People & Planet

People & Planet

Type	Limited company
Founded	1969 as 'Third World First'
Location	Oxford, UK
Area served	UK
Focus	Student activism, Poverty, Human Rights and Environmentalism
Method	Lobbying, protest, direct action
Revenue	£380,000 Pound Sterling (2010-11)
Volunteers	20,000+ members of their primary mailing list
Motto	Student action on World Poverty, Human Rights and the Environment.
Website	peopleandplanet.org

People & Planet is a network of student campaign groups in the UK. It claims to be "the largest student campaigning organization in the country campaigning to alleviate world poverty, defend human rights and protect the environment."

Organization

As of 2009 there were 60 university groups and 75 Sixth Form/College groups in the People & Planet Network, and over 20,000 people on its e-supporter mailing list.^{[citation needed]}

The Support Office provides training and resources to the groups. Based in Oxford, the office has a budget of around £560,000 for 2007-8. This is very low when compared to organizations with a similar support base and remit (such as Greenpeace, Amnesty International, and the Stop AIDS Campaign). People & Planet has struggled with funding in recent years, relying primarily on governmental grants, trusts and foundations for support. People & Planet has a Fundraising and Activist Network called the FAN Club, allowing members to make regular monthly donations that provide invaluable unrestricted income to support the organization's work.

People & Planet groups are completely autonomous and there is no formal membership system. Decisions on the future of the network and the work of the Support Office are made by a Management Committee (the majority of whose members are elected students) and at the annual Forum event.

Some groups, while being part of the People & Planet network, operate without being called 'People & Planet'.

People & Planet members at the Carnival of Climate Chaos, part of Shared Planet 2006

Campaigns and events

Annual events include Shared Planet - a student campaigning conference (as of 2006, the largest of its kind in the UK), The Forum - the annual decision making conference where the Management Committee are appointed and new campaigns elected, and The Summer Gathering - a training event which prepares the key activists in People & Planet groups for the academic year ahead.

People & Planet's current campaign areas are Climate Change and Corporate Power.

People & Planet's Green League

In June 2007 People & Planet published the UK's first university league table to be based on environmental impact, with Leeds Metropolitan University coming out top. .

People & Planet's Green League was first created as a way of driving forward the Higher Education sector's lack of environmental management and poor performance by exposing inaction and celebrating those universities leading the way. It initially scored UK universities on four key institutional factors needed to drive forward significant and sustained improvement in environmental performance, as highlighted by the Going Green report. These criteria are:

• The active, public support of senior university management - (in particular the vice-chancellor or principal) for a programme of environmental performance improvement.

• Full-time staff dedicated to environmental management - developing objectives, setting priorities, and significant, time-bound targets to fulfil them.

• A comprehensive review to investigate all the environmental impacts of the institution - so that current impacts are measured, potential improvements are identified and performance is monitored.

• A written, publicly available environmental policy - to provide a formal demonstration of intent regarding environmental performance improvement and against which to compare practice.

The Green League is widely credited with shifting the UK's Higher Education sector towards improved environmental management and performance. The last People & Planet Green League 2009, published on 18 June 2009, showed that 95% of all universities now have publicly-available environmental policies, whilst 85 institutions employed full-time environmental management staff compared with 70 the previous year.

Since the first Green League in 2007, People & Planet has widened the criteria to include measures of actual environmental performance based on Estates Management Statistics data collected by the Higher Education Funding Council for England on behalf of all UK funding councils, as well as strengthening the 'Management & Policy' criteria which measure a university's commitment and approach to improving sustainability, managing environmental performance and minimizing impacts on climate change.

People & Planet's Green League has been published annually in the Times Higher Education since 2007 as a cover story see for example Green League 2009. The Green League 2010 will be published on 17 June 2010. The Green League ranking also now appears in The Independent's A-Z guide to universities.

The Green League won "Best Campaign" at the 2007 British Environment and Media Awards

Trade Justice

In 2007 and 2008 People & Planet groups have also campaigned regularly outside branches of the high-street retailer Topshop in an attempt to raise awareness of Topshop's poor worker's rights record.

Royal Bank of Scotland campaign

People & Planet co-published a report, along with several other pressure groups, detailing the RBS’ investments into oil and gas extraction. The report claims that RBS are one of the world’s primary financers of oil and gas extraction projects and outlines case studies of RBS funded projects in environmentally and politically sensitive regions where larger amounts of financing is required.

People & Planet have called on RBS (who owns Natwest, the UK’s largest student bank) to shift their investments from fossil fuel extraction to renewable energy projects. Campaigning done by People & Planet groups has caused several students' unions (many which bank with Natwest) to threaten RBS with a boycott. The NUS has also expressed concern.

People & Planet Vs. The Treasury

People & Planet are taking the government to court over its bailout of RBS.

Past successes

• Largely due to pressure from People & Planet groups, there are now over 100 Fairtrade Universities and 4 Fairtrade Schools.
• The Ethics for USS (the University Superannuation Scheme) campaign persuaded the £20 billion lecturers’ pension fund to adopt a socially responsible investment policy.

History

The organization was founded in 1969 as Third World First by a group of students, supported by NGOs including Oxfam.

Third World First was instrumental in setting up the magazine, The Internationalist which was later reincarnated as the now popular activist-magazine, The New Internationalist.

Quotes

• “Over the last three years People & Planet has become an extraordinary organization which attracts student supporters on a scale unmatched within the UK charity and campaign sector. More than any other youth organization it is encouraging the emerging generation to see themselves as global citizens with a responsibility for taking action on global problems of poverty and the environment.”

-Joel, Lord Joffe, CBE, Chair of Oxfam, 1999.

• “People & Planet is one of the most vibrant and effective campaigning organisations in the country. What marks it out from the others is its focus on inspiring and supporting young people. By questioning underlying assumptions and conventional wisdom, and by challenging organizations that are much bigger and more powerful than itself, People & Planet demonstrates its political courage and its independence of thought. I am privileged to be part of People & Planet and hope that this review will give you a glimpse of some extraordinary campaigning by some extraordinary young people over the last year.”

-George Monbiot, Guardian columnist, writer and environmentalist, 2007

Notable people

• Guy Hughes (1974–2006) was head of People & Planet's Campaigns until 2004 when, following the outbreak of war in Iraq, he set up Crisis Action, a UK initiative to help co-ordinate NGO responses to crisis situations.
• The environmental campaigner and journalist George Monbiot is Patron of People & Planet.
• Former members include Mark Lazarowicz, MP, Catherine Stihler, MP, (at the University of St Andrews); and Mark Ballard, former MSP and Rector (at the University of Edinburgh) where the People & Planet group was instrumental in his election in 2006, against a field including Magnus Linklater, Boris Johnson and John Pilger.

External links

• People & Planet website
• History of Third World First
• Crisis Action