2009 ann ual rep ort
Instructions 1. Combine audacity, leverage and strategy. pages 2-7
2. Hear from our fearless leader. pages 8-9
3. Protect forests, fight climate change and transform corporations. pages 10-15
4. Learn more about the operation. pages 16-17
how to get stuff done ¡ 1
LESSON ONE
Audacity
Fig 1: Sling With which David Defeats the Boheamoeth Goliath.
For a moment, imagine yourself in the dark ages of paper production. (Around 1999.) You want to buy some recycled paper products. You walk into Staples. They don’t have any. You try an Office Depot. Nothing. Now you’re getting frustrated. So you try every other major office supply chain in the country — and you find that none of them carry any products made with recycled paper in their stores. You can’t believe it. You’re not going to allow this to continue. You’re going to transform the entire office supply industry — you and your staff of a dozen. That’s audacity. h Most people would say you’re crazy. Unless they’re very, very smart people — in which case, they’d say you’re ForestEthics. With a budget roughly equivalent to the revenue generated daily by just one Staple’s store, we took on the office supply industry in 2000. We began with a Staples campaign and followed it up with an Office Depot campaign. And won them both. By 2005, independent reports indicated that recycled pulp mills were operating at an all-time high due to demand from Staples and Office Depot. We continue to spark new environmental progress from both companies to this day — and we’ve convinced other major office supply companies to change their ways as well. We’ve also transformed the environmental practices of catalog giants such as Victoria’s Secret, Macy’s, Crate & Barrel and Williams-Sonoma.
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LESSON two
Leverage
Fig 2: Fulcrum With which One May Move Mountains.
Once upon a time, environmentalists across North America decided they wanted to protect some of the world’s most important intact ecosystems from logging. So they went to the logging companies and said, “ You need to protect these forests.” The logging companies said, “We don’t think so.” So the environmentalists went to the rulers of the land — in this case, the Canadian provincial governments — and said, “ You need to protect these forests.” The governments said the same thing: “Hmmm... No thanks.” The environmentalists came up with a new plan. They went back to both the logging companies and the government officials and said, once again: “ You need to protect these forests.” Only this time, the environmentalists had leaders from several major corporations with them. And the logging companies and the governments, both of which were financially dependent on the corporations, said, “Oh, well now, I suppose we do need to protect these forests.” That’s leverage. h While this might sound like a fairy tale, it’s based on a very true story — in fact, it’s based on several true stories. By convincing major corporations to cancel contracts with destructive logging companies and lobby governments on our behalf, we’ve generated tremendous leverage. And while we’re not quite living happily ever after just yet, we’ve used that leverage to secure protection agreements for more than 65 million acres of Endangered Forest s— an area the size of Colorado.
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LESSON three
Strategy
Fig 3: The King, Queen andBishop With which One May Win the Game.
Let’s say you want to protect an endangered species. Let’s say it’s the mountain caribou — one of the most magnificent and threatened large mammals in North America, numbering less than 1,900. The reason the mountain caribou is endangered is that it’s losing its habitat — British Columbia’s Inland Temperate Rainforest — to logging. What is the first thing you need to do? A. Start a petition. B. Distribute flyers throughout the region. C. Go thousands of miles away. If you answered C, congratulations. To protect a forest, you need to focus not just on where it is, but where it’s going. And in the case of the Inland Temperate Rainforest, as with most of Canada’s forests, demand from U.S. companies thousands of miles away was driving the destruction. Once we made those companies aware of the destruction they were fueling, some joined forces with us immediately, and others followed suit once we made it clear to them that their brand identity was at stake. That’s strategy. h That was in 2002. In 2008, due almost entirely to our campaign, the government of British Columbia announced it would protect five million acres of mountain caribou habitat. We’re not done protecting the Inland Temperate Rainforest yet — but we’re already bringing the mountain caribou back from the brink of extinction.
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On Getting Stuff Done
LETTER FROM the Executive director
Fig 4: Todd Paglia Fearless Leader.
What gets you excited about a non-profit? For some, it’s the eco-slick offices, the glitzy galas and the free goodies. I’m not above enjoying a trial-sized eco-shampoo myself, but when it comes to investing in environmental change, I have different criteria in mind. At ForestEthics, we’re focused on one thing and one thing only: getting results. If you’ve read this far in our annual report, you’ve got a pretty good idea of how we do it. And if you read further, you’ll find out what we’ve been up to lately. Of course, if you’d prefer to just get the results — after all, that’s what ForestEthics is about — here’s what we’ve been doing: • Securing protection agreements for more than 65 million acres of critical forests— an area the size of Colorado. • Transforming dozens of corporate environmental policies. • Redirecting millions of dollars in corporate buying power towards environmental sustainability. Not exactly what you’d expect from a group whose largest office hosts only 14 staff, but that’s the whole point: we leverage every donation for as much impact as possible. Leading one of the most innovative, effective and efficient environmental organizations out there — making real change every day — is what it’s all about. When you want to protect Endangered Forests, preserve caribou habitat, and hold the marketplace accountable for creating green solutions, you know where to come. I hope you’ll join us. There’s room at our (donated) table for you.
