In the face of climate change, French humanitarian NGOs are adopting different models while confronting a dual injunction: environmental and decolonial. The management tools they use reveal three distinct approaches, as the author explains. This transformation raises issues of colonial heritage, but also presents opportunities for managerial innovation to bring about a fairer, more systemic transition.
Anthropogenic climate change, i.e. disturbances to the Earth system caused by human activity on our planet, is now a major challenge for human society as a whole. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)[1]Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Panmao Zhai, Anna Pirani et al., Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group, 9 August 2021, … Continue reading makes two observations in this regard. On the one hand, the climate system is getting warmer and this is affecting all populations, especially the most vulnerable. On the other hand, the IPCC supports the idea that the standard management model – which tends to reduce organisations to “economic agents seeking to maximise [their] profit(s)”[2]Nathalie Lallemand-Stempak et Philippe Eynaud, Petits manuels de la grande transition. Vers une autre gestion, Éditions Les Liens qui libèrent, 2022, p. 18. – can increase environmental vulnerability. This double observation is now shared by many actors who, since the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015,[3]Nations unies, Accord de Paris, 12 décembre 2015, https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/french_paris_agreement.pdf have been calling for an ecological, social and even economic transition towards more sustainable models of society, and therefore of organisations.
French non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are developing a twin-track approach. In December 2020, thirteen of them committed to halving their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030, stating that “the actions of solidarity organizations, crucial as they may be, can nevertheless generate environmental and climate impacts”.[4]Réseau Environnement Humanitaire, Rapport de suivi de la déclaration d’engagement, à année +3 (Déclaration d’engagement des organisations humanitaires sur le climat initiée en décembre … Continue reading Since March 2022, they have been joined in this commitment by the main Western funders[5]Multilateral funding bodies such as the European Union and its dedicated mechanisms (notably ECHO [European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations]), and bilateral bodies such as France, … Continue reading of official development assistance.[6]European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO), Humanitarian Aid Donors’ Declaration on Climate and Environment, 7 March 2022, … Continue reading Over the last ten years or so, these organisations have also been pursuing an aid localisation agenda aimed at “putting local actors [local authorities or civil society] back at the very heart of the system”.[7]Coordination SUD, La localisation de l’aide. Plus de proximité permet-il d’assurer l’autonomie des projets déployés ?, mars 2020, p. 19, … Continue reading This has recently been accompanied by a more global call to embed the issues firmly in the context of decolonising international aid.[8]Shannon Paige and Dimitri Kotsiras, Time to Decolonise Aid. Insights and lessons from a global consultation, Peace Direct, 10 May 2021, … Continue reading Several organisations[9]Martha Kapazoglou et Yannicke Goris, Décolonisation de l’aide au développement. Partie III – L’avenir, c’est maintenant : des voies viables vers un secteur du développement décolonisé, … Continue reading and authors[10]Anna Diaz, Martine Gwana Passa, Carine Magen-Fabregat et al., « Quels chemins vers une aide décolonisée », Humanitaires en Mouvement, n° 26, décembre 2024, … Continue reading have shown that, in some respects (e.g. in financing organisations in the so-called Global South), this sector may still bear the legacies and blind spots of Western colonial history.
“Several French NGOs are therefore adopting new management tools in an attempt to transform their organisational model and make it more sustainable.”
As actors in this system, French NGOs are therefore facing a double imperative in their transition: firstly, an environmental imperative that is having a direct effect on their deeply thermo-industrial organisational model[11]In other words, a model that is both highly energy-intensive and produces negative external effects for the environment, such as waste generation. and secondly, an imperative we call “decolonial” which questions the enduring nature of this unique colonial history in the modern architecture of international aid. Several French NGOs are therefore adopting new management tools in an attempt to transform their organisational model and make it more sustainable. What are the various models they are proposing? What do these dedicated tools tell us? And what are the underlying paradoxes and drivers?
Three ecological transition paths for French NGOs
We shall illustrate this issue by referring to our doctoral research,[12]Vincent Pradier, Changement climatique et ONG françaises. Une analyse décoloniale de leur outillage gestionnaire, 2025, forthcoming. which focuses on comparative case studies carried out within French international aid and development NGOs. Under the CIFRE scheme (Industrial Agreement for Training Through Research),[13]The platform of French international aid and development NGOs. our work at Coordination SUD allowed us to study five French NGOs[14]ALIMA, Doctors of the World, Solidarités International, Gret, Secours Catholique – Caritas France. and focus on the management tools developed in France, Senegal and Burkina Faso to deal with anthropogenic climate change. We used this work as the basis for building three standard organisational models enabling us to describe how the NGOs concerned are taking climate change into account, the ecological transition practices they have implemented and the management tools put in place.
