WWF and Arctic environmentalism: Conservationism and the ENGO in the Circumpolar North

By Danita Catherine Burke

Based on interviews with WWF representatives and other experts, this book explores WWF’s approach to engagement in the Circumpolar North. It argues that the foundation of WWF’s success in circumpolar engagement is based on four inter-related pillars: legacy, networks, scientific research and communication style. The book argues that WWF has made remarkable strides to distinguish itself in Arctic and northern engagement through its Global Arctic Programme and national organisations and associated offices in the Arctic states. However, WWF’s work and successes are illustrative of the need for environmental and animal rights organisations to adopt a long-term strategy that show commitment to helping in the Arctic and North which factor in the needs and desires of northerners if they want their work to resonate and be welcomed by key northern audiences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: Jan 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781526153814

Book preview

WWF and Arctic environmentalism

ffirs01-fig-5001.jpg

WWF and Arctic environmentalism

Conservationism and the ENGO in the Circumpolar North

Danita Catherine Burke

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Danita Catherine Burke 2022

The right of Danita Catherine Burke to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press

Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 5261 5382 1 hardback

First published 2022

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Cover image:

Polar bear with cub on the ice in the Arctic Ocean north of western Russia. Published by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Photo Mike Dunn.

Cover design:

Abbey Akanbi, Manchester University Press

Typeset

by New Best-set Typesetters Ltd

Contents

List of figures and tables

Acknowledgements

List of abbreviations

Introduction

1 NGOs in the North: concerns, challenges and audiences

2 Legacy: the burdens and benefits of the WWF brand

3 Networks: roots for success or reputational liability?

4 Leading with science: WWF and scientific engagement

5 Getting your point across: the WWF communication style

6 Perceptions of WWF in the Arctic

Conclusion

Appendix A: Data collection

Appendix B: WWF Global Arctic Programme personnel

References

Index

List of figures and tables

List of figures

1.1 Greatest threat facing the Arctic: summary of ‘Arctic public opinion survey, vol. 2’ (2015) results

List of tables

1.1 Greatest threat facing the Arctic (percentage)

4.1 WWF Arctic contribution to the Arctic Council: 2016 observer report

Acknowledgements

The process of researching, writing and publishing this book spans seven years and there are many people, funders and institutions that helped me along the way. Firstly, I must thank all the people who participated in my research projects that inform this book. Particularly I would like to thank the WWF representatives, Arctic state and Permanent Participant representatives to the Arctic Council and all other interviewees, including Greenpeace representatives, Halldór Jóhannsson, Warren Bernauer, Mayor Jerry Natanine, academics/researchers and Indigenous community leaders. Their involvement is invaluable for my research and this book would not have been possible without the willingness to share their insights and experiences with me.

Secondly, I would like to acknowledge and thank my funders. The majority of the research was completed while I was funded by a European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 746312 (2018–20). Additional research came from an earlier project funded by the Carlsberg Foundation in which I received a Distinguished Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (Project Number: CF15–0434) (2016–18). The Carlsberg project laid the foundation for inspiration and success of the subsequent Marie Curie project research. Lastly, supplementary research from the Centre for Newfoundland Studies, Memorial University of Newfoundland came from research undertaken while a Fellow of the J. R. Smallwood Foundation (2020–22) on the legacy of the anti-sealing movement from the 1960s to 1980s on the peoples of the Canadian Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The Centre for Newfoundland Studies research helps to contextualize the legacy of environmental and animal rights organizations, including WWF, in the Circumpolar North.

I also owe a debt of gratitude to my institution, University of Southern Denmark (SDU), and colleagues at the Department of Political Science and Public Management who supported me throughout my research projects and the process of writing this book. In particular, I thank Tina Guldbrandt Jakobsen, Morten Kallestrup, Signe Pihl-Thingvad, Bess Egede Rogers, Ann Skovly, Anette Schmidt, Arne Bækdal Hansen, Rasmus Reimer Ejsing, Kurt Klaudi Klausen, Klaus Petersen, Arjen van Dalen and Romana Careja. Additionally, many thanks to my colleagues at the Center for War Studies, SDU, especially Vincent Keating, Pål Røren, Amelie Theussen, Sten Rynning, Chiara de Franco, Peter Viggo Jakobsen, Tanja Marie Hansen, Trine Flockhart, Vicky Karyoti, Olivier Schmitt and many others past and present.

