Rainforest Action Network (RAN)

Through its programs and projects, in particular consumer boycotts and letter-writing campaigns, the Rainforest Action Network raises awareness of the environmental impacts of deforestation and puts pressure on governments and corporations to end practices that endanger the world’s forests.

IDENTIFICATION: Nonprofit organization that works to protect tropical rain forests and other endangered forests and the rights of the peoples native to those forests

DATE: Founded in 1985

The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) publicizes the environmental dangers associated with the destruction of rainforests and old-growth forests, focusing public attention on the actions of companies involved in the degradation of the world’s forests. RAN achieves its conservation mission through education and direct grassroots activities, with support from activists working in countries with rain forests. RAN organizes product boycotts to influence corporate executives and uses letter-writing campaigns, petition drives, and nonviolent demonstrations to influence public policymakers. RAN also develops coalitions among scientific, environmental, and grassroots organizations worldwide; holds conferences and seminars; and provides technical and financial assistance to native communities and Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in rainforest countries.

At the international level, RAN members participate in letter-writing campaigns targeting the leaders of countries that permit the destruction of rain forests. Information sharing and coordination of activities is facilitated through RAN’s cooperative alliances with other environmental and human rights groups in more than sixty countries. At the local level, RAN members are organized within grassroots organizations known as Rainforest Action Groups. Members of these local organizations are encouraged to write letters to policymakers, coordinate nonviolent demonstrations, organize product boycotts, and participate in educational and direct-action campaigns. Through its Protect-an-Acre program, RAN supports local organizations within rainforest countries that initiate projects to protect the ecological or cultural integrity of forest communities.

In its first notable success, RAN led a boycott of Burger King fast-food restaurants across the United States to raise public awareness concerning Burger King’s purchase of beef from companies involved in expanding pastureland for cattle at the expense of rain forests. This campaign, which ran from 1985 to 1987, led to a 12 percent drop in Burger King’s sales and prompted company officials to cancel $35 million in contracts for beef raised in Central America and discontinue the company’s purchase of beef fed on former rainforest lands. In 1998, RAN’s success in leading a boycott of products produced by the Mitsubishi Corporation encouraged corporate executives to discontinue company practices that were harmful to rain forests and their Indigenous cultures.

The public pressure resulting from other RAN campaigns has also influenced many large companies to change their policies concerning the purchase and resale of old-growth wood products from US forests. For example, in 1999 Home Depot stores made a commitment to stop selling old-growth redwood. Other companies from which RAN has won concessions include Scott Paper, Boise Cascade (a manufacturer of paper and other wood products), Occidental Petroleum, and Goldman Sachs investment bank. RAN has also encouraged organizations such as the World Bank to deny funding for companies involved in ecologically destructive activities within rain forests. Because timber harvesting is the leading agent in rainforest destruction, RAN has become a strong advocate for the use of sustainable alternatives to pulp, paper, and tropical wood in furniture and building construction.

Bibliography

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Gunther, Marc. “The Mosquito in the Tent: A Pesky Environmental Group Called the Rainforest Action Network Is Getting Under the Skin of Corporate America.” Fortune, May 31, 2004, pp. 158-162.

Holzer, Boris. “Transnational Protest and the Corporate Planet: The Case of Mitsubishi Corporation Versus the Rainforest Action Network.” In Environmental Sociology: From Analysis to Action, edited by Leslie King and Deborah McCarthy. Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.

Place, Susan E., ed. Tropical Rainforests: Latin American Nature and Society in Transition. Rev. ed. Scholarly Resources, 2001.

Solum, Tracy. "Community Action Grants Reportback from the Frontlines." Rain Action Network, 13 Feb. 2023, www.ran.org/the-understory/2022-a-year-in-review/. Accessed 22 July 2024.