A Letter to Philanthropy: Saviorism Will Not Save Our Ecosystems

A woman floating in a pool of water while eagles fly above her and wolves sit on the river bank next to her. — Image credit: “Downside Up” by Renée Lapris

Editors’ note: This piece is from Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine’s fall 2024 issue, “Supporting the Youth Climate Justice Movement.”

On June 11, 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 12-year-old Canadian youth organizer Severn Cullis-Suzuki addressed the United Nations:

I am here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet, because they have nowhere left to go. I am afraid to go out in the sun now, because of the holes in our ozone. I am afraid to breathe the air, because I don’t know what chemicals are in it……………………… You teach us to not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share, not be greedy. Then, why do you go out and…do the things you tell us not to do? Do not forget why you are attending these conferences—who you’re doing this for. We are your own children. You are deciding what kind of a world we are growing up in.¹

Cullis-Suzuki became known as “the girl who silenced the world for five minutes.”² She has gone on to inspire countless youth activists and organizers fighting for climate and environmental justice—the issues raised in her speech 32 years ago being as critical now as they were back then, if not more so.³

A Failure of Leadership

The Rio Earth Summit had some limited successes, namely, the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),⁴ whose decision-making body, the Conference of Parties (COP), meets annually to discuss and act on global climate treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol (1997) and the Paris Agreement (2015). The thirtieth session—COP 30—will convene in Belém do Pará, a city in northern Brazil at the base of the Amazon, in 2025.⁵ Many of the pledges that were made at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 have still not been realized, such as the next steps from Agenda 21, a nonbinding treaty that initially aimed to achieve global sustainable development by the beginning of the 21st century. As of 2012, out of the 40 sectoral issues addressed in the treaty, 34 had made little to no progress on their goals.⁶ By 2010, the Convention on Biological Diversity, which was established at the Earth Summit, had failed to reach its goal of significantly reducing species extinction—with “30% of amphibians, 21% of birds and 25% of mammal species” at risk of annihilation.⁷ In 2023, those numbers had jumped significantly to 26 percent of mammals and 41 percent of amphibians—but with the positive news of a decreased risk for birds, now at 12 percent.⁸

More broadly, heads of state across the Global South decried the prevalence of “green imperialism,” accusing Northern countries of imposing their influence in the name of environmentalism.⁹

The 1992 Earth Summit was followed by several conferences at regular intervals, most notably—in 2012—Rio+20, which over 130 youth organizers and activists walked out of, proclaiming that the summit’s slogan should be changed from “The Future We Want” to “The Future We Bought”—and formed their own conference, the People’s Summit.¹⁰

In the 32 years since the Rio Earth Summit, the climate crisis has become ever more dire—and yet every year there are global conferences, meetings, and summits, all in the name of climate progress. At each of these gatherings, world leaders debate what needs to be done to mitigate the worst effects of the crisis, and every year treaties are presented and promises are made, only to fall short of the significant change that is needed¹¹—the level of change that will yank us out of our comfort zones and denounce a business-as-usual approach.

Philanthropy Fuels the Fire

Meanwhile, youth activists and organizers continue to be outspoken, recognizing that the climate crisis continues to worsen, exacerbated by such concurring injustices as poverty and wealth inequality, authoritarianism, and genocide.¹² This polycrisis¹³ is magnified by a deep-seated culture of individualism and saviorism, especially in the Global North.¹⁴ As heads of state continue to make speeches and wealthy donors continue to make multimillion-dollar pledges, youth are refusing to settle for the grandstanding diplomacy disguised as cooperation, and instead are organizing to build a future of deep solidarity and coconspiratorship.¹⁵

Philanthropy has added fuel to the fire that is saviorism disguised as progress. The billionaires and multimillionaires starting foundations and funds and pledging to save the planet are using money taken off the backs of those on the front lines.¹⁶ They pledge to curtail illegal logging, save endangered species, and invest in sustainable development—but on their terms. They platform themselves as having the solutions to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis while still maintaining calls for economic growth and prosperity. Yet much of the money does not reach the populations on the ground;¹⁷ local populations are often not consulted properly or trained in these development schemes;¹⁸ and the development is thus incongruous with stewardship.