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FORESTS PROGRAM At ForestEthics, we believe that protecting Endangered Forests requires constant strategic innovation. But no matter which approach we take,
no matter what new tactics we devise, one factor will always remain the same: we will get results. Everything we do is designed to achieve the greatest,
most enduring environmental protection possible. Guided by this singular focus, we’ve secured conservation agreements for more than
65 million acres of Endangered Forests, an area the size of Colorado. photo: Aaron Ward
Boreal Forest.
Stretching through Alaska across Canada to the Atlantic Ocean, the Boreal Forest is one of the largest intact ecosystems left in the world. On July 14, 2008, our Boreal Campaign celebrated the largest forest protection commitment in the history of our organization: the premier of Ontario committed to protect 55 million acres, an area half the size of California. Since then, we have made significant progress on turning that commitment into reality — and ensuring full participation of First Nations communities — by engaging extensively with government officials and also leveraging for additional protection.
Fig 5: The Spirit Bear of the Great Bear Rainforest.
Great Bear Rainforest.
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photo: brian evans
Fig 6: The Boreal Forest.
In 2006, after ten years of campaigning, we celebrated one of North America’s greatest conservation victories: five million acres of British Columbia’s breathtaking Great Bear Rainforest was protected from logging. Additionally, a revolutionary new form of sustainable forestry was put in place for the remaining 10.6 million acres of the region. To support the economic viability of local First Nations communities, we worked to secure $120 million in funding for sustainable local economic opportunities that the First Nations own and operate. But we weren’t done yet.
Fast forward three years to March 2009, when the government of British Columbia and First Nations set an additional 1.7 million acres of forest off limits to logging. Another success? A coastal First Nations’ conservation-based business to produce and sell native-designed toys launches!
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Greenwashing.
Unprecedented consumer demand for eco-friendly products? Good. Industry groups passing off unsustainable products and practices as green? Very, very bad. With “greenwashing” at an all-time high, ForestEthics has launched the first-ever high-profile campaign to expose it. We’re taking on the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), the industry-led “certification” scheme that’s undermining the legitimate certification efforts of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). We’re also working with Washington Forest Law Center on a coordinated strategy that’s resulted in coverage by The New York Times, E – The Environmental Magazine, Architecture Week and The Seattle Times. In November 2009, we ran an ad in USA Today in Phoenix, Arizona, where more than 25,000 people had gathered
Fig 7: First Nations-designed toy business takes off.
for Greenbuild, the world’s largest green building conference. The ad exposed Sierra Pacific Industries, a longtime ForestEthics nemesis and SFI supporter.
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Do Not Mail.
If you’re looking for one of the largest drivers of forest destruction on the planet, look no further than your mailbox. To produce the 100 billion pieces of junk that arrive in American mailboxes every year, 100 million trees are destroyed. We’re turning that around by building a national movement to stop junk mail — just like Do Not Call to stop telemarketers— as well as by taking on the biggest junk mailers themselves. In 2009, our list of Do Not Mail supporters grew to more than 100,000. In March, we achieved an historic milestone as the city of San Francisco took the country’s first-ever legislative action in favor of a Do Not Mail registry.
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Fig 8: Banner floats over SFI’s booth at Greenbuild.
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CLIMATE PROGRAM So why is a group called ForestEthics working on climate change?
Simple: climate change may well be the single greatest threat to the
future of our forests, not to mention our planet as a whole. We’re using our unique, proven approach to take on some of North America’s most
egregious energy projects — and we’ve already made substantial progress. Tar Sands.
Canada’s Tar Sands is home to the largest, most environmentally devastating fossil fuel project in the world. Producing one barrel of Tar Sands oil wreaks havoc on Canada’s Boreal Forest and generates three to five times more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil production. Here’s what we did in 2009 to build opposition to this environmental catastrophe: • In February, during President Obama’s trip to Canada , we placed tongue-incheek personal ads in major newspapers, resulting in coverage across Canada. Then, in partnership with two First Nations, we published an ad in USA Today exposing the threat the Tar Sands poses to President Obama’s plans for a clean energy future. The ad generated major news coverage across Canada — including all three major TV networks — along with several key media hits in the U.S.
Fig 10: “Clean Energy Smell Test” at the State Department.
Fig 9: The Toxic Tar Sands.
