Environment Program

The environment program proceeds from two central questions. What are the American activities which do the most harm to the long-term preservation of the natural world? How can a modest grantmaking program most effectively seek to change those activities?

We have found that the answers to the first question are not typically considered "environmental." America's farms and highways, for example, are probably more crucial to the future of the earth than its hazardous waste dumps. We have tried to find opportunities where investments in groups trying to reform transportation and agriculture can pay large dividends in the long-term development of a sustainable economy. We also believe that for an economy to be truly sustainable, it will also have to be fair; we have developed a small program to support the nascent environmental justice movement, particularly those campaigns devised and managed by members of minority communities.

Finally, we support grantees trying to "define and promote a sustainable society." Our hope is to engender thought and discussion about the material and cultural characteristics of a civilization that systematically preserves the earth for future generations.

TRANSPORTATION

The family car is the country's primary source of air pollution and a major contributor to greenhouse-gas buildup and ozone depletion. Automobiles cause enormous damage to water supplies through highway runoff, buried gas tanks, and do-it-yourself oil changes. They induce sprawl, which gobbles land, empties downtowns, and makes life hard for the unhappy one-third of Americans-too young or too old or too poor or too disabled-who can't drive to scattered jobs and shops and can't rely on public alternatives. The rest of us log two trillion miles a year and we do it with an average of 1.1 persons in each vehicle. Transportation may be the most important, most pervasive environmental issue in the country.

Luckily, there has been some new legislation to help turn things around. What was once the federal highway bill is now the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA). The law now says that US transportation funds can be spent for a variety of projects, not just roads, and that whatever project is finally selected can't exacerbate non-compliance with clean air standards. The challenge is to enforce these provisions, and Nathan Cummings is working with a small group of other funders to help local and national organizations rise to the occasion.

ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND (In cooperation with the Conservation Law Foundation of New England; the Natural Resources Defense Council; and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund)
Washington, DC, $200,000 over two years

The linkage between transportation funding and air-pollution abatement is a clear and important element of the new ISTEA law; whether the linkage works in practice remains very much in question. This grant is to establish a four-organization Transportation Task Force to promote legal strategies that will require state and local transportation plans to conform to the provisions of the Clean Air Act and ISTEA. Task Force activities will enforce the transportation/clean air connection by: providing information, expertise, and financial support to transportation projects in localities where precedent-setting stakes are high; developing and supporting model state implementation plans; and working cooperatively with grassroots transportation reform groups around the country.

American agriculture is a short-term production success that masks a long-term ecological failure. No other sector of national life contaminates so much ground and water, and few are so toxic to their practitioners. Even more important, perhaps, is the way conventional farming radically depletes the soils and aquifers on which it relies for its abundance. For every bushel of corn grown in Iowa, three bushels of topsoil are washed down toward the Gulf of Mexico.

The Foundation has been working with a number of midwestern grantees to help farmers who want to try alternative methods. Increasingly, however, our emphasis is on work that tries to change national policy to rearrange the financial incentives which now penalize environmentally sound practices and reward the shoddy.

CENTER FOR RESOURCE ECONOMICS, FARM PROGRAM OVERSIGHT PROJECT
Washington, DC $50,000

Recent evidence shows that environmental language in farm legislation is routinely gutted or ignored during appropriation and implementation stages. The Farm Program Oversight Project, a program to monitor the performance of agencies and people charged with enforcing environmental provisions of national agricultural laws, will investigate, evaluate, and expose these practices and attempt to involve a broad sampling of public-interest groups in the process, with the overall aim of forming an "urban coalition for farm policy reform." These investigations will be conducted and publicized with three goals in mind: (1) To document how and where federal farm programs frustrate environmental protection; (2) To broaden and promote public interest and debate over the social purposes of federal support for agriculture; and (3) To provide advocates of federal policy reform with analytic tools and information needed to challenge the interests which dominate agriculture policy.

MINORITY COMMUNITIES

With the spring 1993 announcement that the Rev. Benjamin Chavis had been appointed executive director of the NAACP, one of the prime movers of the country's environmental justice movement had achieved important new prominence. For years, Rev. Chavis and his colleagues from around the nation have be en telling Americans that poor communities and communities of color were bearing a disproportionate and unacceptable share of toxic pollution. Nathan Cummings has played a part by supporting organizations in minority communities to speak in their own voices on these issues and in helping those voices be heard within the broader national environmental movement.

Important complementary efforts are carried out by organizations listed under the environmental/health section of Interprogram grants.

SOUTHWEST COMMUNITY RESOURCES, SOUTHWEST NETWORK FOR ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE
Albuquerque, New Mexico $30,000

This grant is for continued development of the Southwest Network, a regional federation of African-American, Latino, Native and Asian-American activists concerned with environmental and economic justice. In a collaborative effort, the Network will work to ensure and enhance democratic grassroots participation in the development and implementation of public policy. Its activities will include: organization of an Annual Gathering of its far-flung membership; technical assistance to, and leadership development with, the various constituencies; and the conduct of public education campaigns on toxic wastes, cross-border practices, and the particular problems of Indian lands. Formed in 1990, the Network was the first of its kind in the United States, and serves as a model for other regional efforts to promote environmental justice.

SUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES

Our final focus area covers broad ground. Over the past half decade, the word "sustainability" has entered the public lexicon. As these things happen, of course, the term has thereby lost precision. "Sustainable" now seems to have become something of a synonym for "environmentally better." Though we are not particularly interested in semantic tangles, we like the original ecosystem-based meaning of sustainable: the characteristic of a system that lives off natural income rather than natural capital.

Can men and women induce a society that allows its inhabitants to live well without depriving its great-grandchildren of the inheritance of the earth? It is an unanswered and still unanswerable question. Clearly, though, such a society will need to marshal all human resources- economic, intellectual, cultural, spiritual-in order to function so benevolently. The foundation has supported a broad range of grantees who are beginning the complicated business of exploring what we need to do to go from here to there.

NATIONAL RELIGIOUS PARTNERSHIP FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
New York, NewYork $300,000 over three years

In 1990, NCF's support helped launch an unusual program-the Joint Appeal in Religion and Science-to begin mobilizing religious communities on behalf of the environment. Since then, scores of leaders of important denominations and religious institutions have affrmed their commitment to a broad project to involve congregations in the work of environmental protection. Four major "faith groups" will be running coordinated programs: Roman Catholics;Jews; mainline Protestants; and evangelical Protestants. NCF has pledged a three year grant to support continued activities which will include: the formation of satellite offices in each of the four major faith groups; establishment of a central secretariat to support and coordinate activities; and continued expansion of cooperative work with scientists and public policy makers. xic pollution. Nathan Cummings has played a part by supporting organizations in minority communities to speak in their own voices on these issues and in helping those voices be heard within the broader national environmental movement.

Important complementary efforts are carried out by organizations listed under the environmental/health section of Interprogram grants.

SOUTHWEST COMMUNITY RESOURCES, SOUTHWEST NETWORK FOR ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE
Albuquerque, New Mexico $30,000

This grant is for continued development of the Southwest Network, a regional federation of African-American, Latino, Native and Asian-American activists concerned with environmental and economic justice. In a collaborative effort, the Network will work to ensure and enhance democratic grassroots participation in the development and implementation of public policy. Its activities will include: organization of an Annual Gathering of its far-flung membership; technical assistance to, and leadership development with, the various constituencies; and the conduct of public education campaigns on toxic wastes, cross-border practices, and the particular problems of Indian lands. Formed in 1990, the Network was the first of its kind in the United States, and serves as a model for other regional efforts to promote environmental justice.