As the world looks toward yet another UNFCCC meeting (COP 29 will be held in November 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan),¹⁹ and the planet continues to break global temperature records, I wonder what it would look like for philanthropy to help fund the solutions instead of reinforcing the problems. What would it look like for funders and donors to heed Cullis-Suzuki’s words, “You are deciding what kind of a world we are growing up in,” and fund without a profit-motivated trade-off? What would it look like to redistribute wealth in the name of solidarity instead of charity, recognizing that wealth does not give funders, donors, and other development actors the right to control the solutions of those on the front lines?

“The Lungs of the World”

Listening to Cullis-Suzuki’s speech again, in 2024, brought me back to my own origin story. In 2000, when I was 10 and in the fourth grade, my science teacher, Mrs. Mason, taught a unit on the Amazon Rainforest and its importance as “the lungs of the world.” One day, she announced to the class that she had received a grant to take four students to Iquitos, a town that is the gateway to the Peruvian Amazon, for a week. She held a letter-writing contest for interested fourth and fifth graders: Write a letter detailing the importance of protecting/ conserving the rainforest. Mrs. Mason chose three fifth-graders and me. Four months later, my mom and I were on a plane to Lima, and shortly after, we were on a boat on the Amazon River, heading straight into the jungle.

It feels impossible even now to describe the sheer enormity of the awe-inspiring flora and fauna that awaited me down the river. I befriended a capybara and saw a fireball comet burn brightly through the sky, as our guide Ari invited us to revel in the stillness of a night in the rainforest. I remember shaking while standing on a completely structurally sound and safe canopy walkway,115 feet off the ground—terrified and yet completely enamored with the tops of kapok, lupuna, and ojé trees at eye level.²⁰

I was overwhelmed by the diversity of the new things I was seeing, smelling, and hearing. Everything felt so much bigger than me. Everything there suddenly felt so important. I remember thinking that it was one thing to write abstractly about the importance of the rainforest and quite another to experience it. I did not understand at the time the complicated systems at play that led and continue to lead to the deforestation of the Amazon;²¹ but I knew that I wanted a hand in stopping it.

How does a 10-year-old even begin to try to save the rainforest?

The problem(s) felt too grand for my still-developing brain to grasp. Back home, I continued to deepen my love of nature, of being outside, of local wildlife (catching frogs found in my backyard, only to be told to release them back outside). I did not know about Cullis-Suzuki then. I did not know the history of youth organizing for environmental justice.²²

As I got older, I started calling myself an environmentalist, and I went to the University of Vermont for natural resources planning. Around this time, the messaging in many of my environmental classes was focused on “green consumerism” paired with individual action: take shorter showers, drive a Prius, wash out your recyclables, reuse your Ziploc bags. We could continue down this path of exponential growth and development if we were mindful of how we proceeded with our daily lives. Global warming was a slow-moving baseball, miles in front of us, that could be halted with a properly fitted catcher’s mitt. I continued to question, But how? How was it my responsibility as an individual to even make a dent in this crisis? How was my $50 recycled glass water bottle supposed to end deforestation?

In 2011, during my junior year of college, I returned to the Amazon—this time to Brazil. I was accepted and enrolled in a program, at the (now defunct) School for International Training, titled Amazon Resource Management and Human Ecology. I applied because I still often thought of my time in Peru, and I wanted to learn more about how, as an individual, I could make a difference thousands of miles away. At the time, I wanted desperately to work for an international aid agency such as the World Bank or USAID (United States Agency for International Development). I wanted to lead a sustainable development project, educate the local population on what the West had discovered about forest management and renewable energy. (Yes—I thought I was there to save these wise and deeply experienced land stewards from their misguided ways.)

