'Greenpeace' is an international
environmental organization founded in
Vancouver,
British Columbia,
Canada in 1971. It is best known for its campaigns against
whaling. In later years, the focus of the organization turned to other environmental issues, including
bottom trawling,
global warming,
ancient forest destruction,
nuclear power, and
genetic engineering. Greenpeace has national and regional offices in 42 countries worldwide, all of which are affiliated to the
Amsterdam-based Greenpeace International. The global organization receives its income through the individual contributions of an estimated 2.8 million financial supporters, as well as from grants from
charitable foundations, but does not accept funding from governments or corporations.
Mission statement
Greenpeace's official mission statement describes the organization and its aims thus:
:''Greenpeace is an independent, campaigning organization which uses peaceful direct action and creative communication to expose global environmental problems, and to force solutions for a green and peaceful future. Greenpeace's goal is to ensure the ability of the earth to nurture life in all its diversity.''
[1]
Structure
Greenpeace is a global
environmental organisation, consisting of
Greenpeace International (Stichting Greenpeace Council) in Amsterdam, and 27 national and regional offices around the world, providing a presence in 41 countries. These national and regional offices are largely autonomous in carrying out jointly agreed global campaign strategies within the local context they operate in, and in seeking the necessary financial support from donors to fund this work.
[2]
National and regional offices support a network of volunteer-run
local groups. Local groups participate in campaigns in their area, and mobilise for larger protests and activities elsewhere. Millions of supporters who are not organised into local groups support Greenpeace by making financial donations and participating in campaigns as citizens and consumers.
Greenpeace's national offices.
National and regional offices
Greenpeace is present in the following countries and regions, as of March 2007:
Argentina,
Australia-Pacific region [1] (Australia, Fiji, Papua New-Guinea, Solomon Islands), Belgium, Brazil,
Canada, Chile, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany,
Greenpeace Nordic (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden), Greece, Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe (Austria, Hungary, Slovak Republic, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia (no permanent campaign presence in the latter five states)) India, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg,
Greenpeace Mediterranean (Israel, Cyprus, Lebanon, Malta, Tunisia, Turkey), Mexico, the Netherlands,
Greenpeace Aotearoa New Zealand (New Zealand), Russia, South-East Asia (Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand), Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Priorities and campaigns
Greenpeace runs campaigns and projects which fit into the "Issues" (as campaign areas are called within Greenpeace) categories below. Besides exposing problems such as
over-fishing or threats linked to
nuclear energy such as harmful radiation and proliferation, Greenpeace campaigns for alternative solutions such as
marine reserves and
renewable energy.
The organization currently addresses many environmental issues with a primary focus on efforts to stop
global warming and the preservation of the world's oceans and ancient forests. In addition to conventional
environmental organization methods, such as lobbying businesses and politicians and participating in international conferences, Greenpeace uses
nonviolent direct action in many of its campaigns.
Greenpeace uses direct action to attract attention to particular environmental problems. For example, activists place themselves between the whaler's harpoon and their prey, or invade nuclear facilities dressed as barrels of radioactive waste. Other initiatives include the development of a fuel-efficient car, the
SmILE.
Current priorities
Below is a list of Greenpeace's current priorities, as of March 2007:
★ Stopping
climate change (
global warming), -
GP Climate page,
★ Preserving the
oceans (including stopping
whaling and
bottom trawling), -
GP Oceans page
★ Saving
ancient forests, -
GP Forests page
★
Peace and
nuclear disarmament, -
GP Nuclear page
★ Promoting
sustainable agriculture (and opposing
GE), -
GP GE page
★ Eliminating
toxic chemicals (including from
E-waste), many of which are
carcinogens. -
GP Toxics page
History
Origins
The origins of Greenpeace lie in the
Peace movement and the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament generally and particularly in the ''
Don't Make A Wave Committee'' co-founded by
Jim and Marie Bohlen and formed by an assortment of
Canadian and expatriate
American peace activists in
Vancouver in 1970. Taking its name from a slogan used during protests against
United States nuclear testing in late 1969, the Committee had come together with the objective of stopping a U.S.
nuclear bomb test codenamed Cannikin beneath the
Aleutian island of
Amchitka,
Alaska.
