Green NGOs feel the heat

A recent editorial on NetZeroWatch notes that ‘there is so much disinformation put out by the so-called Green Blob – the swamp of activists and renewables subsidy junkies who dominate the public debate’. That is an understatement, and the developments over in Brussels in this regard may be of interest to the UK.

A report by the European Court of Auditors, the European Union’s in-house watchdog, reveals how, between 2021 and 2023, the EU dished out €7 billion to 90 NGOs through funds focused on environmental policy, migration or science. Thirty of them received more than 40% of EU funds between 2014 and 2023 – some €3.3 billion.

The auditors condemned the EU Commission’s monitoring as ‘opaque’. They also warn that the figures in its report ‘should be taken with caution, as there is no reliable overview of EU money paid to NGOs’, lamenting that ‘the information is published in a fragmented way, which hampers transparency, impedes analysis of whether EU funds are overly concentrated on a small number of NGOs, and restricts insight into the role of NGOs in EU policies’. The Commission has already declined to provide clear information on EU funding for NGOs, after being asked to do so by Members of European Parliament.

The auditors report follows revelations by Dutch daily De Telegraaf that the EU Commission had been paying green NGOs, via its environmentalist LIFE fund, to lobby for the EU’s ‘Green Deal’, a series of costly climate policies.

In particular, the auditors complain:

Despite improvements, information on EU funding awarded to NGOs that are active in the bloc’s internal policies remains inaccurate and incomplete. The European Commission did not properly disclose certain EU-funded advocacy activities such as lobbying.”

The Commission has admitted in response that effectively ‘in some cases work programmes submitted by the NGOs (...) contained specific advocacy actions and undue lobbying activities. The Commission has taken action to prevent such cases in the future and will take further measures to strengthen transparency and include appropriate safeguards.’ Furthermore, it also agreed to not allow any grants given to NGOs participating from its LIFE fund for ‘lobbying that targets specific policies or MEPs’.

The situation in the UK

We can see exactly the same thing in the UK. There are more than 170,000 charities in the UK, and they spent £94 billion in 2024. Many are heavily dependent on taxpayers’ money, and use this largesse to lobbying the government. Most of the latter are well connected. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, for example, appointed the CEOs of green NGOs The Wildlife Trust and the Centre for Net Zero to his Clean Power 2030 Advisory Commission.

Oxfam is another example, being funded to a large extent by the UK's Department for International Development (DfID), the European Union and the United Nations. It uses this money to issue alarmist warnings about a ‘climate crisis’, a claim widely dismissed as unscientific. It also spouts Marxist propaganda, lamenting in its Climate Equality report that ‘the richest 1% emit as much planet-heating pollution as two-thirds of humanity…”. This is surely inappropriate for a ‘charity’.

Unfortunately, few people seem to ask questions about the legitimacy of these activities and whether organisations that receive most of their funding from the state truly are are part of ‘civil society’. But is it surely time that someone took a closer look.