Objective of the Fair, Green and Global programme

The overall objective of the Fair, Green and Global(opens in new window) (FGG) programme is to contribute to poverty reduction and socially just and environmentally sustainable development by enhancing the capacity of civil societies in the South. The programme focuses on enhancing civil society’s capacity in relation to four strategic areas:

1. to develop, promote and upscale exemplary policies and practices for sustainable development;
2. to ensure effective corporate accountability measures;
3. to reorient trade and investment policies and
4. to reorient financing policies.

Global programme and role of Southern partners

Achieving the programme objective requires a Global Programme with active participation from civil society organisations (CSOs) in various countries and continents, and cooperation, partnerships and dialogue at numerous levels. The Alliance’s Southern partners play a fundamental role in the programme by bringing their knowledge of the needs and capacities of the target group, their networks, and their expertise and experience in civil society building, policy influencing and development of alternatives to the preparation of the context analysis, and the design and implementation of the programme. They also guarantee a high level of accountability among the target groups: poor communities — and the CSOs that represent them — whose livelihoods are threatened by unsustainable exploitation of human and natural resources.

Contribution to the overall MFS II objective

The FGG programme seeks to strengthen communities and CSOs and support their involvement in decision-making processes at all levels by contributing to knowledge and skills building and increasing bargaining and negotiating capacities. This necessitates not only organisational capacity building in the form of knowledge and skills building, but also in bargaining and negotiating capacity. A strong and mobilised civil society, rooted in communities and capable of creating new alliances with governments and companies that are willing to take their social and environmental concerns and proposals on board, is necessary to ensure that the balance of forces favours the poor and marginalised and secures a sustainable future.

Target group

The FGG programme’s target group is communities of poor people and the Southern CSOs that represent and promote their interests in order to bring about the changes necessary for them to access basic services, decent work and sustainable livelihoods. The communities include, for example, workers in supply chains of European companies who are denied their rights and only marginally benefit from the export of the products they manufacture. It also includes communities promoting sustainable natural resource management, and those whose livelihoods are acutely affected by large-scale extractive, energy and infrastructure projects, such as indigenous people and small-scale farmers. Targeted poor communities are most directly confronted with unsustainable exploitation of human and natural resources, and they experience first hand the negative social and environmental impacts of insufficiently regulated corporate activity, and unsustainable trade, investment and financial policies. Poor communities and the CSOs that work with them have been chosen as the target group because together they have the potential to produce the global groundswell of support needed for structural poverty reduction.

Given the objective of the FGG programme, the Alliance has also identified secondary target groups: local and (inter)national governments, multilateral institutions, financial institutions, corporations, and the public in their roles as citizens and consumers. These secondary target groups are chosen on the basis of their ability to take and influence decisions and practices related to socio-economic and environmental issues.

Main programme activities

The Alliance and its Southern partners will support targeted CSOs in acquiring the knowledge, analysis and skills necessary to develop a solid evidence base to prove how experiments with alternatives are a better path to development. At the same time, we will build their capacity to scientifically demonstrate the negative impact of corporate practices, and trade, investment and finance policies on their constituencies. We will support stronger local-global linkages for Southern CSOs through network facilitation, as both a means of empowerment, learning, increased effectiveness and efficiency. We will build public support through outreach, including media work, in both the South and North to expand CSO bargaining power to upscale alternatives, and secure policies and legislation that focus on structural poverty reduction and sustainable development. Southern partners will provide targeted CSOs with media and technical training to improve their outreach. The Alliance and its partners will also engage in direct advocacy with decision makers in corporations and governments, while simultaneously developing the negotiating skills of poor communities and targeted CSOs.

Programme intervention strategies and role of Alliance members

The FGG Alliance uses three strategies to implement the programme:

1. Building civil society to enhance the knowledge base and organisational capacity of CSOs, with the aim of establishing a basis for well-informed and well-linked CSOs working together toward the FGG objective.
2. Policy influencing that focuses on building public support for change, including through the media, and building the bargaining power and evidence-base necessary to empower CSOs and the communities they work with, in interactions with key actors and decision makers in favour of changes in policies and practices that advance the agenda for structural poverty reduction and sustainable development.
3. Promoting exemplary models to generate well-grounded innovative cases of practices that better support the interests and livelihoods of Southern communities and deserve to be up-scaled and used as the basis for policies and business models.

Alliance members have complementary experience and skills in each of the three intervention strategies. The role of each Alliance member can be summarised as follows:

• Both ENDS (opens in new window) (Lead applicant): monitoring, analysing and lobbying for sustainable capital flows; supporting existing and emerging Southern networks in developing alternatives; strengthening the capacity of Southern groups to influence decision-making processes at national and international levels, and facilitating dialogues with relevant stakeholders.
• CCC(opens in new window) : promoting improvements in income, employment conditions and human rights of garment workers by sharing its experiences with corporate accountability instruments; connecting the Alliance to the global trade union movement and key human rights organisations and key practitioners in the CSR field, and contributing a strong gender focus.
• Milieudefensie(opens in new window) : documenting cases, projects and investments with positive and negative impacts on poverty reduction and sustainable development; stimulating governments, corporations and banks to adopt policies that contribute to sustainable development in the South, preventing operations that enhance poverty and mobilising public support.
• ActionAid:(opens in new window) supporting partners and communities in Sub-Saharan Africa in bringing about changes in practices related to natural resources; linking partners to facilitate innovation;,conveying the concerns of communities and CSOs in Africa through European and international advocacy and campaigning efforts.
• SOMO: conducting action research; training Southern CSOs to perform their own research and integrate this into lobbying, advocacy, dialogue, negation and campaigning strategies; contributing knowledge about corporate accountability, multinational corporations and providing links to a large network of stakeholder organisations.
• TNI:(opens in new window) promoting and upscaling alternative development proposals and initiatives and linking groups globally; monitoring the impacts of the current trade and investment policies.