In October the Ford Motor Company will, for the sixth year in succession, award grants to Chinese environmentalists and green NGOs in recognition of their ongoing contribution to sustainable development. This year, the car manufacturer is increasing the total prize money to CNY 1.7 million (USD 214,000) which is expected to be divided between fifteen organizations

Chinese NGOs face momentous tasks with minimal financial resources. Despite the rising tide of environmental awareness in China, the green NGOs’ own membership base is still small—in part, almost certainly, because growing a mass membership would be politically risqué for the NGOs—and they do not have the right to raise funds publicly. This means that many look to international organisations for funding.

But there are good reasons why thinking Chinese environmentalists should think twice before accepting money from the Ford Motor Company.

It is not just that the vehicles rolling off Ford’s China production lines add to the congestion and pollution in Chinese cities where, still, only a small minority of the population enjoy the luxury of private cars, but where everyone suffers the consequences of car-centred urban planning (with children, elderly and disabled people particularly vulnerable to new forms of social exclusion and immobility.)
These are serious problems that the government and people of China will have to tackle—although no-one could reasonably argue that the answer is to prevent Chinese people enjoying the consumer freedoms that the Western world has enjoyed for a century. Moreover, Ford Motors could well point out that if they didn’t make cars in China their competitors certainly would. (In fact, Ford’s China market share is modest—with only 220,000 vehicles sold last year, accounting for a mere 4% of the 6 million or so new vehicles to take to the roads).

The reason Chinese greens should shun Ford is, rather, the company’s execrable record on fuel efficiency in the United States.

Back in 1908 Henry Ford changed the world with his original “T model” car: both by revolutionising production lines, and by creating vehicles that were cheap enough for ordinary American families to afford. Ford ushered in an age of both mass production and mass consumption. That was an extraordinary achievement, offering the prospect of reasonable prosperity for all—a kind of Henry Ford version of xiao kang. But, as we now know, mass prosperity has to be balanced by rigorous standards, including “technical fixes,” to ensure that it is also environmentally sustainable.

The 1908 T model could drive for 25 miles per gallon of gasoline. Nearly a hundred years later (as the moderate US conservation group, the Sierra Club, pointed out in a series of advertisements in 2003), despite a century of technological advance, and despite the fact that domestic US oil resources are well past peak production, the average fuel efficiency of Ford vehicles sold in American markets was actually lower. An annual investigation by the US Environment Protection Agency found that in 2006 the Ford US fleet is averaging just 19.7 miles per gallon. For decades, Ford has been at the bottom of fuel efficiency league tables in the United States (although this year it edged just above DaimlerChrysler), lagging a long way behind European and, especially, Japanese competitors.

Principle villains are the large, powerful, gas-guzzling “Sports Utility Vehicles” (SUVs) that, in defiance of environmental common sense, have become commonplace in suburban America over the last decade. Because of a loophole in US law, these evade statutory fuel efficiency standards and thus feed the American addiction to cheap gasoline, suburban sprawl, and the least environmentally sustainable lifestyles in the world.

What’s more, Ford invests heavily in lobbying efforts to prevent the SUVs being
re-classified as cars and so brought within statutory fuel efficiency controls. According to the Center for Public Integrity (a US non profit organisation dedicated to promoting investigative journalism), between 1998 and 2004 Ford Motors spent USD 41 million lobbying the US government. Some US environmental groups put the figure at more than USD 60 million.

As we approach a world energy crisis, with geopolitical conflicts developing over remaining oil resources, this is a prime example of sheer corporate irresponsibility.

In view of this, although they are cash strapped and hungry for resources to carry forward their important work, Chinese NGOs should reflect carefully before accepting awards from Ford Motors. This would demonstrate that while acting locally they are capable of thinking about sustainability on a genuinely global scale, and it would send a clear and useful message to Ford Motors: that “corporate social responsibility” means a lot more than buying credibility by handing out small change.

Chinese environmental NGOs should also, as this publication has long argued, embark on the long and difficult road of mobilising local resources. This is necessary for their own sustainability, but also for their legitimacy. One yuan donated by a Chinese person is worth a lot more than ten thousand donated for public relations purposes by a multinational company.

Notes:

An online database of Chinese environmental NGOs, developed by China Development Brief in collaboration with Chinese NGO representatives, is now up and running at www.greengo.org Over 90 organisations are profiled on the site, and we are beginning to add English language summaries.