Furthermore, the Marie Curie project underpinning much of this book's research was hosted for a secondment at Keele University from March to September 2018. Special thanks to David Scrivener and Brian Doherty for all their guidance, feedback and support while in Keele, UK, with particular thanks to Teale N. Phelps Bondaroff who worked tirelessly with me while at Keele to write ‘Becoming an Arctic Council NGO observer’, published in the Polar Record journal – an article that helped inspire the conceptualization of this book. Thank you, as well, to colleague André Saramago.

Special thanks to Ulrik Pram Gad, founder of the Arctic Seminar Series based in Copenhagen, Denmark jointly at the University of Copenhagen and Aalborg University, for the opportunity to present early chapters of this book and receive vital feedback from polar scholars from the Kingdom of Denmark. This feedback enabled me to strengthen my book's focus and approach, which ultimately helped me to obtain the publishing contract.

Additionally many thanks to Colleen Field, archivist at the Centre for Newfoundland Studies, and to her colleagues for their help with archival data collection at the Centre, and to Nicole Holloway of the Ferriss Hodgett Library, Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland for her library assistance. Together Colleen and her colleagues and Nicole were of tremendous help navigating restrictions in place in 2020 at the time of the completion of this book due to the COVID-19 pandemic and global, national and provincial lockdown restrictions and travel impediments. The research at the Centre and access to Memorial's library resources would not have been possible without their help.

Lastly, a special thanks to my family. Their support and love helped me throughout the process of researching, writing and publishing the book, especially as I navigated the challenges of remote researching and working during the COVID-19 pandemic.

List of abbreviations

Introduction

The World Wide Fund for Nature/World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is one of the most recognizable international environmental non-governmental organizations (IENGOs) in the world. The iconic panda symbol is known around the globe but in recent years a different bear has taken centre stage in the organization's work: the polar bear. The Arctic has become one of the organization's prominent focus areas in the twenty-first century, but what the general public is less aware of is the fact that WWF has been involved in northern conservationism work for decades. WWF's Arctic work at the regional/international level is led by the WWF Global Arctic Programme (WWF Arctic), which is a multinational programme that draws expertise from WWF national organizations in the Arctic states (and their associate offices)¹ and the national organizations in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

Within academic literature about WWF's Arctic and northern engagement, much attention is given to cursory references about the organization's participation as an observer within the Arctic region's pre-eminent forum for environmental protection and economic development work – the Arctic Council. It is true that WWF is involved in the Arctic Council and has been an observer for over twenty years, but what is not clear is how the organization has managed to carve out a place for itself in Arctic and northern discussions and decision-making and whether its participation is even welcome or adding value to help address local interests and concerns.² In this book I delve into the work of WWF in the Arctic and the North and focus on how it has built its role in regional discussions and decision-making in order to engage different local, national, regional and international audiences.

Understanding how an organization like WWF is engaging various audiences in the Circumpolar North is important for two key reasons. First, WWF ‘is the world's largest and one of the most experienced independent conservation organisations’ (Chasek et al., 2014: 86). As such, when considering how IENGOs influence global environmental politics, WWF stands out for its size and duration and is, therefore, a valuable case study. Second, WWF has an Arctic/North-specific focus in its work through WWF Arctic and the work in its national organizations in the Arctic states, but the Arctic work of WWF's offices has not received much detailed attention in academic literature. Rather, acknowledgement of WWF's presence in the Arctic often comes from the organization's own promotion and information material (e.g. WWF, n.d., ‘The Circle’),³ its website (WWF, n.d., ‘The Arctic’), references to WWF Arctic's presence as an observer within the Arctic Council in academic writing (Koivurova et al., 2009; Knecht, 2017; Graczyk, 2011) and in broad discussion about the contrast between WWF's northern work and the other environmental organizations who have an overtly negative legacy in parts of the North and Arctic, such as Greenpeace (Burke,

2020c).

