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Rainforest Action Network

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Submitted By KayLee
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The Rainforest Action Network (aka RAN) was founded in 1985. They work towards helping rainforests and their inhabitants in a nonviolent way. The group supports activists in countries with rainforests and organizes action groups throughout the United States. It works with groups from 60 different countries, and began by bringing the rainforests to public attention.

One of it's first successes was it's battle against Burger King in 1987. Burger King wanted to make rainforests into cattle ranches, but RAN campaigned against it. So Burger King canceled $35 million dollars that was going into the project. In 1988 RAN stopped the funding for the making of the Nam Choam Dam in Thailand because it would have hurt rainforest communities.

RAN has had many successful campaigns over the years. In 2010, General Mills committed to getting it's palm oil sources from responsible sources by 2015. The same year, an Australian timber-company called Gunns decided to stop native forest logging. And, eight children's book publishers pledged to not work with some controversial Indonesion suppliers because they were hurting the environment.

One of RAN's most recent efforts are to eliminate palm oil from products. Palm oil is a popular type of oil because its very cheap, but it grows in rainforests. The issue of palm oil is a main factor of rainforest loss in Indonesia. Currently, RAN is fighting against Cargill, the largest importer of oil into the U.S. Cargill ships palm oil but does not make sure that it isn't hurting rainforests in the process, and RAN is trying to get them to protect rainforests but still be able to ship palm oil. Also, RAN has recently announced its partnership with two Girl Scout activists. They are trying to eliminate the palm oil use in the Girl Scout cookies which destroys rainforests, so they partnered up with RAN to lead this new campaign.

RAN has also earned some criticism over the years. Some people say that RAN has lost it's core values and doesn't fight for certain issues anymore. It is said that they compromise too much and only fight halfway for their issues.

My opinion of RAN is that is looks like a helpful organization. There's not much known about the statistics of RAN's campaigns, or how well they work, though. I don't think I would be able to support them fully because I just don't know how well they work, and it's also tricky supporting an environmentalist group because it sometimes seems like they just make issues about silly things that don't really matter.

Bibliography

http://ran.org/content/our-mission-and-history

http://www.greenassembly.net/organizations-global/rainforest-action-network/

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