Criticism
Conservation International has been chastised for poor judgment in expenditure of donors' money. A 2008 article in The Nation pointed out that the organization had attracted $6 million for marine conservation in Papua New Guinea, but the funds were used for "little more than plush offices and first class travel."
In recent years, CI has also come under increasing scrutiny around its corporate partnerships -– particularly around its practice of accepting financial support for its work. Critics say such deals are unseemly because nonprofit groups taking cash from big companies are unlikely to push their donors to achieve meaningful environmental change. CI’s response is that its corporate financial support is communicated transparently, directed toward core conservation programs, and linked to high expectations for the sustainability performance of its corporate partners—and, therefore, does not compromise the organization's integrity, independence and effectiveness.
In 2011, Conservation International was targeted by a group of reporters from Don't Panic TV who posed as a major American arms company and asked if the charity could "raise green profile." Options outlined by the representative of Conservation International (CI) included assisting with the arms company's green PR efforts, membership of a business forum in return for a fee, and sponsorship packages where the arms company could potentially invest money in return for being associated with conservation activities. Conservation International agreed to help the arms company find an "endangered species mascot." Film footage shows the Conservation International employee suggesting a vulture North African birds of prey as a possible endangered species mascot for the arms company because of the "link to aviation." CI contends that these recordings were heavily edited to remove elements that would have cast CI in a more favorable light, while using other parts of the video out of context to paint a highly inaccurate and incomplete picture of CI’s work with the private sector.
Read more about this topic: Conservation International
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“...I wasn’t at all prepared for the avalanche of criticism that overwhelmed me. You would have thought I had murdered someone, and perhaps I had, but only to give her successor a chance to live. It was a very sad business indeed to be made to feel that my success depended solely, or at least in large part, on a head of hair.”
—Mary Pickford (1893–1979)
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“It is ... pathetic to observe the complete lack of imagination on the part of certain employers and men and women of the upper-income levels, equally devoid of experience, equally glib with their criticism ... directed against workers, labor leaders, and other villains and personal devils who are the objects of their dart-throwing. Who doesn’t know the wealthy woman who fulminates against the “idle” workers who just won’t get out and hunt jobs?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)