NGOs and their Assistance to the Government

In the past few decades, we have seen tremendous effort from the Non-government organisations. Call it the upsurge of the youth for a better society or whatever; today many non-governmental organisations have been able to achieve what the government sometimes lacked. NGOs are working in literally every sector that there is, and that is because social causes need people’s initiatives and the government is not always able to reach every person. In this article, we will be discussing environmental NGOs in particular.

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate change in the government of India constitutes a special NGO cell to oversee the functions of environmental NGOs in the country. It was constituted in May 1992 to promote more NGOs and movement in the society with respect to environment. The forest department and the NGOs many a time collaborate and disseminate information for each other. Surveys conducted by the former and provided with personnel by the NGOs who may also require the information for their campaigns.

International NGOs have been able to carry out campaigns that have been successful in protecting an endangered species, or at least spread enough awareness that people could do something about it. Let us take two case studies, one from India and one from another country.

WWF India, India’s largest NGO working in the environment sector, has launched campaigns for protection of endangered species like the Bengal tiger, Asian elephant, Snow leopard, Ganges river dolphins etc. The way they go about it is that they focus more on the threats that these species have and the issues in their surroundings like poaching and hunting, loss of habitat. So there campaigns stress more upon people’s awareness. Only sometimes they cater to government intervention.

International Fund for Animal Welfare from the United States of America has a different approach towards handling this. Their belief in state is perhaps a little higher, so their direct line of attack is legal and they fight for law reforms that may help their situation. For example, USA and China last month committed to protecting elephants by banning ivory trade in the regions, due to IFAW leaders and campaigners. Similarly for tiger protection, IFAW has leaders fighting the government for protection from poachers, hunting for tiger skins; IFAW, in partnership with Russian government and World Bank among others, helped in organizing the global tiger summit to fight the legal and awareness battle. Similarly, in 2009, revised trade in seal products was seen due to various animal NGOs along with IFAW.

Both these approaches work, and well. But they are thought of differently because people of India are so much more different than any other country. It takes different types of appeals to arouse people’s feelings towards something enough that they do something for it. Therefore, the NGOs in India, although large in number, do in some ways or the other contribute to the environment conditions of the place they operate in. Even if they do not affect the governance and the laws in India, they do impact the way people function in a particular ambience.

Let’s help these NGOs in what they are trying to achieve because at the end, they are working towards causes that the society as a whole faces and therefore, we are the basic units of it. If we just do what we are supposed to, everyone’s work would be so much easier. You don’t have to be or support a non-governmental organisation to protect the place where you live. Although, support some that don’t have the scope of involving you directly. 

Vaibhavi Khanwalkar