Greenpeace | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Formed in 1971 by a group of Canadian and expatriate American Sierra Club members who wanted a more active form of environmentalism, Greenpeace is a global environmental organization with offices in 23 countries and international headquarters in Amsterdam. Its major campaigns include Atmosphere and Energy, Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power, Tropical Rainforests, Toxics, and Ocean Ecology. Its mission combines both environmental and peace issues. Since its inception, Greenpeace has been involved in hundreds of highly publicized direct-action campaigns against major polluters and government nuclear testing. Its flamboyant protests in the cause of ocean ecology in the 1970s heightened public awareness to environmental abuses around the world and drew millions of people to its membership list. Political pressure exercised by Greenpeace led to global treatise protecting whales and dolphins. It shocked public sentiment into action with graphic footage of baby seals being bludgeoned to death. In 1998, Greenpeace, one of the world's largest, wealthiest, and most successful environmental groups, had a membership totaling over 5 million people worldwide.

Greenpeace relies heavily on canvassing, telemarketing, and direct mail campaigns for mobilization, retention, and fund raising. Not allied with any political party, it accepts no corporate donations, and ninety percent of its revenues come from membership dues and other contributions. To promote their confrontational tactics, Greenpeace operates an international information service that consists of four units: Hard News and Features, Film and Video, Photo Desk, and Publications Division. It also runs mass-media crusades, drafts and lobbies for international conventions, participates in educational campaigns, and sells Greenpeace merchandise such as T-shirts and posters. Greenpeace concerts, albums, and compact discs, featuring groups such as U2, REM, and other major acts, market the organization's message to the world's youth.

The elemental principle behind the operation of Greenpeace is the American Quaker tradition of "bearing witness"—drawing attention to objectionable activity by unwavering presence at the site of abuse. The organization has a "navy" of eight ships, an "air force" of one hot air balloon and two helicopters, as well as an "action bus." Its bold protests have included sailing into nuclear testing zones, intercepting whaling vessels, and hanging banners from bridges,skyscrapers, and smokestacks. In the 1970s and 1980s, these demonstrations drew enormous media attention and Greenpeace became a model for other organizations by utilizing the mass media to influence public opinion. As a result of its campaign against the killing of harp seals, people around the globe changed their buying habits and stopped purchasing products made out of the seal pelts. In 1985, After protests against nuclear testing in the South Pacific, the French government sabotaged the organization's flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, in New Zealand. The sinking killed Fernando Pereira, a Greenpeace photographer, and sparked worldwide condemnation against France. This incident resulted in a doubling of the group's membership and a tripling of its revenues. It became the organization of choice for many high-profile celebrities and the pet issue for many Western politicians. The French government eventually paid Greenpeace $8 million in compensation for the destruction of the Rainbow Warrior.

During the 1990s, Greenpeace increasingly moved into the corporate board rooms, law offices, and scientific laboratories of the mainstream, but direct action—nonviolently confronting polluters and marine mammal killers—is what Greenpeace is best known for in the public mind. As Chris Rose, program director of Greenpeace UK in 1993 pointed out, "The moral imperative of demonstrators and direct action to save whales on the high seas was set against rationalizations and sales images of conventional commerce, and the whales won." The mythology of Moby Dick and Captain Ahab that had dominated human consciousness about whaling for over a century had been destroyed. The story became one of courageous whales fighting men in giant boats. Greenpeace's media exploits and public relations drives were the centerpiece of its strategies and the prototypes for other social movements striving to assert a presence in the electronic age. With its reputation as an effective, persistent, and uncompromising environmental organization, grown from its prowess as an efficient publicity machine, Greenpeace has been instrumental in alerting people around the world to environmental evils. Together with other organizations, it succeeded in moving the protection of the environment from a marginal to a central public and moral concern.

Brown, Michael and John May. The Greenpeace Story. New York, Dorling Kindersley, 1991.

Rose, Chris. "Beyond the Struggle for Proof: Factors Changing the Environmental Movement." Environmental Values. Vol. 2, 1993, 185-98.

Wapner, Paul. "Politics Beyond the State: Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics." World Politics. Vol. 47, No. 3, 1995, 311-30.

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