Take the World Wildlife Fund, or WWF, a green giant with over $600 million in assets. WWF and McDonald’s are both founding members of the beef roundtable, and later, the two worked together on other beef-related projects. In fact, that inaugural conference in 2010 was officially titled the World Wildlife Fund Global Conference on Sustainable Beef. (WWF has helped to found similar industry roundtables for poultry and soy — most of which is fed to farmed animals — and a certification program for seafood.)
For its collaboration, McDonald’s makes sure WWF is well compensated; from 2015 to 2022, the company donated $4.5 to $9 million to WWF-US.
From 2017 to 2022, WWF-US brought in approximately $12 million to $28.6 million from various meat, dairy, seafood, fast food, restaurant, and grocery companies, including Tyson Foods, Cargill, Burger King, Costco, Walmart, Red Lobster, Chobani, and Dairy Management Inc., a dairy trade group.
I listened to a lecture once where the speaker related her story of working with indigenous/tribal peoples in East Africa and how the central government sent in armed men to displace them from their ancestral lands, burn their villages, etc and seize them for a climate mitigation effort funded by one of the Nordic states’ public fund to carbon offset their oil, and all of this was brokered by WWF.
the focus was on how bad climate science was driving worse policy and facilitating neocolonial land grabs.
anyway, what the bad actors didn’t count on was that this researcher had lived with these people for like 18+ months and they routinely stayed in contact because people have cell phones now, so she documented their experiences and ended up writing an journal article about the phenomenon which the Nordic state fund reps were pretty upset to learn what was being done in their behalf… and how it might blow back on them back home, because none of the messaging for offsets included funding state terror, expropriation, eviction, etc. there was lots of damage control and revisions and hasty/sloppy attempts to deny, but it was a clusterfuck.
but the creme de la creme was apparently at a public conference with a panel discussion on the topic, a PR/lawyer for the WWF leaned over, covered their mic and to this small framed academic who wrote the article and said, “who the fuck do you think you are? we will destroy you.” happy to report she remains undestroyed and has a career lol.
so anyway, that was one of my takehomes that day. the WWF is just another capital formation and it is just as ruthless, evil and anti-public science as any oil company.
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ex Belgian colonists in Congo run all of the national parks and wildlife funds
THOSE FUCKERS ARE STILL AT IT?!
one of them is a literal prince of Belgium, descendant of Leopold
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The WWF hires mercenaries in Africa to do “anti poaching” missions. Some of these mercenaries are operated by ex-Rhodesian military members.
Of course, this results in abuses of prisoners and random villagers who have nothing to do with poaching. They also have ties with the CIA and Rhodesians, helping to foster coups and anti communist/anti anti-colonial struggles during the cold war, and allow trophy hunting for the very rich to “conserve” endangered species