The pace of my days during my four-month stay in Pará, Brazil, became rhythmic. Most days were spent in class learning about the communities that have called the Amazon home for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years, and how intertwined they are with the ecosystem. We often had class in the jungle itself, guided by our professor Gustavo, a local resident who walked with confidence, machete in hand, effortlessly naming every single plant and insect we came across.

We traveled through dusty, arid land that was once forest, visiting AgTech corporations, listening to engineers from Europe and the United States explain how they were conserving the land “somewhere over there,” as they promised. We shuffled our feet in the iron-dense clay soil, faces red from the dust. We visited a massive hydroelectric plant that was sucking local rivers dry and sending the energy produced to the south of Brazil, to the detriment of local fishing-reliant communities. We stood in the middle of an aluminum bauxite mining pit managed by an American mining company, and I could not hear the birds. It was just silence and sweltering heat.

We traveled by boat for two weeks, sleeping in hammocks, looking up at the Milky Way at night, and picturing ourselves pedaling through the stars. I had only experienced darkness so bright once before, in Peru, eleven years prior. I remember seeing the smoke rising from the trees every thousand feet or so during the day—illegal logging followed by slash-and-burn agriculture. It was sobering.

We stayed three nights in a Quilombola village,²³ where I was nearly swept down a waterfall and was bitten by a piranha two days later (yes, it hurt; a lot). I learned how to play soccer (poorly) and listened to stories of liberation through songs. The African-descended Quilombola population live in tight-knit communities surrounding the Tocantins River, and rely on fishing and agriculture to survive. The arrival of palm oil plantations and the nearby hydroelectric plant has threatened to erase their way of life. Quilombolas could still live in their homes, but some of that land now belongs to the palm oil companies, which stake the population’s continued residency on working for them.²⁴ This is an incredibly common arrangement that I saw from many extractive companies—entire towns built/transformed around an industry: barely legal indentured servitude.

A few weeks later, we stayed with communities that were part of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra (MST)—in English, the Landless Workers’ Movement.²⁵ We talked to people who were on the run from private security forces hired to protect agricultural land from MST settlers—and on the same afternoon, we learned how to manually dry cacao seeds for export, part of a sustainable development project financed by one international aid organization or another. We stayed in abandoned concrete houses that the World Bank had built in the 1990s for the communities, to “modernize” them. They were hot, poorly ventilated, and surrounded by mosquitoes. I could not help but smile with pleasure at this small form of resistance from the communities, who traditionally live in houses made from naturally cooling local plant and wood materials.

I spent two weeks on Ilha do Marajó, a small island in the Amazon River, writing my independent study project on another cacao processing project taking place there. I stayed with a local researcher who was writing her PhD thesis on the project. She took me into her “backyard” to forage for wild herbs and greens for dinner, complete with freshly baked bread and butter from local water buffalo (who were transported to the island via ship hundreds of years ago and now call the island home).²⁶ I handwrote most of my study sitting on the beach, hoping to catch glimpses of pink river dolphins swimming by.

Stewards of the Amazon

I share these experiences because they bring together the inner workings of the jungle with the people who call it home, forever intertwined. If I wanted to have a hand in conserving the rainforest, I needed to understand its people—the stewards of the Amazon. At the time, I still thought sustainable development was the answer, and that the solutions came from a “nicer” version of capitalism. There was/is a myth that development can be sustainable; that transforming the topography and functioning of one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet can be done on a grand scale and still do minimal harm. But I’ve seen what development is doing to the region and have spent time with people whose only option is to fight it, no matter the cost.

What became clear during my time in the Amazon was that forest conservation and stewardship was necessarily political and an act of resistance. Many of the community members we talked to were young and energized. They knew the ins and outs of the rainforest, how to take only what was needed and leave the rest. Their ways of life were dotted with comforts of modernity, but their connection to the land was undeniable.

They were dependent on it and on each other to protect it. We cannot talk about protecting the rainforest without also considering the people who are already doing just that. Especially the youth. This is their home too, and their future.