• In March, we attended Power Shift, the largest youth environmental conference in the country and signed up 800 new student activists. • In April, we organized more than 40 Tar Sands-focused events across the country. • In late June, we put pressure on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to stop the Tar Sands. Our efforts included an ad in prominent political newspaper Roll Call, online actions by thousands of supporters, a protest outside the state department and an editorial in The Huffington Post. These efforts were featured in Reuters. • We launched the first phase of our U.S. corporate campaign by sending a “Tar Sands Brand Risk” letter to more than 100 Fortune 500 companies educating them on the Tar Sands controversy, offering to engage in dialogue, and making clear that
• We produced two reports: “Divided We Fall: The Tar Sands vs. The Rest of Canada” and “TARnishing Our Climate Efforts: Dirty Oil and the Future of BC,” which sparked a national debate in Canada and caused key leaders to go on the record demanding accountability around the Tar Sands.
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Sacred Headwaters.
In a remote corner of British Columbia lies the Sacred Headwaters, the birthplace of three of North America’s greatest wild salmon rivers. This vast landscape, territory of the Tahltan First Nation, is also home to rich populations of grizzlies, caribou and stone sheep.
photo: brian huntington
inaction could result in their being targeted in a high-profile public campaign. Less than a month after the mailing, we had responses from more than 30 companies, and before year’s end we had serious conversations going with more than half of them. Fig 11: The Sacred Headwaters.
None of these facts have kept Shell from attempting to scar the area by drilling for coal-bed methane. In 2008, in partnership with a wide range of allies, we convinced the government of British Columbia to declare a two-year moratorium on all coalbed methane development in the Sacred Headwaters. It also took the unprecedented step of forbidding Shell to speak with First Nations in the region for the entire duration of the moratorium unless the company is invited. Since then, we have worked to persuade government that it should change the current energy development process, and we have collaborated extensively with First Nations.
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A s if the Tar Sands development wasn’t bad enough already, Enbridge Inc. hopes to
A Look Ahead: Taking on the Enbridge Pipeline photo: Andy Wright
significantly expand it by building two 725mile pipelines through the Great Bear Rainforest. The move would introduce oil tanker traffic to the region for the first time — putting it at risk of an oil spill. The pipelines themselves are also prone to leaks: Enbridge recorded 92 spills in 2009 alone.
Fig 12: Grizzlies at Risk.
Thanks to more than ten years of successful campaigning in Ontario and British Columbia, we already have exceptional relationships with key players who can help us win this campaign. In the coming year, we’ll expand our effort to stop the pipeline by organizing opposition from local British Columbia communities and First Nations, and by pressuring the Canadian government to take action. how to get stuff done · 13
MARKET SOLUTIONS For years we were told that we had to make a choice: we could
either work with corporations or against them. We decided to do
both — and we’ve become exponentially more powerful because of it. When a company is ready to protect forests, wild places and the climate— whether they come to that conclusion on their own or because of our public campaigning — our Market Solutions program helps them develop and implement sound policies. And even after a policy is in place, our work is far from over. We continually encourage and empower companies to improve their policies and practices with strategic tools such as our 2009 Green Grades, which updated our 2008 ratings of the forest- and ecosystem-related policies and practices of FedEx Office, Office Depot, Office Max and Staples, and provided new ratings for Amazon. com, Costco, PaperlinX, Target, Unisource, United Stationers, Xpedx and WalMart/Sam’s Club.
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Fig 13: Shifting the marketplace towards sustainability.
Market Solutions also turns corporate leaders into powerful environmental advocates. Corporations have enormous leverage with logging companies, energy producers and government officials— and Market Solutions ensures that when a campaign needs it most, corporate support will be there.
Corporate Transformation: All in a Year’s Work
009 was a banner year for Market Solutions. We convinced Staples, Office Depot, and seven other companies to lobby for Boreal Forest protection. We created the first-ever ‘model corporate low-carbon fuel standard’, which companies are now adopting to address the risk of Tar Sands fuel. We also played a leading role in keeping the Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC) standards strong. Of course, Market Solutions’ bread-and-butter is corporate transformation. In 2009, we helped four companies adopt sustainable paper sourcing policies, worked with ten companies to increase their use of FSC-certified paper and helped seven companies avoid paper from Endangered Forests in the U.S., Canada and Asia. And that’s only part of the story. On the page that follows, you’ll find a few examples of the transformative environmental progress that some of the world’s largest corporations made in 2009 by working with us.
The following are examples of the corporate progress that our
Market Solutions department influenced and supported in 2009:
With our support, Target stopped buying paper produced by Asia Pulp & Paper, a company that is destroying Endangered Forests in Indonesia. Target also increased the amount of paper it buys that meets the high standards of the Forest Stewardship Council.
