http://environment.independent.co.uk/green_living/article3024725.eceGreen charities lose out as donors ignore environmental issues
By Emily Dugan
Published: 04 October 2007
Despite growing concern for the state of the environment from Government and the public alike, only a tiny proportion of donations to charities go towards green causes, a report has revealed. Less than 2 per cent of UK charitable grants go towards environmental concerns, and only 5 per cent of the £8bn donated annually by private individuals goes to green charities.
The report from the New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) described these figures as puzzling and "woefully inadequate", warning that "we ignore environmental problems at our peril".
The environment is given a lower priority among donors than other concerns, such as medical research, which receives 19 per cent of the UK's charitable funding. Religious charities, and those dedicated to children and young people, are also popular, receiving 16 and 10 per cent of charitable funding respectively.
According to the report, The Green Philanthropy, the 100 largest UK charitable trusts allocate just 2 per cent of their £1.1bn annual funding into environmental charities. The report suggests this is partly down to a lack of information about how to fund green causes and which charities engage in environmental work.
Bernard Mercer, the author of the report, said: "There's a tremendous public conscience about poverty, but there isn't an analogous one for the environment. There are some shocking facts.
"For example, the Government's primary international programme for biodiversity, called the Darwin Initiative, only receives an annual budget of £7m. That's about a third of the cost of one city academy."
The report also suggests that green issues lose out to other charities because the public have only become aware of the scale of climate change issues relatively recently. "In part the problem is historical," said Mr Mercer. "We've only known about the gravity of environmental issues for a much shorter time than poverty. That's the past, but the future has got to be moving quite quickly. People are still very much describing the problem rather than analysing solutions."
The scale of environmental concerns is also off-putting to potential donors, the report said, and green charity fundraisers agree that this is their major stumbling block for funding.
Pippa Carte, director of fundraising at the Worldwide Fund (WWF), said: "I wasn't surprised by the numbers. Environmental issues are very complex, and people still find it quite confusing. There's a lot of uncertainty about when a crisis might occur, so there isn't the urgency that is felt on natural disaster appeals".
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