Janine Wedel - Collision and Collusion - The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe

In a setting in which there was little precedent for making information available to citizens, either for free or at all, the aid-funded environmental NGOs responsible for gathering and disseminating environmental information to the public often guarded the information they acquired and made it available only at a price. With resources in short supply, organizations and individuals tended to use the money and perks they received to broaden their own opportunities and enhance their résumés, rather than to develop environmental policy or support clean-up activities. It was hardly a step toward the civil society that donors thought they were underwriting.

This state of affairs was mirrored in the environmental ministries and institutes. State-run agencies that had been massively subsidized in the old system suddenly lost their funding or saw it dramatically cut. Their chief resources became their databases, such as geographical survey or monitoring information. In some scenarios, one branch of government sold to another.

Given the competitive atmosphere, it was not surprising that the NGOs often declined to share information and advantages with others and conducted little outreach. A few “environmentalists” spent their time on the international conference circuit, largely working their own contacts and opportunities. One Hungarian environmentalist spoke of herself and her colleagues as the “green jet set.”90 Moreover, according to the GAO, the Regional Environmental Center’s “early operations suffered from financial management and programmatic weakness.”91 As a result, USAID withheld approximately $1.4 million, about one-third of U.S. funding to the Center, until evidence could be provided that its operations had been improved,92 and Director Hardi resigned after being asked to leave by the donors.93

Given the fact that U.S. aid’s main job was to sign up projects and contractors and “to get the money out the door”—and there was considerable pressure from multiple sides to do so—intervention in problematic projects and admissions of failure were unusual. Consciously or unconsciously, project officers had incentives to go along with contractors and collude in the process. But U.S. aid officials took the uncommon step of trying to reorient the Center, an indication of the gravity of its problems. Following a financial and management audit in 1992, the Center was radically reorganized. With donors and recipients working together, the Center’s management and financial practices, program direction, and criteria for giving grants to NGOs all were revamped, a finding that the GAO independently confirmed.94

Although the Regional Environmental Center failed initially to achieve the ambitious goal the donors had set of becoming a catalyst for environmental activism, the situation had changed substantially by mid-decade. Eventually both donors and recipients emphasized the need to fund NGOs with more indigenous public support and with track records that could be verified.95 The earlier heavy-handed and top-down approach involved, on the recipient side, elites who knew English and had quickly learned how to write grant proposals. But by 1993, there began to be more of a “bottom-up” approach, especially to assistance provided by foundations.

Under the able leadership of Stanisław Sitnicki, a Polish scholar and environmentalist who took over the Center in 1993, and Jernej Stritih, a Slovenian who assumed control in 1996, local projects expanded. Sitnicki and Stritih involved more local people and field officers throughout Central Europe. They set up operations in Romania, Bulgaria, and other so-called second-tier countries, trained local people to serve as the directors of, and staff for, these newly established field offices, and located grassroots groups that wished to become involved in a larger network.

Under its new leadership, the Regional Environmental Center moved from merely providing money to initiating projects and policies. The Center began conducting policy research and bringing together people who were participating in regional policy issues, such as the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Convention on Public Participation in Environmental Decision-Making. The Center also became a player in regional processes such as harmonization for EU expansion.

In the same spirit, the Environmental Partnership for Central Europe, under the leadership of the German Marshall Fund, pooled the resources of several foundations (notably the German Marshall Fund, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation) to “encourage NGOs to get started and to participate around environmental problems in their communities,” according to Marianne Ginsberg, coordinator of the Partnership.96 In 2000, the Partnership still awarded grants, “but not just to create local initiatives, but to have a strategy in transportation, the right to know, energy issues, nature conservation, and land-use issues.” EU accession, and its likely impact on local environments, was a major thrust.97 Miroslav Kundrata, country director of the Czech office of the Partnership since 1994, has detailed some of the changes in the Western-funded business of NGO environmental grantsmanship:

The Partnership’s own knowledge and skills have developed.… In a relatively short time, we have gone from reacting to grant proposals to initiating them. We are becoming less dependent on our Western advisors, particularly the U.S. Support Office, in running an effective, well-managed foundation. Along with this growing independence has come a realization that we hold our future in our own hands, and that the projects we support are capable of contributing to change.98

In this way, the changes in the Regional Environmental Center during the 1990s exemplify the evolution of many NGOs through the periods of Triumphalism, Disillusionment, and Adjustment.

AFTER ADVERSITY

The first few years of “transition” in Central Europe were not long in terms of time, but they loomed large in symbolic and psychological terms. Just as the euphoria and optimism of the phase of Triumphalism were great, so was the heavy despondency of Disillusionment. Eventually the disappointment gave way to more clear-eyed agendas and grounded expectations on the part of both East and West.

By 1994, the luster of the words “civil society” had dimmed. With that, some adjustment on the part of donors occurred with regard to their support of specific elites. Although most aid went to the national centers and was explicitly or inexplicitly political, aid sometimes helped to encourage grassroots development and decentralization of NGOs and the building of institutional infrastructure for local and national governments. As regional and local leaders became more effective lobbyists, and as donors became more experienced, pressure mounted to go outside the capitals and major cities. In time, local leaders began to receive somewhat more of the aid. And, in response to protest from Central Europe, by 1994 the United States stopped funding explicitly political groups in the Visegrád countries.

In time, some overall positive results came out of the NGO sector in Central Europe. In Poland, for example, an entire NGO-support industry has emerged: The Forum of Nongovernmental Initiatives (FIP), an informal coalition of Polish NGOs, was created in 1993, and the Network of Information and Support Center for Non-Governmental Organizations (SPLOT), in 1994.99

Less than a decade after the collapse of communism in Central Europe, NGOs appeared to have defined their identities more precisely as NGOs and were more inclined than previously to differentiate between their interests and those of business or the state. The “we-versus-they” approach inherited from the communist past, in which civil society was, by definition, the antagonist of the state and the representative and proponent of society, had diminished, and Polish NGOs now worked to build bridges in business and in Parliament. In a productive attempt to connect with the business sector, FIP created a “benefactor of the year” award, given to businesses for philanthropic contributions on the basis of innovation, staff involvement, amount of money, and sustained effort.100 NGO expert Wygnański explained that “people are grasping these sectors as separate things, but connected.” The donors, simply by being there, helped this process. They offered NGOs time and opportunities to identify themselves—to discover “who they were”—and to find their own way in the new contexts.