The first model, which is more typical of the so-called emergency humanitarian NGOs, is based on a management tool marked by a strong instrumental dimension[15]In other words, they have a practical-utilitarian function. See in particular: Ève Chiapello et Patrick Gilbert, Sociologie des outils de gestion. Introductionà l’analyse sociale de … Continue reading and oriented mainly towards costing (and reducing) the carbon footprint. It concerns NGOs mainly funded by public humanitarian aid – both multilateral (Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations – ECHO, etc.) and bilateral (USA, France, Germany, etc.) – and which have an “internalised” organisational model, i.e. with “delegations” or “country offices” tied to, and reporting to, the same head office. In this model, organisations (such as ALIMA)[16]ALIMA et Climate Action Accelerator, Feuille de route environnementale. ALIMA, face aux enjeux du climat et de l’environnement 2020-2030, 5 avril 2022, … Continue reading apply practices based on precise strategies consisting of numerous quantitative indicators (quantities of fuel used in kWh, tonnes of carbon equivalent, number of kilometres travelled by vehicles, etc.) that are standardised (between thirty and sixty, depending on the NGOs and common to the entire organisation, regardless of the country in which it operates. These can be used as a quick means of assessing the effects that the practices are having on the organisation’s decarbonisation pathways. The strategies are generally based on the Paris Agreement and the IPCC’s recommendations[17]In particular, reducing an organisation’s carbon footprint by 50% by 2030.. If adaptation-related problems are included in them, they are generally less prominent than those relating to mitigation and are rarely translated into operational measures.
The second model, implemented by GRET,[18]Gret, Gret’s Climate Strategy, April 2022, https://gret.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/GRETs-CLIMATE-Strategy_AN.pdf features management tools which the NGO uses in an attempt to reconcile its mitigation and adaptation practices. While the NGOs in this model also have an internalised organisational system, they use more diverse and less restrictive resources, including public funds (notably those from the Agence française de développement [French Development Agency]). Like humanitarian NGOs, the management tools here are based on a formalised strategy, but GRET has set only a dozen or so key actions and dedicated indicators for its carbon footprint, based on seven identified themes.[19]Energy consumption, travel, waste, procurement, etc. Incidentally, these indicators and actions can be adapted by each country delegation to suit the specific context: in some cases, the actions will focus more on energy challenges, and in others on waste reduction or air travel, etc. Lastly, the process of building and validating the action plans and piloting tools is also longer, as it involves numerous dedicated consultation groups (teams of employees, volunteers, people targeted by the projects etc.). In terms of objectives, the 50% carbon footprint reduction does not apply across the board, but on an individual basis. In other words, in this model, NGOs can aim to “increase the sobriety of [their] activities while leaving [themselves] the possibility of developing them”.[20]Gret, Gret’s Climate Strategy…, op. cit., p.7. Furthermore, this model places greater emphasis on adapting practices to deal with the effects of anthropogenic climate change, both in terms of transforming the ways in which activities are carried out and in terms of the structure’s commitment (constructing an “ecological transition” marker).
The third and final management model is typical of the management practices developed by NGOs that are not very dependent on public funding and work with partners, i.e. a more outsourced organisational model such as Secours Catholique – Caritas France (SCCF). Advocating “fair” ecological transition – still a vague concept which the NGO and its partners are trying to define – SCCF offers management tools co-developed with a variety of stakeholders (similar organisations operating in twenty or so countries). In doing so, it is implementing specific management tools that integrate the central issue of “common but differentiated responsibility” in projects aimed at reducing inequality whilst protecting the environment. With this in mind, the NGO does not have a dedicated carbon-footprint strategy for its international activities: it feels that its partners operate in regions where the per-capita carbon footprint is already relatively low. With the aim of “collectively promoting a common vision of fair ecological transition”,[21]Agence française de développement, Fiche projet AFD : concevoir et promouvoir une transition écologique juste, décembre 2021, … Continue reading however, it is implementing adaptation projects designed to “empower vulnerable communities” and “formalise a systemic vision of ecological transition”.[22]Agence française de développement, Fiche projet AFD : concevoir et promouvoir…, op. cit., p. 2. For SCCF, these resilient communities projects are seen as levers of climate and environmental justice, aimed at generating sustainable systemic and structural changes in the international aid system.
How decolonial ecologies can help us understand the humanitarian crisis
Whilst these three models illustrate how French NGOs are dealing with this environmental imperative in their management practices, our work also sheds light on the colonial legacies that underlie the practices they adopt. All the NGOs in our study are therefore, to varying degrees, carriers of several forms of coloniality. Some authors see this as “the global articulation of a ‘Western’ system of power [which] is based on the supposedly natural subordination of places, human groups, knowledge and non-Western subjectivity”.[23]Arturo Escobar et Eduardo Restrepo, « Anthropologies hégémoniques et colonialité », Cahiers des Amériques latines, vol. 62, n° 3, décembre 2009, p. 83-96, 86. It operates on various levels – power, knowledge, being, gender, nature – and is, for decolonial thinkers, “the most general mode of domination in the world today”,[24]Aníbal Quijano, «Colonialidad y modernidad/racionalidad», Perú Indígena vol. 13, no 29, 1992, p. 11-20,14 [Translated into English from the author’s French translation of the original]. especially in terms of international architecture.
