heads of my Eastern European offices asked my to represent the region?s interest at the general Greenpeace International Council as their regional trustee . I accepted, though it was a strange situation, being on the one hand the ?boss?, on the other hand the trustee. I had to manage this dilemma (one could also speak of a conflict of interests) in a very diplomatic and convincing way, both towards my colleagues at GPI and my colleagues of the region. What I learnt was to openly communicate different interests and searching together a solution which can be accepted, even as a compromise. I did not succeed in every case – but, becoming more accepted and respected as a person, and making everyone believing that the Human Beings I was working with are the most valuable asset of the organization, I could manage better and better. I also learnt that, even if there are some mutual interests of the offices in my region, there was a lot of diversity. I had to develop a different relationship to any of my Directors, driven by their needs and the needs of GPI. I also had to persuade two of them to resign when I realized they were suffering more in this difficult and demanding job than they could (and should) stand. I left in 1996, because I was sure, the job was done. The offices were in a stable situation, staff turnover was reduced, and we even could identify and mobilize some additional funding beyond the GPI budget. Some of the young campaigners developed leadership qualities. Sergey, the former forest campaigner of Greenpeace Russia, is the Director of the Russian office for almost 10 years. My next job station was Friends of the Earth Germany, called BUND in German. This was a challenge of another kind. Whilst my former 2 jobs focused on developing young and immature NGOs, which needed mainly support and guidance, the German BUND was already one of the biggest and most experienced environmental NGOs in Germany. I was hired as one of the 3 CEOs, being responsible for the political direction and positions of BUND. Other than Greenpeace, which is by far no basic-democratic NGO – and this is for good reasons, otherwise it would need months to focus such a big global organization to a specific campaign or action ? BUND is. For me, this was a totally new experience. I used me to make decisions quite quickly, if possible unanimously with my team, if not by the majority ? and if there was no majority, just alone?. Now I felt to have almost no power in anything, but being reduced to a mediator. Though mediation was also a big aspect of my job in Greenpeace, as I said before, we were still small teams, which quickly found a way to get out of stagnation and could again focus on our purpose ? to work for a better environment. At BUND, with a membership of about 300.000 in these days, (today it is about 370.000, this was totally different. Of course, the three CEO´s ? being me responsible for politics and policies, and my colleagues responsible for PR, fundraising and communication and finance/administration, could in most cases manage to come to a shared agreement on topics, strategies, and activities, but the Board members could have very different opinions. With seven members serving at the Board and no rule how achieve agreement; one could be confronted with seven different positions, some of them extremely controversial. Besides the Board, there was (is) a Scientific Council, mainly assisting my work, but as extremely diverse in its opinion as the topics were they had to deal with. And there were the political bodies who supported the one or the other side or person, always according to the favored interests of their Bundesland or region. Let me give an example: I had to manage a highly controversial debate about how to phase out nuclear power plants in Germany. Whilst the more realistic federal BUND organizations proposed some concrete measures, which required a certain time, the radical groups promoted an immediate stop of the use of nuclear energy. In political terms, this was not realistic at all, but the radical groups meant if no one demands the ?just stop it now?, nothing would happen at all. The others wanted to support parts of the government (especially the German Greens) to become stronger and so finally to convince the rest of the government that nuclear power is an unsustainable and uneconomic energy source. Another topic, which was very controversial, was wind power. Whilst the nuclear energy opponents were strongly in favor of fostering wind power, the nature protection fraction, especially the bird protection groups, were against. They worried about threats to birds caused by the wind rotors. Since I left BUND; this conflict could not be resolved. As a consequence, BUND could not develop a clear political position if the organization likes or dislikes wind power. Of course, I did have my own opinion ? I always belonged and belong to the pragmatic and realistic side that wants to see achieve goals, even if they are small ? but I could not speak for myself. These endless debates almost paralyzed the organization and frustrated me. On the other hand, being quite an international person, I could quickly make the BUND a more international NGO that is engaged much stronger in the affairs of FoEI or quite supportive to FoEE . The success factor here was no clear position ? and even less interest ? of most BUND groups on international affairs of BUND. I found my niche and used it with the help of some youong BUND members who felt the organization should develop a stronger international profile. We succeeded in linking BUND much stronger to FoEE, thus involving BUND as a lobby orgaization in European environmental-related affairs, such as the debate about the Maastricht criteria and later the Aarhus convention. What I hated, but could not change, was the culture of many members to focus BUND on purely internal affairs ? power plays ? and forget the purpose of BUND: to mobilize as many Germans as possible to become active environment protectors and to act accordingly. By chance, I moved to China in 1999. My former partner got a job offer with the German development cooperation agency GTZ and I decided to accompany him for a limited period of 6 months, intended to check out if I could assist the emerging Chinese civil society with my experiences made over the last 9 years. After some research work and with the help of colleagues and friends in China, I could make contact to CANGO, the Chinese Association for NGO cooperation. CANGO is a local umbrella organization assisting Chinese grass root NGOs to get access to foreign and local funds aimed to implement local projects and to develop their capacities (please check www.cango.org). When I met Haoming Huang, the Executive Director, the first time, I was very excited by his spirit and optimism regarding the development of China?s civil society. In this time, China had only a