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Greenpeace is an international environmental organization founded in Canada in
1971.
Greenpeace is known for the dramatic use of nonviolent direct action in campaigns to stop atmospheric nuclear testing and to bring an end to high-seas whaling. In
recent years, the focus of the organisation has turned to other environmental issues, including climate change and genetic
engineering.
Greenpeace has national and regional offices in 41 countries worldwide, all of which have affiliation with the Amsterdam-based Greenpeace International. The global organisation receives its income
through the individual contributions of an estimated 2.8 million financial supporters, as well as from grants from charitable
foundations, but does not accept funding from governments or corporations.
Greenpeace's official mission statement describes the organisation and its aims thus:
- Greenpeace is an independent, campaigning organisation which uses non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global
environmental problems, and to force solutions for a green and peaceful future. Greenpeace's goal is to ensure the ability of the
earth to nurture life in all its diversity.
Early history
The origins of Greenpeace lie in the formation of the Don't Make A
Wave Committee by an assortment of Canadian and American ex-patriate peace activists in Vancouver in 1970. Taking its
name from a slogan used during protests against United
States nuclear testing in late 1969, the Committee came together
with the objective of stopping a second underground nuclear bomb test by the United States military beneath the island of
Amchitka, Alaska. The committee's founders and early members included:
Darnell has been credited with combining the words ‘green’ and ‘peace’, thereby giving the
organisation its future name.
In September 1971, the group chartered the Phyllis Cormack, a fishing vessel skippered by John Cormack. They named it the
Greenpeace, and set sail for the island of Amchitka with the intention of disrupting the scheduled second nuclear test.
The US Coast Guard vessel Confidence
intercepted the Phyllis Cormack and forced her to return to port, but not before the crew of the Confidence
delivered a note (behind their Captain's back) declaring "what you are doing is for the good of all mankind".
Upon their return to Alaska, the crew learned that protests had taken place in all major Canadian cities, and that the second
underground test had been postponed until November. Although attempts to sail into the test zone using a second chartered vessel
also failed, no further nuclear tests took place at Amchitka.
On May 4, 1972, following Stowe's departure from the chairmanship of the Don't Make A Wave Committee, the fledgling
environmental group officially chaged its n ame to the "Greenpeace Foundation".
Moruroa Atoll and the Vega
When the newly formed Foundation put out a call to sympathetic skippers to help them protest against the French Government's atmospheric nuclear tests at the Pacific atoll of Moruroa, a response came from David McTaggart, a
Canadian expatriate and former entrepreneur based in New Zealand. McTaggart, a champion badminton player in his youth, had sold
his business interests and relocated to the South Pacific following a gas explosion which seriously wounded an employee at one
his ski-lodges.
Outraged that any government could exclude him from any part of his beloved Pacific, McTaggart offered his yacht, the
Vega, to the cause, and set about assembling a crew.
In 1973, McTaggart sailed the Vega into the exclusion zone around Moruroa, only to have his vessel rammed by the
French Navy. When he repeated the protest the following year, the Vega was boarded and McTaggart was brutally beaten by
French sailors. Later, staged photographs of McTaggart dining with senior navy officers were released to the media, suggesting
that all was civil between the opposing parties. A different picture was revealed when photographs of McTaggart's beating,
smuggled off the yacht by crew member Anne-Marie Horne, were also released to the media.
The campaign against French nuclear testing achieved a victory when the French government announced a halt to atmospheric
testing, only to begin testing underground. Greenpeace would continue to campaign against testing in the Pacific until the French
ceased their testing program in 1995.
Saving the Whales
When Robert Hunter was contacted by Paul Spong, a New Zealand neuroscientist hired by the Vancouver Aquarium to study the behaviour of whales in
captivity, the 'Save the Whales' campaign which resulted was initially orchestrated under the banner of Project Jonah, due to Irving Stowe's
resistance to broadening Greenpeace's scope beyond opposition to nuclear weapons.
Stowe's death in 1974 effectively ended this deadlock, and a re-chartered Phyllis Cormack steamed from Vancouver to meet the
Soviet whaling fleet off the Californian coast in the spring of 1975. Thanks to the guidance of a primitive radio
direction-finder and some fortuitous navigation by musician Mel Gregory, who steered towards the moon rather than following a compass, the Cormack encountered the
whaling fleet on June 26.
The crew used fast Zodiac inflatables to position themselves between the harpoon of the catcher ship
‘’Vlastny’’ and a fleeing whale. Film footage of the ‘’Vlastny’’ firing a harpoon
over the heads of Greenpeace activists was broadcast around the world, highlighting the plight of the whales to the world's
public in the closing days of the International Whaling Commission's 1976 conference, which had been taking place in
London.
Greenpeace International
By the late 1970s, spurred by the global reach of what Robert Hunter called "mind bombs," in which images of confrontation
on the high seas converted diffuse and complex issues into considerably more media friendly David versus Goliath-style
narratives, the name Greenpeace had been adopted by more than 20 groups across North America, Europe, New Zealand and
Australia.
In 1979, however, the original Vancouver-based Greenpeace Foundation was struggling financially, and the global movement was
split by disputes between offices over fundraising and organisational direction. David McTaggart lobbied the Canadian Greenpeace
Foundation to accept a new structure which would bring the scattered Greenpeace offices under the auspices of a single global
organisation, and on October 14, 1979, Greenpeace International came into existence.
Under the new structure, the local offices would contribute a percentage of their income to the international organisation,
which would take responsibility for setting the overall direction of the movement. Greenpeace's transformation from a loose
international network united by style more than focus, to a global organisation able to apply the full force of its resources to
a small number of environmental issues deemed of global significance, owed much to McTaggart's personal vision.