My outlook changed. Though I had yet to be fully radicalized as an organizer (it would be a few more years before I became fully immersed in that world), I had a much deeper understanding of how neocolonialism, disguised as development and aid, has created and exacerbated the dire situation the region is in today.²⁷ We should not get to sit in comfortable air-conditioned rooms at climate conferences discussing how to protect a crucial ecosystem and the continued overextraction of the resources that are needed for that ecosystem’s functioning.

As more promises and pledges for legislation and funding fall short of monumental change, I see more young folks rising up and reminding those of us who have become disillusioned that we cannot surrender. These days, when I talk about my experiences in the Amazon rainforest, I am solemn: “I hope to go back and visit while it is still there.”

When I hear people in Western nations talk about the Amazon in relation to the climate crisis, I often hear the term “carbon sink.”²⁸ There are pledges from wealthy donors such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who in 2023 granted $50 million via 10 grants to the Brazilian Amazon in the name of conservation.²⁹ But conservation for whom? One of these grants is called “Carbon Market Training for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in the Brazilian Amazon,”³⁰ the purpose being to train Indigenous and traditional communities on how to benefit from carbon market schemes. Trees as dollar signs—capitalism at its finest.

The Amazon is a resource state for wealthier nations:³¹ a place to exploit via extractive mining, cattle ranching, hydroelectric dams, palm oil, crude oil, sugarcane harvesting, logging, poaching, and various other monoculture crops such as soybeans and corn for animal feed and food-additive production.³² In 2019, when Jair Bolsonaro became president, deforestation for these activities skyrocketed.³³ The region is also one of the most dangerous places to be an environmental activist, with at least 342 activists murdered in the Brazilian Amazon between 2012 and 2021, a figure that is likely underreported.³⁴

The Amazon does not need “saviors”: wealthy donors platforming themselves as experts. It needs organizers and activists. It needs people whose livelihoods are connected to the land to decide how to protect it for generations to come. That land belongs to them, not us. Philanthropy can be in solidarity with Amazonians on the front lines by funding land stewardship, food sovereignty, just transitions, and resistance to development and deforestation. Funders can do this without attaching their own agendas to that money. And there are funders already doing this work: CLIMA Fund; Grassroots International; CS Fund; and Rainforest Action Network, to name a few.

***

As individualism and saviorism become further entrenched in society, so does the resistance.³⁵ As more promises and pledges for legislation and funding fall short of monumental change, I see more young folks rising up and reminding those of us who have become disillusioned that we cannot surrender. These days, when I talk about my experiences in the Amazon rainforest, I am solemn: “I hope to go back and visit while it is still there”; “I wish my future children could have the experiences that I had.” As someone aging out of youth, I find solace and hope in how naturally it comes to younger organizers today to organize collectively and reject the notion of individualism. The future of the Amazon Rainforest is connected to the fights for clean air and water, arable land, food sovereignty, fair housing, antimilitarism, and antiauthoritarianism around the world.

The issue of resource extraction for the benefit of wealthier nations is a systemic problem that cannot be solved without wealth redistribution and collective organizing and solidarity with those who are on the front lines of the crisis.

As we look toward COP 30 in the Brazilian Amazon, I call out to funders, nonprofit leaders, and state negotiators: direct your energy and your grant-making to those on the ground, not to Western organizations acting as saviors. Do not platform yourselves as experts just because you are wealthy. That money does not belong to you; it was extracted from those who should have a say in their own futures. Fund international solidarity; join the calls from those on the ground who are fighting development-aid schemes; and heed the calls of youth organizers who will inherit these ecosystems.

