| Rainforest Action Network | |
|---|---|
| Abbreviation | RAN |
| Motto | Environmentalism with teeth. |
| Formation | 1985 |
| Type | NGO |
| Purpose/focus | Environmental protection |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California |
| Website | ran.org |
Rainforest Action Network (RAN) is an environmental organization based in San Francisco, California, USA. The organization was founded by Randy "Hurricane" Hayes and Mike Roselle in 1985, with the financial help of Fund for Wild Nature.
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RAN campaigns for the forests and rainforests, their inhabitants and the natural systems that sustain life by transforming the global marketplace through grassroots organizing, education and non-violent direct action. RAN helped pioneer market campaigns against large multinational corporations in the 1990s, using grassroots activism and savvy media work to advocate for changes in environmental policies. Since then, RAN has had numerous successes in its campaigns against logging companies, banks, and vehicle manufacturers.
RAN relies on grassroots organizing, media stunts, and the use of non-violent civil disobedience to pressure corporations into publicly adopting environmental policies that address issues ranging from deforestation to global warming.
RAN works in close alliance with an increasingly well-coordinated movement of NGOs (non-governmental organizations). Along with Global Exchange and the Ruckus Society, RAN played a central role in organizing the mass actions against the WTO (World Trade Organization) summit in Seattle in 1999. Although the organization once had RAGS (Rainforest Action Groups) around the country, today its operations are centralized in San Francisco.
The organization's board of directors includes André Carothers, Anna Hawken McKay, Anna Lappé of the Small Planet Institute, James Gollin, a founding member of the Social Venture Network and Jodie Evans, a founder of Code Pink Women for Peace. Honorary members of RAN's board include Ali McGraw, Bob Weir, Bonnie Raitt, Chris Noth, John Densmore and Woody Harrelson.
The Global Finance campaign targets banks involved in the financing of mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR) in the Appalachian Mountains of the United States. This form of surface mining uses millions of tons of explosives[1] to blow apart mountain peaks in order to access the coal seam below. Past targets have included JP Morgan Chase, which was one of the leading financiers of mountaintop removal mining,[2] as well as the United States Environmental Protection Agency, which issues the permits for MTR.
RAN's Rainforest Agribusiness campaign, The Problem With Palm Oil, centers around the social and environmental impact of palm oil plantations in the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. Palm oil plantations in these areas result in the clearcutting of tropical hardwoods, the killing of local wildlife, the displacement of local communities and a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions. While still targeting Cargill, the largest supplier of palm oil to the United States,[3] with minimal success, RAN moved to one of Cargill's palm oil customers, General Mills. RAN has used direct action tactics, negotiation and membership engagement to convince General Mills to source environmentally and socially sustainable palm oil.
Launched in December 2009, the We Can Change Chevron campaign targets the California-based oil corporation for Texaco's dumping of 18 billion US gallons (68,000,000 m3) of waste oil into the Amazon Rainforest in Ecuador.[4] We Can Change Chevron aims to pressure Chevron into paying for the cleanup of the waste oil pits abandoned by their subsidiary, and to develop an environmental and human rights policy that will prevent future scenarios like this from occurring in the future. Chevron acquired Texaco in 2001, and asserts that Texaco completed its agreement to clean up its share of the waste generated by the joint venture between Texaco and Petroecuador, the state run oil company. The company claims it cleaned up one third of the waste, more than its share of the agreement with Petroecuador, and the rest of the responsibility lies with the state who has had sole ownership of the oil fields since 1992.[5][6]
RAN's Freedom From Oil campaign is focused on halting Royal Bank of Canada's funding of the tar sands, an oil extraction project in the Alberta region of Canada. The Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon tactic targeted the wife of CEO Gordon Nixon, asking her to convince her husband to stop financing the environmentally detrimental project. In addition, RAN has organized a number of rallies to call attention to the bank's connection to the tar sands, including the Toronto-based protest at RBC's Annual General Meeting in March 2010.[7]
Since 2003, the organization has been the subject of a Congressional investigation as to whether it should be allowed to keep its tax-emempt non-profit 501(c)(3) status. RAN has been subpoenaed by the House Ways and Means Committee to hand over every document and piece of footage relating to all protests the organization has done since 1993 in order to investigate whether they should be entitled to the tax-exempt status. RAN to date has handed over hundreds of documents and video footage and are waiting to see if they will be called to testify.
RAN has come under criticism for its support of the Forest Stewardship Council[8] and primary forest logging. The group has been harshly criticized by the television show Penn & Teller: Bullshit! stating that the group is composed of activists possessing very little knowledge of the causes they champion.[9]
The group has also been criticized for its treatment of impoverished communities in developing countries. In 1993, RAN founder Randall Hayes was criticized in a letter to the editor of a local Malay newspaper by Eric Hansen, a Malaysia-based tour guide, for rendering a "fictional account" of a two-week tour of Mulu National Park in Sarawak, Malaysia, in order to raise funds.[10] Hayes stated in a newsletter that he took part in a protests against logging activity with the indigenous Penan people, and witnessed 'cultural genocide' and 'rape' of the Penan people; according to Hansen, they witnessed no such activity, and his newsletter was taken as an insult by the local Penan employed by the tour company. Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud commented on the group's action, stating that RAN had not donated any of the funds raised to the Penan people.[11]
However, while the details of Hayes 1993 trip to Sarawak may have been disputed, the existence of longstanding disputes between Penan communities and logging companies is well-documented, and Penan have been protesting treatment by loggers since the 1980s;[12][13][14][15] in some instances, in an echo of Hayes' allegations, this mistreatment has allegedly included rape of Penan women and girls by logging company workers.[16] Through its Protect-an-Acre Initiative, Rainforest Action Network has donated $5,000 to Indigenous Forests Restoration Initiative, a conservation project of nine Penan, Kayan, and Iban villages in Sarawak;[17] RAN has also donated $5,000 to the Borneo Project to fund land demarcation in order to protect land rights for Penan communities.[18][19]