Greenpeace Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

This Greenpeace Essay example is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic, please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.

Greenpeace is an international environmental organization that pioneered environmental direct-action tactics and has gone on to become one of the largest and most important global forces in the name of environmental protection. Greenpeace, which takes its name from its dual concerns of antimilitarism and environmentalism, was founded in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1971. It was one of several new environmental organizations to grow out of the New Left activism of the 1960s, and it adopted a decidedly more confrontational approach to environmental protection relative to the conservation organizations that preceded it.

Its first action was characteristic of the tactics and style that would come to define the organization. A number of activists, along with invited journalists, sailed an old fishing vessel toward the Aleutian Island of Amchitka north of Alaska with the intent to draw attention to the underground nuclear testing that was being conducted by the United States in that area. Although the contingent was intercepted by U.S. forces and never reached the testing zone, the incident received a great deal of publicity and the activists successfully brought the issue of nuclear testing to the world’s attention. International pressure spawned by Greenpeace actions eventually brought an end to nuclear testing in the Aleutians.

Using the Quaker notion of “bearing witness,” Greenpeace activists would continue to use nonviolent civil disobedience to draw attention to practices that threatened the environment. Although some were critical of the masculinist organizational culture associated with the focus on daring stunts, the group’s actions continued to attract media attention and win public support. For its first decade these actions focused primarily on nuclear issues and the protection of ocean mammals. Greenpeace activists campaigned against seal hunts and the whaling industry, sometimes placing themselves between whaling vessels and their prey.

High-Profile Tactics

Inspired by their high-profile tactics, new Greenpeace chapters were formed throughout the 1970s. But these remained largely autonomous and loosely joined during this period. Although there were internal conflicts about focusing on action versus formalizing the organization, in 1979 the six existing chapters were brought together more formally as Greenpeace International.

During the 1980s, Greenpeace expanded its agenda beyond oceans and nuclear testing to include issues such as energy and toxic waste. It was also during this period that Greenpeace was targeted by the French Secret Service. In 1985, French agents planted a bomb and sunk the Greenpeace vessel, the Rainbow Warrior, while it was docked in New Zealand. One crew member was killed. The incident received international attention and support for the organization grew significantly.

Greenpeace has played a central role in advancing a number of environmental causes. Its campaigns against nuclear testing and the ocean dumping of nuclear waste led to international treaties that banned many such practices. The group was also instrumental in achieving a ban on commercial whaling. In addition, Greenpeace played an important role in the protection of Antarctica. In 1983 it was among the first major environmental organizations to call for the protection of the undeveloped continent. In part as a result of their work on this issue, the 1991 Madrid Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty banned resource extraction from the region. Greenpeace also successfully campaigned to ban the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), gasses that deplete the ozone layer of the earth’s atmosphere. Current campaigns include climate change, forests protection, fair trade, toxics use reduction, and the elimination of genetically modified organisms.

Greenpeace continues to work on nuclear issues. They have dramatized the security threats at nuclear plants, utilizing classic civil disobedience tactics that they pioneered in the 1970s. In 2002, Greenpeace activists easily gained access to and occupied the Sizewell nuclear facility in Britain vividly demonstrating before the media and the world that nuclear facilities are not secure.

Today, Greenpeace International is headquartered in Amsterdam, and has offices in over 40 nations. Organizationally, it incorporates elements of different types of environmental movement groups, which usually specialize in either professional lobbying and litigation or grassroots tactics. Greenpeace continues to be run by professional staff with little grassroots participation beyond letter writing. Direct action media events are carried out by a handful of trained activists. But professional staff members also carry out lobbying and litigation as well as international diplomacy. Although the organization is hierarchically structured, chapters retain a good deal of autonomy and are therefore able to respond quickly to local developments.

The organization is funded through foundation grants and individual contributions. Although no formal membership exists, contributors number over 2.8 million and many more participate in Greenpeace letter writing and Internet lobbying campaigns. Greenpeace continues to be a significant voice in international environmental politics.

Bibliography:

William Carroll and R.S. Ratner, “Media Strategies and Political Projects: A Comparative Study of Social Movements,” Canadian Journal of Sociology (v.24/1, 1999);
Peter Dykstra, “Greenpeace,” Environment (v.28/6, 1986);
Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring (Island Press, 1993).