handful ?real NGOs?, but many organizations like the former mass organizations I knew from the former GDR. In China, these organizations are called ?GONGOs?, what stands for Governmental Organized NGOs ? already by language a contradiction in itself. The first ?real? NGOs were permitted to be founded after the World Women?s conference hold nearby Beijing in 1995. Before this date, any independent citizen movement was considered to be illegal. Anyway, even if establishing of NGOs became easier at the beginning of the new millennium, the working conditions for NGOs have not been eased at all. Local fundraising was not allowed ? and is not up to date. The registration process required the NGO to find a ?sponsor?, what in fact had to be a State Institution that would act as the legal liable body for the NGO, as the NGO itself was not considered to be a legal body. There are more obstacles to the successful registration, thus most NGOs in that time did not even give a try to go for it, but registered either as a company (and had to pay taxes for any grants) or did not register at all. In this difficult environment, CANGO, which was by chance registered in 1997, played an increasing role as advocacy organization in lobbying for better working conditions of the third sector. My fist task as a volunteer for CANGO was to conduct a workshop at a conference organized by CANGO that gathered NGO representatives of Chinese organizations and of foreign organizations and Chinese officials in charge of NGO legislation . The workshop intended to introduce the participants in the German NGO legislation that was quite impressing attendants as the German NGO legislation is quite simple and pragmatic. When I joined CANGO as its International Senior Advisor ? a title, which requires the approval of the Board and is only given to a few foreign experts who assist CANGO ? we quickly started a debate about the strategic priorities for CANGO over the next five years. It was clear to the Board, the CANGO staff, who was actively involved in the strategic planning process, and me as a foreigner that the previous main task ? to mobilize foreign funding for local projects ? would not be a strategic priority in the future for following reasons: Fundraising operations within China would be supported in some years as the government needed to mobilize local funds for social tasks: foreign donations would drop to zero as China considered by more and more governments to be already a developed country. And finall, more and more Chinese NGOs were able to access foreign funding, so CANGO would have to compete and would loose its ?monopoly?. Instead of strengthening this branch, CANGO decided to assist young NGOs to grow up and develop proficiency as this was identified as a need in developing a strong third sector. A second priority was to build networks amongst the NGOs across China and amongst NGOs and other stakeholders such as the ethical corporations. CSR ? an unknown term when I started working with CANGO ? became very popular over the next years, not only because the NGOs were pushing companies to assist social and environmental development ? in fact, none of the NGOs was aware of the huge potential companies could offer ? but because companies, forced by their clients and customers, were prepared to assist the sustainable development in their host countries. We met very impressive people from the business sector who wanted to support good local projects of NGOs ? but it was almost impossible to identify a good project. As the result of the strategic planning process, CANGO changed its mission and vision to reflect the new challenges the NGO had to cope with. We founded the CANGO Vision Training Center (in fact, no center but a program) intended to assist grass root NGOs in their sound development, I could raise a budget of 500.000 Euro from EED , which was used to develop the training curricula, buy some equipment for the training program ? but mainly to enable our participants to come to the training. Today, after three years running the program, we have conducted more than 30 training weeks with more than 800 participants and without any external ?expensive? consultant. We have trained our own trainers, got access to a range of very skilled resource people, have adapted each training course to the special needs of our participants ? and became through this program very popular. When we conducted the 2-years evaluation, many participants told that their organizations made a great progress, some of our trainees founded their own NGO. When I left CANGO end of March, CANGO invited 150 trainees to participate in my farewell party. Though CANGO wanted to cover the costs for the participants, nobody requested any reimbursement. I think this is a very good indicator for the commitment and compassion of our NGO volunteers and staff. In fact, when comparing NGO people in China with those I worked with in Eastern Europe and Germany, I found much more similarities to my colleagues in Eastern Europe than in Germany. It is true that NGOs growing in a culture not prepared for NGOs have more difficulties to ?professionalize? themselves, but they show by far more motivation, initiative and sometimes encouragement than some colleagues from the already established organizations where many just do a job. I learnt a lot from my Chinese NGO colleagues who had to work in incredibly difficult conditions: They are driven by deep ethical values and spirits, they did not give up, even in the most difficult situations, many of them are outstanding inspiring people, amongst them the majority is female! I also met old ladies coming from the lower levels of the former mass organizations, such as the China All Women?s Association, who did not receive any State funding anymore, but who wanted (and they did) go ahead with their activities for the well-being of their beneficiaries, just started to ?transform? the GONGO in to a real NGO. I am very grateful for the experiences I could make in the last 15 years. I got the chance to experience the third sector ?top-down? ? as a CEO at BUND and an office head at Greenpeace, and ?bottom-up?, when working with and assisting grass root people and also in cooperating with them in their local projects in the field. Now, being back in Germany, but will remain the Senior Advisor to CANGO life-long (as the Board has just decided) I want to tell people about my experiences and I want to network them with the wonderful people I met in many countries. My vision is to assist building a global network of passionate, committed and skilled people, a real global Civil Society, where people care about the future of the planet by speaking with a strong mutual voice, but acting according to the local needs and opportunities. By acting together, replicating good experiences and assisting each other, I strongly believe, we can make the world a better place.