Staples has worked hard to improve its environmental performance. In 2009, the company required its branded recycled copy paper to be 100% certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Staples also used its influence as an environmental leader with the Canadian province of Ontario to support protection of endangered Boreal forests where caribou are struggling to survive.
With our help, HP engaged its principal paper suppliers, regarding sourcing from Endangered Forests and plantation conversion in the U.S. Southeast, and took other steps to implement Dell manages its supplier relationships in the industry-leading policy HP developed the same innovative way that it makes with our guidance. products. Our first work with Dell in 2003 produced an industry leading ‘Forest Products Stewardship Model’ that has helped to protect our planet’s Endangered Forests. With our help, Macy’s made its catalog more And in 2009, we worked with Dell on a forest friendly by reducing the amount of new idea that, if adopted, can become an paper it requires and by favoring catalog paper industry-leading, low-carbon fuel policy to that meets the high standards of the Forest help protect our planet’s endangered climate. Stewardship Council. And Macy’s agreed to avoid repeating the inaccurate environmental claims of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.
Nordstrom worked with us to reduce the amount of paper it uses in all stores and operations and to increase the amount of paper it buys that meets the high standards of the Forest Stewardship Council.
With our support, Unisource adopted a new paper buying policy that will help protect Endangered Forests in Indonesia, the U.S. Southeast and Canada’s Boreal region.
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FINANCIALS
Revenue Foundation Grants
1,724,555
Program Revenue (fee for service)
327,038
Contributions from Individuals
Foundation Support (70%)
331,199
Other Income
Program Revenue (13%)
98,973
Total Support and Revenue $2,481,765 Expenditures Program Services Canadian Boreal Forest
431,817
Climate Campaign
766,017
Great Bear Rainforest Save the Sierra
Paper/Do Not Mail Campaign Market Solutions
Chile Native Forest Protection
Individial Contributions (13%)
Other (4%)
Fig 14:
386,491
2009 Revenue Breakdown
153,623 252,509 109,880
Campaigns & Programs (70%)
21,384
Total Program Services
$2,121,721
General & Administrative
363,476
Total Support Services
$908,595
Support and Services Fundraising
Development (18%)
545,119
Total Expenditures
$3,030,316
Increase/Decrease in Net Assets ($548,551) (met by multi-year grants accrued in previous years)
Net Assets-Beginning of Year $1,496,972 (restricted multi-year grants)
Net Assets- End of Year
$948,421
Administration (12%)
Fig 15:
2009 Expense Breakdown
Staff/BOARD Board of Directors
Staff (Continued)
Marika Holmgren President James Clay Secretary Nadine Weil Treasurer
Will Craven Media Officer
Neal Gorenflo
Andrea Leebron-Clay Kevin Johnson Stuart Sender Michael Uehara Mark Westlund Angel Kyodo Williams
Senior Management Team Todd J. Paglia Executive Director Matt Westendorf Chief Operating Officer Kristi Chester Vance Communications Director Pierre Iachetti Conservation Director Aaron Sanger Director, U.S. Campaigns Coila Ash Executive Coordinator Corinne Ball Organizing Director
Staff Joel Accathara Financial Analyst Jolan Bailey Climate Outreach Coordinator Eric Cleveland Bookkeeper
Marlene Cummings BC Forest Campaigner
Stephen Danner Senior Development Officer Catharine Grant Senior Boreal Campaigner
Daniel Hall Director, Market Solutions Chuck Kapelke Grant Writer
Sharon Kurtz Administrative Coordinator
Valerie Langer BC Forest Campaigns Director Claudia Li Communications Officer Hayden Llewellyn Corporate Researcher
Michael Mullan Database & Office Manager Sharon Rose Development Associate Dan Ross Operations Manager Mark Schofield Paper Coordinator
Nikki Skuce BC Energy Campaigner
Karen Tam Wu Energy Campaigner, Forest Policy Advisor Shannon Unger Administrative Assistant Paras Upadhyay Senior Accountant
Alex Vanderweele Web Manager, Communications Associate how to get stuff done ¡ 17
Be part of our solution When you give to ForestEthics, you have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve made a tangible difference in the struggle to protect Endangered Forests and our climate. There are many ways you can make a donation to ForestEthics: • Visit www.forestethics.org/donate. • Call us at 1-800-725-0087.
• Or, find other ways to give at www.forestethics.org/ways-to-give.
ForestEthics would like to thank the thousands of grassroots supporters, volunteers, donors, and concerned citizens in the U.S. and Canada who make our work possible.
San Francisco · Bellingham · Vancouver · Toronto www.forestethics.org www.forestethics.ca info@forestethics.org