Many of the founding members were members of the
Society of Friends. The committee was affiliated with the
Sierra Club but it withdrew its support when
Jim Bohlen, a member of the committee, told journalists that the committee would send a boat to Amchitka to protest the nuclear test without it having been approved by the
Sierra Club.
The first ship expedition, inspired by the voyages of the ''
Golden Rule'', ''Phoenix'' and ''Everyman'' in 1958, was on the chartered west coast fishing vessel, the "Phyllis Cormack", owned and sailed by John Cormack of Vancouver, and called the ''Greenpeace I''; the second expedition was nicknamed ''Greenpeace Too!''.
[3] The test was not prevented, but the voyage laid the groundwork for Greenpeace's later activities.
Early influential people
Bill Darnell has received the credit for combining the words "green" and "peace", thereby giving the organization its future name.
Irving Stowe a member of the
Society of Friends can probably be described as the father of Greenpeace and introduced the concepts of
nonviolence and bearing witness.
Robert Hunter was a media guru and spiritual and organisational leader.
Ben Metcalfe became the first Chairman of the Greenpeace Foundation and with wife Dorothy managed the media for the first few years. Dr
Patrick Moore was the ecologist of note and served for nine years as President of Greenpeace Canada, as well as seven years as a Director of Greenpeace International. Rod Marining's campaign saved the entrance to Vancouver's Stanley Park, he was on the first voyage to Amchitka and was a board member during the 1970's.
Captain Paul Watson was involved in the very early days of Greenpeace as a 1st director, and led the Harp Seal Campaigns but later founded
Sea Shepherd and sank the pirate-whaler ''Sierra'' in 1979. Lyle Thurston was medical doctor on the first voyage and served on the board during the 1970s.
Campaigns
On
4 May 1972, following Dorothy Stowe's departure from the chairmanship of the ''Don't Make A Wave Committee'', the fledgling environmental group officially changed its name to the "Greenpeace Foundation".
In 1972 the yacht Vega a 12.5-metre ketch owned by
David McTaggart, (an eventual spokesman for Greenpeace International), was renamed Greenpeace III and sailed in an anti nuclear protest into the exclusion zone at
Mururoa in
French Polynesia to attempt to disrupt French atmospheric
nuclear testing. This voyage was sponsored and organised by the
New Zealand branch of the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
[4] CNDNZ and the NZ Peace media had been lobbying the New Zealand Government and the New Zealand public to place pressure on
Britain and France to agree to enforce a
nuclear test ban in the
South Pacific since the mid 1950s. This pressure through
civil disobedience protests in French Polynesia and public education at home, eventually resulted in New Zealand declaring itself a
nuclear-free zone by
legislation in 1987. (
New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987).
[5] In 1974 ''La Flor'', from Melbourne, Australia, skippered by Rolf Heimann, a childrens' author set out for Mururoa via New Zealand as Greenpeace IV but arrived after the final nuclear test for the year. The
French Military conducted more than 200
nuclear tests, (40 of them atmospheric), at
Mururoa and
Fangataufa atolls over a thirty year period ending 1996.
In 1974 the Vancouver based Greenpeace Foundation mounted an anti-whaling campaign that encountered Soviet whalers over the
Seamounts off
Mendocino, California. This campaign had been influenced by the work of
Paul Spong and
Farley Mowat and
Robert Hunter's encounter with the
Orca Skana.
In 1976 a campaign was launched against the killing and skinning of harp
seal pups in
Newfoundland for the high fashion fur trade, targeting Norwegian ships engaged in the trade after receiving a hostile welcome from the Newfie fishermen involved in the hunt. Greenpeace used helicopters to move people and supplies to a base camp at
Belle Isle.
Brigitte Bardot later involved herself in this campaign to great effect. In the same year a another anti-whaling expedition using the ''James Bay'' as Greenpeace VII disrupted the Soviet fleet again, but this time with the assistance of a "deep throat" source and extra funding from Ed Daly of
World Airways. At about the same time visits to Japan were arranged to persuade the Japanese people that whaling should be ended.
