Did ABB Pay WWF Half a Million Dollars to Keep it Quiet?
4/16/97
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Headline: Did ABB Pay WWF Half a Million Dollars to Keep it Quiet?
Source: REGENWALD@UMWELT.ECOLINK.ORG (Rettet den Regenwald e.V.)
Date: 4/16/97
Author: Alain Zucker
Translation from "Weltwoche", in Zurich, Switzerland, 27 March 1997
SWEET HONEY FOR THE PANDA BEARS by Alain Zucker
Bakun Project: Did ABB pay WWF half a million dollars to keep it
quiet?
Last October, WWF International had every reason to celebrate. The
largest environmental organization in the world had very quietly just
taken in half a million dollars. The head of the World Wide Fund for
Nature made just as little noise about the generous contribution.
Neither the members of the foundation committee nor the public was
informed that the monetary gift came from none other than the
electrotechnology corporation ABB, the multinational that WWF
repeatedly criticizes, for its controversial plans to build the Bakun
power plant in Malaysia, for example.
"The contribution was unsolicited," confirms the spokesperson for
WWF International, Arun Chacko. He stresses, however, that ABB did not
attach any conditions. "Otherwise, naturally, we would not have
accepted."
However, the fact that ABB had contributed half a million dollars
to WWF caused a stir. Why should the company support the very
organization whose resistance to the Bakun Project was characterized
in August by ABB official Percy Batnevik as "populist and intellectually
dishonorable behavior"?
The subject of the ABB contribution did not fully explode until the
end of February, when WWF Switzerland surprisingly retreated from a
protest action against the involvement of the Swedish-Swiss
multinational in the Bakun dam. The Swiss arm of the World Wide Fund
for Nature, together with the Erklaerung von Bern (EvB) and
Greenpeace, had organized a counter-event to the ABB annual press
conference, but pulled out at the last minute "out of consideration
for our sister organization in Malaysia," as the Swiss environmental
protectors with the panda emblem told their partners officially.
"Our withdrawal has nothing to do with the ABB contribution," claimed the
leader of the project department, Andrea Ries, when "Weltwoche"
investigated the furor on Monday by making inquiries at WWF. As is common
within the network, she said, WWF Switzerland had arranged with WWF
Malaysia, which had suffered a legal defeat in the Bakun case, to take up
negotiations with ABB Malaysia. "They preferred that we didn't make a
public appearance."
In fact, even after the contribution, WWF Switzerland expressed
criticism to ABB twice, though not with respect to Bakun, but a
similar project planned for China. This made it even harder to
understand the short-term retreat by the Swiss panda bears from the
cause for which they had so carefully prepared. In a preliminary
statement by telephone, WWF Switzerland asserted further that the
uncompromising attitude of Greenpeace toward the Asian colleagues was
too unsophisticated. This particular point, however, was greeted by
the former partners with stunned disbelief. "It was never in
question that Greenpeace would participate. Their position was clear
from the beginning," explained EvB member and organizer Peter
Bosshard.
Like the representatives of WWF, the electrotechnology multinational ABB
called a possible relationship between the monetary gift and the retreat
of WWF Switzerland from the Bakun campaign farfetched. He believes that
the company has done nothing worthy of reproach:
"Hundreds of organizations have written us letters of protest against
Bakun. So it makes no sense to label the WWF contribution hush money."
Oddly enough, even within the WWF, the contribution was highly
controversial. Sources mention an uproar when WWF Switzerland
headquarters found out about the plans to slip out of the protest
action against ABB's involvement in Bakun. The retreat, according to
a source within the group, occurred at the behest of WWF International,
and disappointment was loudly expressed within the Swiss branch.