An ENGO (environmental non-governmental organization) is a non-governmental organization (NGO) in the field of environmentalism. Examples of ENGOs include the WWF, Greenpeace, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Investigation Agency.
The goals of environmental NGOs include but are not limited to: creating relationships with the government and other organizations, offering training and assistance in agricultural conservation to maximize the use of local resources, establishing environmental solutions, and managing projects implemented to address issues affecting a particular area. Environmental NGOs are organizations that are not run by federal or state governments but rather have funds issued to them by governments, private donors, corporations, and other institutions. In order to fully understand the social, economic, and environmental effects an organization can have on a region, it is important to note that the organization can act outside the formal processes that state governments and other government institutions must comply with.
The funds issued by various parties inevitably influence the way their efforts will be put out, the different kinds of environmental policy-making, and the activities pursued to challenge and put pressure on the states to cooperate in environmental protection. It is clear that private and non-private funding influences and affects the way environmental NGOs view and report environmental conditions.
The concept of what is local is crucial to the kinds of efforts and objectives environmental NGOs will carry out. This aim will aid how environmental NGOs will “facilitate, fund, promote, and provide planning and organizational assistance to so called grass roots organizations". Their efforts come in many forms such as: launching campaigns against nuclear weapons testing, protesting whale hunting, and "international campaigns against the degradation of environmental goods caused by practices like "clearing of timber, and criticize states for their ineffective policies or transnational corporations for environmentally damaging production".
With political backup, environmental NGOs receive considerable amounts of assets and resources through government sponsors such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) among many others, who supersede environmental policies.
By the 1980s, most of Zimbabwe's best land had been taken control of by European settlers which have been divided into categories of "(1) large-scale commercial farm land. (2) resettlement areas, (3) communal lands, (4) national parks and safari areas, (5) forest lands, and (6) urban land" which (with the exception of communal land) is owned and operated by the state. Environmental problems are defined as:
"a change in the physical environment brought about by human interferences which are perceived by people to be unacceptable with respect to a particular set of commonly shared norms".
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- Pamela Chasek, ed. 2000 The Global Environment in the Twenty-First Century: Prospects for International Cooperation. United Nations University
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- Paige West, James Igoe, and Dan Brockington (October 2006). "Parks and Peoples: The Social Impact of Protected Areas" (PDF). Annual Review of Anthropology 35: 251–77. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123308.
- Potter, David, ed. 1996 NGOs and Environmental Policies: Asia and Africa. Oregon: Frank Cass.