Norway’s international environmental organization Bellona has avoided bankruptcy, after an emergency call for donations was met and even exceeded. Bellona founder and leader Frederic Hauge expressed both “gratitude and humility” on behalf of Bellona’s board of directors.
Employees had already taken pay cuts and even gone without pay last month, before the organization’s economic trouble went public. Bellona officials disclosed that they’d actually been struggling for several years, not least after international turmoil and wars have taken attention away from environmental and climate issues. Lots of public funding and private donations have instead been going to defense and humanitarian aid instead.
“We have noticed that climate and the environment are no longer topping the international agenda,” Hauge told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK).
He was among those starting up Bellona in 1986, just seven weeks after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident that also exposed Norway to radioactive pollution. Hauge, Rune Haaland and other activists at the time also mounted demonstrations against toxic waste, illegal emissions and not least expansion of the oil and gas industry.
During the 1990s, Bellona expanded internationally, not least because of nuclear threats posed by neighbouring Russia. While still based in Oslo, Bellona also has offices in Brussels, Berlin and Vilnius, with a staff of more than 70 engineers, ecologists, physicists, chemists and other professionals. Hauge himself has become active in several projects aimed at developing more environmentally friendly technology, and was once listed as among the world’s most influential people by TIME magazine.
Instead of celebrating its 40th anniversary, though, Bellona is now celebrating survival in what’s likely to be reduced form. Even though revenues have increased in recent years, expenses have increased more, and the foundation’s capital had eroded.
Bellona officials announced last week that they needed NOK 8 million (USD 851,000) by this week in order to survive. As of Monday emergency donations amounted to around NOK 13 million, rescuing Bellona from insolvency. Sveinung Rotevatn, the former top politician for the Liberal Party (Venstre) who recently took over as managing director, said cost-cutting would continue along with staff reductions.
“We are in an economic crisis,” Rotevatn told NRK last week, “but we’re keeping our spirits up.” They rose dramatically this week, when donations exceeded expectations. Among those coming to the rescue was a foundation tied to the late Norwegian shipowner Tom Wilhelmsen, which donated NOK 3 million. Other donors remained mostly anonymous, including one from “a private person” who reportedly donated NOK 5 million. “We know who the person is,” Rotevatn told newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN), “but we respect a desire for anonymity.”
Bellona is the name of a goddess of war, Hauge noted last week “and I wouldn’t let Bellona fall until we had tried everything. The response we have received during the past day has been really heartwarming.”
NewsinEnglish.no staff
