Making a Difference One Country at a Time

Author: Kelsey Rinehart

We all want to change the world, but how many of us succeed? Last Friday, Co-founder and President of the Middlebury-based organization ECOlogists Linked for Organizing Grassroots Initiatives and Action (ECOLOGIA) Randy Kritausky showed that his organization is doing just that - making the world better and even cleaner. In his presentation, "Balancing The Scales Of Development: Combining Practical and Ethical," Kritausky discussed the organization's push for global climate control. He stressed that through international grassroots organization - town-by-town and person-by-person - ECOLOGIA hopes to raise awareness about the importance of global climate control.

When grassroots environmental activists in Pennsylvania founded ECOLOGIA in 1989 (in the midst of the Cold War), their original intent was to establish a system of support for local environmental initiatives across the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Their goals since then have changed a little and so has their location. In 2000, ECOLOGIA moved to Middlebury. On its Web site, ECOLOGIA cites the Green Mountain State as the perfect home base for its organization, due to "Vermont's long tradition of community participation, environmental awareness and respect for individual differences."

Kritausky explained that the title of his lecture refers to finding equilibrium between pragmatism and ethics. Throughout the discussion, he addressed this balance as a central concern of ECOLOGIA and its fellow Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). He emphasized the importance of remaining "true to the environmental movement" and its strong ethical spirit, while at the same time recognizing economic concerns and working with, not against, industry. Kritausky said that when he and his organization come to the table with policy-makers, heads of industry or economic groups, both sides may have to compromise, but "we have to know when we've hit the bottom line."

Throughout his talk, Kritausky continually emphasized ECOLOGIA's goal of striking this balance. Noting the overspecialization of many NGOs, Kritausky described these as "too pure to enter into the real world." He mentioned, on the other hand, that some other organizations grow so large and become so willing to compromise that they start to resemble the industries they criticize. ECOLOGIA endeavors to avoid both extremes. The organization states that its program aims to "bring international perspectives and resources to local sustainable development projects, and bring locally based 'on the ground' experience back to the world of international decision making" to create a true local-global connection.

In the spirit of its slogan, "Building Global Connections to create Civil Society and support Local Environmental Initiatives," ECOLOGIA established in 1996 the Virtual Foundation, which "screens and posts [local community improvement] projects on its Web site, enabling donors to choose directly among them." Today, the Foundation's Web site contains information on roughly 150 projects and has local partners in 25 countries.

In particular, ECOLOGIA has spent years working in communities in China and bringing its experiences and findings to the Chinese government. Kritausky mentioned that China, which is on "an unprecedented development path," is vying for development space - natural resources - with the United States, "the largest resource consumer and producers of greenhouse gases (GHGs) on earth." When Kritausky attended a "Green Earth Volunteers" meeting in Beijing, an elderly woman in the front row asked him, "Are Americans going to change their patterns of consumption so that we in China can increase our standard of living and level of consumption?" This question is precisely what Kritausky and ECOLOGIA have attempted to address. Kritausky asserted that the United States has been "overly optimistic" in our development, believing "we can carry on our ways without endangering economic growth and the health of the planet's ecosystem."

ECOLOGIA's recent work aims to find a "verifiable measuring mechanism" for GHG emissions. Kritausky mentioned the organization's desire to find an international standard for GHG emissions and the need for "a third-party verifier" - an "independent inspection regime that will go out into the field and find the truth."

Randy's daughter, Laurel Kritausky, attended Middlebury College and majored in international studies. Now a project director for ECOLOGIA, she remarked that the organization is "working to empower people to make decisions about their future."

The organization has recruited several other students over the years, and established its most recent connection with the College through a class taught by Assistant Professor of Economics Jon Isham. Students in Isham's class conducted investigative research, as Kritausky said, "about the people that ECOLOGIA has to sit down with to negotiate." The research informed ECOLOGIA of the industries' backgrounds and goals before negotiation and compromise began.

ECOLOGIA's next vision is a Vermont-China community partnership, in which students would be paired up to monitor the collective carbon footprint of their towns. Returning to his original metaphor, Kritausky said that the American community and its sister community in China would seek to establish a balance, posing the question, "How can we grow together so that we don't crowd each other out?"

Returning to the need for grassroots action, Kritausky concluded, "The only place that [change] really happens is from the bottom up - hundreds and thousands of little changes" that together make a difference. Wise words from someone who founded an organization that is working on making big changes the world over.