This book builds on the existing scholarship about WWF's work in the Arctic by researchers like Timo Koivurova, E. Carina H. Keskitalo and Nigel Bankes (2009) and Sebastian Knecht (2017) and aims to bridge the research gap in our awareness and understanding about WWF's overarching approach toward Arctic and northern engagement, while also highlighting areas which all environmental and animal rights organizations must take into consideration when coordinating campaigns and agendas and targeting them toward different audiences. It does not attempt to provide a summation of all of the work of WWF Arctic and the national organizations and associate offices on Arctic and northern issues. Instead the book focuses on increasing our understanding of WWF's presence in the Circumpolar North by examining its overarching approach toward its work and how its approach is received and perceived by key audiences in the region.

The book argues that WWF has adopted an insider strategy to foster relations with two key regional audiences: (1) Arctic governments and (2) northern communities and peoples, notably Indigenous peoples. The capacity and appeal of WWF's strategy and the receptiveness to it by its target audiences are grounded in four inter-related pillars: (1) legacy; (2) networks; (3) scientific research; and (4) communication style. These pillars are distilled from interviews I conducted with WWF representatives from the national organizations and WWF Arctic who work on Arctic/northern issues. The thematic selection of the pillars is triangulated through additional interviews with civil servants, diplomats and Indigenous peoples’ representatives. The insights of these individuals from outside of the WWF organization who routinely interact with WWF representatives help to provide insight into the perception and regional reception of WWF's engagement efforts and its proposed and existing northern-focused work.

⁴

Outline

Chapter 1 contextualizes the book's exploration of how WWF approaches its Arctic work and how it is received by regional, national and local actors by situating WWF's work within the wider context of the history of IENGO involvement in the North. It introduces core concepts necessary to understand the operating conditions for environmental and animal rights organizations, and WWF in particular, in the Circumpolar North and what factors like trust, moral legitimacy and stigma are and what role they play in the capacity of IENGOs to make inroads into the Arctic with different audiences in the region.

This chapter emphasizes that WWF has waded into a geopolitical landscape in which local audiences, particularly in the North American North, Iceland and Norway, are predisposed to be sceptical toward non-local IENGOs owing to historical events and negative experiences at the hands of environmental and animal rights activists. As such, the local audiences can find it difficult to distinguish between and trust different non-state actors focused on environmental issues. Understanding the geopolitical context, WWF is trying to distinguish itself from the negative perceptions of the IENGO category of actors, while balancing its mandate and philosophical approach to conservation with the interests and concerns of its supporters and donors situated outside of the North and the needs, wants and interests of local peoples in the region.

Chapter 2 explores the WWF legacy. In order to examine the legacy, the chapter examines the organization's structure and advocacy history. It focuses on the work that the national organizations and WWF Arctic have done to distinguish themselves from the negative legacy of IENGOs in the Circumpolar North, and the Arctic in particular.⁵ This chapter discusses the broader legacies of the anti-sealing and anti-whaling movements, which have had a profound impact on the receptiveness of local audiences in many parts of the North and Arctic to environmental and animal rights organizations, and details WWF's effort to navigate perceptions of IENGOs which come from the cultural and economic fallout of these movements.

The chapter also examines the challenges faced by large international NGOs trying to navigate internal divergences in opinions and interests amongst its various branches. The chapter emphasizes how the work of one national branch can impact the work of another, even when the two sub-organizations are largely disconnected from one another. Specifically, this chapter examines the implications of WWF South Africa's opposition to whaling in 1998 on WWF Arctic's effort to obtain an observer seat at the Arctic Council.