Notes

“Severn Suzuki: Speech at UN Conference on Environment and Development,” American Rhetoric: Online Speech Bank, accessed June 28, 2024, americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ severnsuzukiunearthsummit.htm.
Original source
“Bio,” Severn Cullis-Suzuki, July 6, 2020, com/bio/.
“UN Climate Change Conferences,” United Nations, accessed June 28, 2024, un.org/en/climatechange/un-climate-conferences.
“Brazil is formally elected host country for COP 30,” Planalto, December 11, 2023, gov.br/planalto/en/latest-news/2023/12/brazil-is-formally-elected-host-country-for-cop-30.
See Felix Dodds, Kirsty Schneeberger, and Farooq Ullah, Sustainable Development in the 21st Century Project: Review of implementation of Agenda 21 and the Rio Principles (UK, US, and the Netherlands: Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future, 2012).
Jeff Tollefson and Natasha Gilbert, “Earth summit: Rio report card,” Nature 486 (June 2012): 22.
Sharon Guynup, “Global study of 71,000 animal species finds 48% are declining,” Mongabay, June 5, 2023, mongabay.com/2023/06/global-study-of-71000-animal-species-finds-48-are-declining/; and “Table 1a: Number of species evaluated in relation to the overall number of described species, and numbers of threatened species by major groups of organisms,” IUCN Red List, International Union for Conservation of Nature, last updated June 27, 2024, www.iucnredlist.org/resources/summary-statistics#Summary Tables.
See Vandana Shiva, “Conflicts of Global Ecology: Environmental Activism in a Period of Global Reach,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 19, 2 (1994): 195–207.
Common Dreams Staff, “Rio+20 Fail: Youth Lead Walkout of UN Summit,” Common Dreams, June 6, 2012, commondreams.org/news/2012/06/21/rio20-fail-youth-lead-walkout-un-summit.
Miriam Prys-Hansen et , “Contestation in the UNFCCC: The Case of Climate Finance,” in Contested World Orders: Rising Powers, Non-Governmental Organizations, and the Politics of Authority Beyond the Nation-State, ed. Matthew D. Stephen and Michael Zürn (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019), 272–92.
See “2024 ESG Forum on ‘Re-imagining Earth System Governance in an Era of Polycrisis,’” accessed June 28, 2024, earthsystemgovernance.org/2024-forum/; Carlos Tornel, “The Genocide In Gaza Is Also A Terricide: Reflections On The Climate Crisis And The Collapse Of Western Civilization,” Undisciplined Environments, May 21, 2024, undisciplinedenvironments.org/2024/05/21/the-genocide-in-gaza-is-also-a -terricide-reflections-on-the-climate-crisis-and-the-collapse-of-western-civilization/; Dahr Jamail, “Indigenous Wisdom During The Great Unraveling,” Resilience, October 12, 2023, www.resilience.org/stories/2023-10-12/indigenous-wisdom-during-the-great-unraveling/; and “Covid-19, climate change, armed conflicts: world’s crises can lead to interconnected polycrisis,” Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, January 17, 2024, www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/covid-19-climate-change-armed-conflicts-world2019s-crises-can -lead-to-interconnected-polycrisis.
See, for example, Claudia Ciobanu et , Trends Report 2024: Life in the Time of “Polycrisis” (Reporting Democracy, 2024).
Eric Daniels, “A Brief History of Individualism in American Thought,” in For the Greater Good of All: Perspectives on Individualism, Society, and Leadership, Donelson R. Forsyth and Crystal L. Hoyt (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); and Teju Cole, “The White-Savior Industrial Complex,” The Atlantic, March 21, 2012, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/.
See John Foran, Summer Gray, and Corrie Grosse, “‘Not yet the end of the world’: Political cultures of opposition and creation in the Global youth climate justice movement,” Interface 9, 2 (Nov/Dec 2017): 353–79.
See Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Democracy: A Global Citizens’ Report on the Corporate Control of Technology, Health, and Agriculture, Vandana Shiva (Santa Fe, NM: Synergetic Press, 2022); Nathan J. Robinson, “How Bill Gates Makes the World Worse Off,” interview with Linsey McGoey, Current Affairs, July 29, 2022, www.currentaffairs.org/news/2022/07/how-bill-gates-makes-the-world-worse-off; and Linsey McGoey, “Philanthrocapitalism and Its Critics,” in Poetics 40, no. 2 (April 2012): 185–99.
Michael Kavate, “More Funding is Flowing to Support Indigenous How Much Is Making it to the Front Lines?,” Inside Philanthropy, January 24, 2024, www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2024/1/24/more -funding-is-flowing-to-support-indigenous-peoples-how-much-is-making-it-to-the-front-lines.
See Mark Langan, “Neo-Colonialism and Donor Interventions: Western Aid Mechanisms,” in Neo-Colonialism and the Poverty of “Development” in Africa (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 61–88.
“UN Climate Change Conference Baku—November 2024: 11 Nov–22 Nov,” UN Climate Change, accessed June 28, 2024, int/cop29.
“Canopy Walkway,” Amazon River Expeditions, accessed July 14, 2024, amazonriverexpeditions .com/en/destinations/canopy-walkway/.
See Aline Hänggli et , “A systematic comparison of deforestation drivers and policy effectiveness across the Amazon biome,” Environmental Research Letters 18, no. 7 (June 2023): 073001.
See Julie Quiroz-Martinez, Diana Pei Wu, and Kristen Zimmerman, ReGeneration: Young People Shaping Environmental Justice (Oakland, CA: Movement Strategy Center, 2005).
See “Quilombolas Communities in Brazil,” Comissão Pró-Índio de São Paulo, June 10, 2024, accessed July 14, 2024, org.br/direitosquilombolas/observatorio-terras-quilombolas/quilombolas-communities -in-brazil/.
Miguel Pinheiro, “In Brazil’s Amazon, Quilombolas fight the erasure of their African heritage,” Mongabay, May 17, 2022, mongabay.com/2022/05/in-brazils-amazon-quilombolas-fight-the-erasure-of-their-african -heritage/.
See “What Is the MST?,” Friends of the MST, accessed June 28, 2024, mstbrazil.org/content/what-mst.
Simon Romero, “To Soften Image, Brazilian Police Ride In Atop Horned Beasts,” New York Times, June 20, 2015, nytimes.com/2015/06/21/world/americas/to-soften-image-brazilian-police-ride-in-atop-horned -beasts.html.
See Langan, “Neo-Colonialism and Donor ”
See “What is a carbon sink,” ClientEarth, clientearth.org/latest/news/what-is-a-carbon-sink/; and “Deforestation, warming flip part of Amazon forest from carbon sink to source,” NOAA Research, July 14, 2021, research.noaa.gov/2021/07/14/deforestation-warming-flip-part-of-amazon-forest-from-carbon-sink-to -source/.
“Brazilian Amazon,” Bezos Earth Fund, accessed June 28, 2024, bezosearthfund.org/initiatives/brazilian-amazon-rainforest.
“Bezos Earth Fund Announces $9.7 Million to Provide Carbon Market Training for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in the Brazilian Amazon,” April 20, 2023, Bezos Earth Fund, accessed June 28, 2024, www .bezosearthfund.org/news-and-insights/9-million-carbon-market-training-indigenous-peoples-local -communities-brazilian-
Thais Borges and Sue Branford, “Historical analysis: The Amazon’s mineral wealth—curse or blessing?,” Mongabay, December 21, 2020, mongabay.com/2020/12/historical-analysis-the-amazons-mineral -wealth-curse-or-blessing/.
Jonathan Watts, Patrick Greenfield, and Bibi van der Zee, “The multinational companies that industrialised the Amazon rainforest,” The Guardian, June 2, 2023, theguardian.com/global-development/2023/jun /02/the-multinational-companies-that-industrialised-the-amazon-rainforest.
Benji Jones, “Earth’s future depends on the This month, it’s up for a vote,” Vox, October 3, 2022, www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2022/9/29/23373427/amazon-rainforest-brazil-jair-bolsonaro-lula -deforestation.
Ali Hines, “Decade of defiance,” Global Witness, last modified May 10, 2023, globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/decade-defiance/.
See Foran, Gray, and Grosse, “‘Not yet the end of the ’”