“All the NGOs in our study are therefore, to varying degrees, carriers of several forms of coloniality.”
In our research, we document these forms of coloniality in the ecological transition practices we have seen and which relate to the localisation dynamics implemented by NGOs. This can be seen, for example, in practices that subordinate non-Western knowledge deemed illegitimate a priori (coloniality of knowledge). As a result, NGOs sometimes exclude subordinated groups – and the knowledge they possess – from the design and management of their activities, i.e. the vulnerable people most affected by anthropogenic climate change. This is also reflected in the Western-centricity of some management tools: consider, for example, standardisation and the generalisation of new humanitarian “standards”, which, by means of numerous technical and instrumental indicators, incorporate environmental issues but help reinforce disparities in international aid. This is manifested in the difficulty non-Western organisations have accessing funding – paradoxically, they are the first to be affected by anthropogenic climate change but also the furthest removed from these international “standards” of humanitarian management (coloniality of power). In more general terms, the constraints imposed by Western public funders reinforce, through the standardisation effects they bring, these forms of coloniality within NGO practices – and we should not forget the multiple management inconsistencies they bring and which prevent genuine ecological transition, especially in humanitarian funding.
The NGOs studied, however, should not be reduced to these forms of coloniality. Our work shows that there is a wide range of practices in the three models described. These practices actually allow us to move away from colonial management and offer alternative tools. Admittedly, there are more or less institutionalised ways in which the management tools deemed too prescriptive can be circumvented by teams deployed in the field (a process that could even be called “falsification of data”). “When a white man wants a number for his dashboard, we’ll find it for him”, said a Burkinabé salaried manager from one of the NGOs we studied. The physical reality of anthropogenic climate change, however, also allows NGOs to innovate on many levels. Let us consider just two of the more enlightening examples.
Firstly, some NGOs have become active participants in circular economies, supporting the emergence of local cooperatives with the aim of localising supply chains, and recycling or reusing waste, such as ALIMA’s “Plastik” project in Burkina Faso. Even though the initial intention is to respond to the challenge of environmental sustainability, the NGO’s action is simultaneously helping empower the communities involved in the project. Secondly, most NGOs draw on a wealth of endogenous knowledge (use of materials, agricultural techniques, conservation systems, etc.) with the aim of engaging in a horizontal epistemological dialogue with Western science to enhance the way in which local communities adapt to the effects of anthropogenic climate change. This is certainly the case for GRET and SCCF in Senegal, which are building on the knowledge of the agricultural cooperatives they support to strengthen the food security of the population in the regions concerned through agroecology practices.
All the NGOs studied therefore show some form of “creolisation” (or even pluriversality) of the tools they use to manage ecological transition. These concepts, drawn in particular from decolonial ecologies,[25]Collectif, Décoloniser le changement climatique, Plurivers, revue d’écologie décoloniale, n° 1, Éditions
du Commun, 9 février 2024. are useful for gaining a better understanding of “the options and obstacles encountered by the humanitarian system in its efforts to connect the protection of human life with the natural world”.[26]Extract from the call for papers for this issue of Humanitarian Alternatives. Popularised by authors such as Malcolm Ferdinand and Arturo Escobar,[27]Arturo Escobar, Un autre possible est possible, Éditions Zulma et Jimsaan, 2024, https://www.zulma.fr/wp-content/uploads/EXTRAIT-SITE_ESCOBAR.pdf these approaches make “the colonial divide the central issue of the ecological crisis, [based on] the observation that pollution, loss of biodiversity and global warming are the material traces of this colonial habitation of the Earth”.[28]Malcom Ferdinand, Une écologie décoloniale. Penser l’écologie depuis le monde caribéen, Éditions du Seuil, 2019, p. 298. [Translated into English from the French version]
Faced with this escalating dual environmental and decolonial imperative, these new approaches to ecology can help Western NGOs develop their own transition path. Like the models proposed by French NGOs, they make it possible to develop practices aimed at simultaneously reducing environmental, economic and social vulnerability.
Whilst public funders have a decisive role to play because of the constraints they impose, NGOs have everything to gain by placing the climate crisis and its consequences back into a longer historical context, particularly that of Western colonial history. Understanding how that very history has shaped a “colonial habitation”[29]For Malcolm Ferdinand, “colonial habitation” means “a unique conception of the existence of certain humans on Earth (settlers), their relationship with other humans (non-settlers) and their way … Continue reading can enable NGOs to be fully involved in a transition that is ecological, climate-related, fair and inclusive.
Translated from the French by Derek Scoins
Picture Credit : ICRC