Chapter 3 explores the second pillar: networks. It inspects the role of the networks that WWF has as an organization and the networks of its individual representatives in how WWF has approached its northern work. The chapter stresses the value of networks for IENGOs like WWF and their necessity to effect any change with audiences, such as governments and businesses. One example explored in more detail is WWF's work in Greenland and Denmark to address overfishing. The chapter focuses on work that national organizations in Scandinavia are doing to promote sustainable fishing in partnership with corporate actors.

The chapter also alludes to some of the potential liabilities for an organization's credibility when it decides to partner with certain actors. It addresses concerns in the non-state actor literature about NGOs being perceived by their supporters as selling out or being co-opted by corporate or government actors when accepting financial support from them. Furthermore, the chapter examines the strategic move by WWF to have associate offices in more northerly locations, such as in Iqaluit, Canada, Nuuk, Greenland and Arkhangelsk, Russia, and the role that physical presence plays in the organization's path to distinguish itself and foster local trust, legitimacy and networks.

Chapter 4 examines the third pillar: scientific engagement. This chapter unpacks the WWF promotion of itself as an organization leading with science in all its work. It discusses the role that scientific research plays in how WWF plans its work and frames its contribution to addressing northern issues from the perspective of WWF representatives. It focuses on the claim that WWF's work is driven by scientific research and how the perception of, and belief in, the scientific underpinnings of WWF's work influences and frames its lobbying and advocacy efforts.

This chapter touches on the issue of capacity when discussing scientific research and whether WWF sometimes has ambitions about how it would like to contribute to northern work which extend beyond what it is actually able to act upon. Specifically, the chapter raises the issue of Indigenous inclusion, in particular the challenges associated with incorporating Indigenous Traditional Knowledge (ITK) and the bringing together of different knowledge systems in the research, planning and implementation of conservation efforts and strategic planning on environmental issues.

Chapter 5 looks at the fourth pillar: communication style. It delves into the benefits and drawbacks of WWF's communication style and how that communication style has helped to characterize external expectations of the organization and how it is able to engage on certain topics with different actors. The chapter emphasizes the role that the audience and perceptions of transparency and legitimacy play in all NGO work and how WWF's communication style is a reflection of its navigation of its role in national, regional and international governance debates and discussions.

Overall, the chapter illustrates WWF's effort to project an image of being an organization that communicates in a straightforward manner and is relatively uncontroversial in its approach toward its messaging techniques and its grounding in science. The chapter points out the potential implications of the WWF communication style and some alternative perspectives on its effectiveness. Specifically the book notes that concern exists regarding WWF's adoption of a compromising style of conservation diplomacy in exchange for a trusted place behind the scenes in closed decision-making situations within forums, institutions and backroom discussions. The alleged worry is that by being known as an organization that is open for compromise to find conservation-focused solutions, WWF may be diluting its calls for action too much at times and undermining what it is trying to achieve in the long run.

Lastly, Chapter 6 provides a snapshot of opinions, as expressed by some Arctic states’ representatives to the Arctic Council and Arctic Indigenous peoples’ representatives, on WWF's work and engagement efforts. This chapter helps to triangulate the reception of two key audiences that WWF is trying to engage within the Arctic and North and opens room for discussion about how successful the WWF strategy has been to date. It highlights the general receptiveness that Arctic state representatives at the Arctic Council have toward WWF contributions to the forum's work, and the more nuanced perspectives of some Indigenous organization representatives who have some concerns over WWF's consistency and use of scientific data.

Notes

1 WWF has national branch offices in seven of the eight Arctic states (Canada, Finland, the Kingdom of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia and the United States, excluding Iceland), who also do Arctic and northern-focused work.

2 In this book, ‘success’ in environmental/animal rights activism is broadly understood as an activist's and/or an organization's ability to achieve their objectives. In the case of WWF, this book argues that its primary overarching objective in Arctic politics and diplomacy is to carve out an accepted place for the expression of its positions in regional environmental diplomatic dialogue and decision-making spaces. In other words, WWF wants a seat at the table when discussions and