Sustaining what, and for whom?
Read the full story in Grist.
In her new book Green Inc., Christine MacDonald argues that that large environmental NGOs have compromised their agendas in exchange for corporate cash. (See Mark Pawlosky’s recent review of Green Inc. for Grist.)
I haven’t read the entire book yet, but I did catch an excerpt published by Multinational Monitor. In it, MacDonald makes a pretty convincing case for Big Green lameness with regard to the ever-expanding agricultural frontier in Brazil.
She details collaborations between Conservation International and Bunge to “sustainably” expand soy production in Brazil’s vast savanna region; and between the Nature Conservancy and Cargill to promote “responsible” soy farming in the Amazon region.
According to a recent Reuters piece, Cargill and Bunge are the world’s largest and third-largest agribusiness companies, respectively, by revenue. Bunge concerns itself mostly with grain-trading and processing; Cargill maintains a global empire with interests in grain trading and processing, meat production, biofuels, fertilizer, livestock feed, and more.