By the late 1970s, spurred by the global reach of what
Robert Hunter called "mind bombs", in which images of confrontation on the high seas converted diffuse and complex issues into considerably more media-friendly David versus Goliath-style narratives, more than 20 groups across
North America,
Europe,
New Zealand and
Australia had adopted the name "Greenpeace".
Greenpeace also engaged with their opponents through the courts both in Canada (defending a loitering charge for failing to leave a fisheries office) and in France (David McTaggart's Law of the Sea case to recover repair costs after his yacht Vega was damaged by the French navy).
Similarly, Greenpeace became involved with lobbying elected officials and various bodies such as the
United Nations through events such as the Conference on the Human Environment and with the
International Whaling Commission.
On August 21, 2007, Yvo de Boer, head of the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), angered environmental groups due to his suggestion that "''rich nations should be absolved from the need to cut emissions if they pay developing countries to do it on their behalf''". Doug Parr of
Greenpeace opposed Mr. de Boer's suggestion - "''The current trading system is not delivering emissions reductions as it is" ... "Expanding it like this to give rich countries a completely free hand will simply not work''."
[6] On August 22, 2007, the
Philippine Department of Energy's plan to develop
nuclear energy as an alternative source of power was opposed by Von Hernandez, campaign director of Greenpeace
Southeast Asia, who warned that exploring nuclear options to bolster energy demand is “''dangerous and misleading''.” He cited the risks of accidents like
Chernobyl or the most recent
Kashiwazaki nuclear plant leak in
Japan after an
earthquake are real.
[7]
Formation of formal global organization
In 1979, however, the original Vancouver-based Greenpeace Foundation encountered financial difficulties, and disputes between offices over fund-raising and organizational direction split the global movement
[8].
David McTaggart lobbied the Canadian Greenpeace Foundation to accept a new structure which would bring the scattered Greenpeace offices under the auspices of a single global organization, and on
October 14 1979, Greenpeace International came into existence. Under the new structure, the local offices would contribute a percentage of their income to the international organization, which would take responsibility for setting the overall direction of the movement.
Greenpeace's transformation from a loose international network to a global organization enabled it to apply the full force of its resources to a small number of environmental issues deemed of global significance, owed much to McTaggart's personal vision. McTaggart summed up his approach in a 1994 memo: "No campaign should be begun without clear goals; no campaign should be begun unless there is a possibility that it can be won; no campaign should be begun unless you intend to finish it off". McTaggart's own assessment of what could and couldn't be won, and how, frequently caused controversy.
In re-shaping Greenpeace as a centrally coordinated, hierarchical organization, McTaggart went against the anti-authoritarian ethos that prevailed in other environmental organizations that came of age in the 1970s. While this pragmatic structure granted Greenpeace the persistence and narrow focus necessary to match forces with government and industry, it would lead to the recurrent criticism that Greenpeace had adopted the same methods of governance as its chief foes — the multinational corporations. Its current Executive Director is Gerd Leipold.
[9]
For smaller actions, and continuous local promotion and activism, Greenpeace has networks of active supporters that coordinate their efforts through national offices. The United Kingdom has some 6,000 Greenpeace activists.
Greenpeace ships
Since Greenpeace was founded, seagoing ships have played a vital role in its campaigns.
In 1978, Greenpeace launched the original ''
Rainbow Warrior'', a 40-metre, former fishing
trawler named for the
Cree legend that inspired early activist
Robert Hunter on the first voyage to Amchitka. Greenpeace purchased the ''Rainbow Warrior'' (originally launched as the ''Sir William Hardy'' in 1955) at a cost of £40,000, and volunteers restored and refitted her over a period of four months.
First deployed to disrupt the hunt of the
Icelandic whaling fleet, the ''Rainbow Warrior'' would quickly become a mainstay of Greenpeace campaigns. Between 1978 and 1985, crew members also engaged in non-violent direct action against the ocean-dumping of toxic and radioactive waste, the
Grey Seal hunt in
Orkney and nuclear testing in the Pacific. Japan's Fisheries Agency has labeled Greenpeace ships as "anti-whaling vessels" and "
environmental terrorists"
[10].
