Pacific Environment
Pacific Environment protects the living environment of the Pacific Rim by promoting grassroots activism, strengthening communities and reforming international policies.
Description:
We put our mission into action by:
Supporting Local Environmental Struggles
We dedicate over one-third of our budget each year to funding grassroots organizations on the front-lines of the environmental movement.
Holding Banks and Corporations Accountable
We confront tax-payer funded banks that back oil, gas, mining and timber extraction and the companies that profit from these often environmentally-devastating projects.
Promoting Best Practices
We support and encourage sustainable fishing, renewable energy and other initiatives that put environmental protection and communities first.
Building a Global Movement
We forge coalitions and partnerships with environmentalists and other community members around the Pacific Rim—building a united movement to deal with the global threats we face.
History:
For nearly two decades, Pacific Environment has been partnering with the communities that depend on the Pacific Rim’s ecological riches to preserve these shared treasures.With our partners, we’ve shielded millions of acres of forest, we’ve won protections for endangered species, we’ve forced oil, gas and mining companies to apply higher standards to resource extraction projects, and we’ve changed the way some of the world’s most powerful financial institutions approach development lending.
Founded in 1987 as Pacific Energy and Resources Center, we set our early sights on international energy and resources issues, winning respect for scientific and academic articles that helped define and shape emerging global environmental issues and promote the use of international environmental law.
In 1991, Pacific Environment became the first international organization to bring widespread attention to the threats facing the Siberian taiga, beginning a long history of work in Russia. With articles in the Washington Post and the British journal Nature, among others, we highlighted the rush to liquidate Russia’s natural resources in the post-Cold War economy.At the same time, we began our long-term commitment to cooperating with and supporting local environmental organizations and activists.
Very quickly, Pacific Environment started to achieve tangible environmental victories in Russia. In 1993, a Pacific Environment campaign with Russian partners led to the creation of the Botchi Nature Preserve, protecting valuable forests in the Russian Far East that were to be logged by Weyerhaeuser Corporation. That same year, we worked with the Udege people in the Russian Far East to protect the 3-million-acre upper Bikin Watershed against logging by the Hyundai Corporation.This area is now a wildlife refuge.
Over the ensuing years, Pacific Environment continued to develop and implement innovative and effective environmental strategies in Russia. We helped our partners develop campaign strategies, collaborate with international environmental experts and secure outside funding, all of which led to a dramatic expansion of the Russian environmental movement in the 1990s. We also continued to bring significant international attention to Russian environmental issues through the media, including a cover story in Time Magazine and major coverage in The New York Times, TheSan Francisco Examiner, The Oregonian, Wall Street Journal, and on CNN.
Our work continued to have a significant impact on the ground, catalyzing international efforts to protect the endangered Siberian Tiger, for instance, and bringing international attention to other critically endangered species, such as the Western Pacific Gray Whale.
By the mid-1990s, we began to focus on the lynchpin financial role international institutions were playing in resource extraction in Russia and initiated a long-term effort to link grassroots environmentalists around the Pacific Rim to international policy decisions, particularly those of government-supported Export Credit Agencies. Pacific Environment pioneered efforts to block the financing of destructive projects and improve others as one of the founding members of an international campaign to reform the social and environmental policies of Export Credit Agencies, known as ECA Watch.
The results of “following the money” were dramatic: Pacific Environment and our partners blocked financing in 1996 for a gold mine that would have encroached on a World Heritage Site in Kamchatka. We forced Shell and Exxon to stop dumping toxic drilling muds into the Sea of Okhotsk, and we helped partners throughout the world respond to destructive projects like the Ilisu Dam in Turkey and the Kumtor mine in Kyrgyzstan. On a policy level, we worked with a broad coalition of groups to force the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the U.S. Export-Import Bank to adopt higher social and environmental standards.Today, thanks to our work and that of our partners, most of the world’s Export Credit Agencies have adopted basic environmental policies that apply to billions of dollars in annual financing.
While Pacific Environment’s biggest successes in the 1990s were in Russia, we also began to focus more broadly on the Pacific Rim. For instance, Pacific Environment brought together dozens of Pacific Rim organizations into the Ring of Fire coalition to defend the region’s old growth forests. This coalition played a major role in stopping the proposed “Global Free Logging Agreement” before the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999.
In China, Pacific Environment took advantage of the growing opportunities to partner with that country’s emerging environmental movement by helping dozens of local groups become more effective watchdogs of local government, especially through the media. We also assisted these groups in encouraging the Chinese government to review environmental impacts. Pacific Environment’s partners at Greener Beijing utilized the internet to organize a campaign against consumption of turtle and tortoise species in Hainan Province. After a government investigation prompted in part by the campaign, the Hainan Yang Sheng Tan Company halted its import of turtle and tortoise species after financial losses and public pressure. And in 2004, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao ordered officials to reconsider plans for a dam along the Nu River after journalists and environmentalists teamed up to spotlight the issue.
In addition to our direct contribution to environmental conservation around the Pacific Rim, Pacific Environment has also played an important role in strengthening relations between environmental organizations in developed and developing countries. A central tenet of our work has been that local, community-based organizations should have as much influence on environmental decision-making as large international groups. As such, Pacific Environment has shaped new approaches to international environmental work by listening to our partners and finding ways to provide direct support to community groups around the Pacific Rim.
Nearly two decades after our founding, Pacific Environment has forged a movement involving dozens of grassroots environmental groups in Russia, China and elsewhere around the Pacific Rim. And years later, we continue to partner with the region’s environmental heroes to achieve victories and create change: In 2004, Pacific Environment and our partners stopped a proposed pipeline that would have bisected Tunka National Park, south of Lake Baikal, and we forced Royal Dutch/Shell to reroute proposed under-sea pipelines near Russia’s Sakhalin Island that would impact the critically endangered Western Pacific Gray Whale. Of course, there’s much more work to be done!
Contact people:
Office fax number: (415) 399-8860
Address:
 |
251 Kearny St, Second Floor
San Francisco, CA 94108
(See a map) |
Web Site: http://www.pacificenvironment.org
Directions:
|
Nearest Metro/Subway Stop: Montgomery,
Walk distance (in minutes): 5 |
| Last updated on January 5, 2010 |
