The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) is an environmental organization founded in 1985 in San Francisco, California. RAN campaigns for the protection of forests, rainforests, their inhabitants and the natural systems within them that sustain life. They achieve these targets by transforming the global marketplace through grassroots organization and education and non violent actions to pressurize corporations to adopt environmental policies that address issues ranging from deforestation to global warming.
RAN helped conduct campaigns against big multinational corporations in the 1990s, by grassroots activism and savvy media work to promote changes in environmental policies. RAN also played a vital role in organizing mass actions against World Trade Organization summit in Seattle in 1999. Their corporate campaigns force big companies to balance profit with environmentally conscience principles. Some of RAN’s current campaigns include:
- Freedom From Oil – RAN believes that cheap oil supplies are running out, yet oil companies are pushing to keep the global economy hooked on what’s left at the bottom of the barrel. The Freedom From Oil Campaign attempts to break America’s oil addiction by working to halt the development of the Canadian Tar Sands, the dirtiest and most deadly attempt yet to profit from and prolong humanity’s crippling addiction to oil.
- Global Finance – The Global Finance Campaign challenges large banks to stop funding the world’s most destructive industries and start funding renewable energy.
- Old Growth – RAN’s Old Growth Campaign is shining a spotlight on companies and industries that engage in outdated, destructive logging.
- Rainforest Agribusiness – The Rainforest Agribusiness Campaign is challenging the latest and fastest growing threat to the world’s tropical forests: the rapid expansion of industrial agriculture.