In 1985, the ''Rainbow Warrior'' entered into the waters surrounding
Moruroa atoll, site of French nuclear testing. The French government
secretly bombed the ship in a New Zealand harbour on orders from
François Mitterrand himself; killing Dutch freelance photographer
Fernando Pereira, who thought it was safe to enter the boat to get his photographic material after a first small explosion, but drowned as a result of a second, larger explosion. The attack was a public relations disaster for France, after it was quickly exposed by the New Zealand police. The French Government in 1987 agreed to pay New Zealand compensation of NZ$13 million and formally apologised for the bombing. (Also see
Sinking of the ''Rainbow Warrior''.) The French Government also paid 2.3 Million French Francs compensation to the family of the killed photographer.
In 1989 Greenpeace commissioned a replacement vessel, also named the ''Rainbow Warrior'', which remains in service today as the flagship of the Greenpeace fleet.
In 1996 the Greenpeace vessel ''MV Sirius'' was detained by Dutch police while protesting the import of genetically modified soybeans due to the violation of a temporary sailing prohibition, which was implemented because the Sirius prevented their unloading. The ship, but not the captain, was released a half hour later.
In 2005 the ''
Rainbow Warrior II'' ran aground on and damaged the
Tubbataha Reef in the Philippines, while she was on a mission to protect the very same reef.
[11] Greenpeace was fined $7,000 USD for damaging the reef and agreed to pay the fine, although they said that the Philippines government had given them outdated charts.
Along with the ''Rainbow Warrior'' the Greenpeace organisation has four other ships:
★
MY ''Arctic Sunrise''
★
MY ''Esperanza''
★ ''Argus''
★ ''Beluga II''
See also
★
Nuclear-free zone
★
Criticism of Greenpeace
★
Nonviolence
★
Environmentalism
★
Sea Shepherd
References
1. Our mission
2. How is Greenpeace structured?
3. Discover Vancouver. The Greenpeace Story
4. Making Waves the Greenpeace New Zealand Story by Michael Szabo ISBN
5. Nuclear Free: The New Zealand Way, The Right Honourable David Lange, Penguin Books, New Zealand,1990.
6. BBC NEWS, Rich 'can pay poor to cut carbon'
7. ABS-CBN Interactive, Greenpeace opposes nuke power option
8. Waves of Compassion. The founding of Greenpeace. by Rex Weyler p.4. Retrieved on May 8 2007
9. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/about/how-is-greenpeace-structured/management/executive-director
10. Greenpeace Rejects Terrorism Label, 14 December 2001
11. BBC News. Greenpeace fined for reef damage. 1 November 2005.
Further reading
★ David McTaggart with Robert Hunter, ''Greenpeace III: Journey into the Bomb'' (London: William Collins Sons & Co., 1978). ISBN
★ Robert Hunter, ''Warriors of the Rainbow: A Chronicle of the Greenpeace Movement'' (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979). ISBN
★ Michael King, ''Death of the Rainbow Warrior'' (Penguin Books, 1986). ISBN
★
John McCormick, ''The Global Environmental Movement'' (John Wiley, 1995)
★ David Robie, ''Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior'' (Philadelphia: New Society Press, 1987). ISBN
★ Michael Brown and John May, ''The Greenpeace Story'' (1989; London and New York: Dorling Kindersley, Inc., 1991). ISBN
★
Rex Weyler (2004), ''Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists and Visionaries Changed the World'', Rodale
★ Kieran Mulvaney and Mark Warford (1996):'' Witness: Twenty-Five Years on the Environmental Front Line,'' Andre Deutsch.
External links
★
Greenpeace International homepage
★
Greenpeace 30th Anniversary
★
Greenpeace 25th Anniversary Interview with Founders
★
Waves of Compassion: The Founding of Greenpeace by Rex Weyler
★
Change It -- Greenpeace's week of activist training with Seventh Generation
★
Greenpeace Australia homepage
★
Greenpeace Europe homepage
★
Greenpeace - Green My Apple
★
Greenpeace Founders
★
Greenpeace Characters
★
Greenpeace Chronology
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