McTaggart summed up his approach in a 1994 memo: "No campaign should be begun without clear goals; no campaign should be begun
unless there is a possibility that it can be won; no campaign should be begun unless you intend to finish it off." MacTaggart's
own assessment of what could and couldn't be won, and how, was frequently controversial.
In re-shaping Greenpeace as a centrally co-ordinated, hierarchical organisation, McTaggart went against the anti-authoritarian
ethos that prevailed in other environmental organisations that came of age in the 1970s. While this pragmatic structure granted
Greenpeace the persistence and narrow focus necessary to match forces with government and industry, it would lead to the
recurrent criticism that Greenpeace had adopted the same methods of governance as its chief foes - the multinational corporations.
The Rainbow Warrior
In 1978, the Rainbow Warrior, a 40-metre, former fishing
trawler named for the Cree legend that inspired early activist Robert Hunter on the first
voyage to Amchitka, was launched by Greenpeace. Originally launched as the Sir William Hardy in 1955, the Rainbow
Warrior was purchased at a cost of £40,000 and restored and refitted by volunteers over a period of four months.
First deployed to disrupt the hunt of the Icelandic whaling fleet, the Rainbow Warrior would quickly become a
mainstay of Greenpeace campaigns. Between 1978 to 1985, crew members also engaged in nonviolent direct against the ocean-dumping
of toxic and radioactive waste, the Grey Seal hunt in the Orkneys and nuclear testing in the Pacific.
It was Greenpeace’s continued protest against nuclear testing at Moruroa atoll that prompted the government of France to order the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, in Auckland, New
Zealand, in 1985.
The Warrior had sailed from the Pacific, where it assisted the evacuation of the inhabitants of Rongelap in the Marshall Islands, who continued to suffer health affects attributed to the fallout from American
nuclear testing during the 1950s and 1960s, and was due to lead a flotilla of vessels protesting against imminent nuclear tests
at Moruroa.
On the evening of July 10, frogmen attached two bombs to the hull of the ship. The first bomb detonated at 11:38, and was
closely followed by the second explosion, sinking the ship and killing photographer Fernando Pereira.
Acting on tip-offs from a shocked public, the New Zealand police quickly traced the bombing to Major Alain Mafart and Captain Dominique Prieur of the French
armed forces, who were posing as a Swiss honeymoon couple. Mafart and Prieur were arrested, but attempts on the part of New
Zealand authorities to secure the extradition of their suspected accomplices from Australia, and later from France, were
unsuccessful.
The French Government initially denied any involvement in the bombing, but mounting pressure from the French and international
media led to the admission, on the 22 September, that the bombing had been ordered by the French secret service. Investigations
subsequent to the bombing also revealed that the Auckland office of Greenpeace New Zealand had been infiltrated by Christine Cabon, a French secret
service agent who posed as a volunteer in order to gather information on the Moruroa campaign and the Rainbow
Warrior’s movements.
In 1987, the French Government agreed to pay Greenpeace compensation of NZ$13 million, and formally apologised for the
bombing. The original Rainbow Warrior, too damaged to repair, was cleaned and scuttled in Matauri Bay, where it serves as an
artificial reef and popular dive destination.
In 1989 Greenpeace commissioned a replacement vessel, also named the Rainbow Warrior, which remains in service today
as the flagship of the Greenpeace fleet.
Sailormongering Charge
On July 18, 2003, the US Government's Justice Department
charged Greenpeace under an obscure 1872 law against "sailormongering" for a 2002 protest against the US importation of over $10
million worth of Brazillian mahogany
after the Brazillian government had set a moratorium on mahogany exports.
The original action occured on April 12, 2002. Greenpeace boarded the ship APL Jade that was carrying the mahogany, to hang
a banner reading "President Bush, Stop Illegal Logging".
Greenpeace was rearraigned on a revised indictment at the federal courthouse in Miami on November 14, 2003. The original
indictment included the claim that Greenpeace was wrong about the presence of contraband mahogany on the ship that was boarded.
The Justice Department revised its indictment of Greenpeace, deleting the claim that Greenpeace was wrong about the illegal
cargo.
On May 16, 2004, Judge Adalberto Jordan ruled in favour of Greenpeace and found that "the indictment is a rare – and maybe
unprecedented – prosecution of an advocacy group" for free speech-related conduct.
Activities
The organization is currently active in many environmental issues, with primary focus on efforts to stop global warming and
preserve the biodiversity of the world's oceans and ancient forests. In addition to the more conventional environmental organization methods, such lobbying
politicians and attendance at international conferences, Greenpeace's stated methodology is to engage in nonviolent direct action.
Greenpeace uses direct action to attract attention to particular environmental causes, whether by placing themselves between
the whaler's harpoon and their prey, or invading nuclear facilities dressed as barrels of radioactive waste.
Some of Greenpeace's most notable successes include the ending of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, a permanent moratorium on international commercial
whaling, and the declaration by treaty of Antarctica as a global park,
forbidding possession by individual nations or commercial interests.
Public Interest Watch says that Greenpeace's
controversial actions are coordinated through the secret action
warehouse in suburban Washington, D.C..
Funding
Despite its founding in North America, Greenpeace achieved much more
success in Europe, where its membership is larger and it gets most of its money. The
vast majority of Greenpeace's donations come from private individual members. It has received donations from some prominent
figures, however, such as Ted Turner. Along with other members of the activism industry, in the USA it also uses the services of the Fund for Public Interest Research. Greenpeace spends approximately $360M USD per
year.
While Greenpeace claims that it does not accept donations from companies, governments or political parties; there has been a
noted inverse correlation between their focus of attention and sources of income. The organisation claims this policy permits
them more freedom of movement in their actions and the ability to be supported from people from any political background.
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