1. Origins
Greenpeace

2. • Type Non-governmental organization
• Founded 1971
• Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• Location Amsterdam, The Netherlands (International)
• Key people Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director
• Lalita Ramdas, Chairman
• Area served Worldwide
• Focus Environmentalism, peace
• Method Direct action, lobbying, research, innovation
• Revenue €196.6 million (2008)
• Members 2.86 million (2008)
• Website www.GreenPeace.org
• www.GreenPeace.mobi

3. • Greenpeace is a non
governmental environmental organization with offices in over
forty countries and with an international coordinating body
inAmsterdam, The Netherlands. Greenpeace states its goal is
to "ensure the ability of the Earth to nurture life in all
its diversity" and focuses its work on world wide issues such
as global warming, deforestation, overfishing, commercial
whaling and anti-nuclear issues. Greenpeace uses direct
action, lobbying and research to achieve its goals.

4. Origins
• In the late 1960s, the U.S. had plans for an underground nuclear weapon test in
the tectonically unstable island of Amchitka in Alaska. Because of the 1964 Alaska
earthquake, the plans raised some concerns of the test triggering earthquakes and
causing a tsunami. Anti-nuclear activists protested against the test on the border
of the U.S. and Canada with signs reading "Don't Make A Wave. It's Your Fault If
Our Fault Goes". The protests did not stop the U.S. from detonating the bomb.
• While no earthquake or tsunami followed the test, the opposition grew when the
U.S. announced they would detonate a bomb five times more powerful than the
first one. Among the opposers were Jim Bohlen, a veteran who had served the U.S.
Navy and Irving and Dorothy Stowe, a Jewish couple, who had recently become
Quakers. As members of the Sierra Club Canada, they were frustrated by the lack
of action by the organization. Jim Bohlen's wife Marie came up with the idea to sail
to Amchitka, inspired by the anti-nuclear voyages of Albert Bigelow in 1958. The
idea ended up in the press and was linked to The Sierra Club. The Sierra Club did
not like this connection and in 1970 The Don't Make a Wave Committee was
established for the protest. Early meetings were held in the Shaughnessy home of
Robert and Bobbi Hunter. The first office was opened in a back-room, storefront on
Cypress and Bwy SE corner in Kitsilano, (Vancouver) before moving to West 4th at
Maple.

5. • There is some debate as to who are the actual founders of The Don't Make
a Wave Committee. Researcher Vanessa Timmer has referred the early
members as "an unlikely group of loosely organized protestors". According
to the current Greenpeace web page, the founders were Dorothy and
Irving Stowe, Marie and Jim Bohlen, Ben and Dorothy Metcalfe, and
Robert Hunter. The book The Greenpeace Story states that the founders
were Irving Stowe, Jim Bohlen and Paul Cote, a law student and peace
activist. Greenpeace used to list Moore among "founders and first
members" of The Don't Make a Wave Committee but has later stated that
while Moore was a significant early member, he was not a founder.
According to Moore's own letter he applied to the already existing
organization in March 1971.

6. • In 1972, The Don't Make a Wave committee changed their official name to
Greenpeace Foundation. While the organization was founded under a
different name in 1970 and was officially named Greenpeace in 1972, the
organization itself dates its birth to the first protest of 1971. Greenpeace
also states that "there was no single founder, and the
name, idea, spirit, tactics, and internationalism of the organization all can
be said to have separate lineages".
As Rex Weyler put it in his chronology, Greenpeace, in 1969, Irving and
Dorothy Stowe's "quiet home on Courtenay Street would soon become a
hub of monumental, global significance". Some of the first Greenpeace
meetings were held there, and it served as the first office of the
Greenpeace Foundation.
After the office in the Stowe home, (and after the first concert fund-raiser)
Greenpeace functions moved to other private homes before settling, in
the fall of 1974, in a small office shared with the SPEC environmental
group, at 2007 W. 4th Avenue, at Maple Street, across from the Bimini
neighbourhood pub. The address of this office has since been changed to
2009 W. 4th Avenue. The building still exists, and the office is up the stair
at the “2009” door.

7. • Organizational development
Historian Frank Zelko has commented that "unlike Friends of the Earth,
for example, which sprung fully formed from the forehead of David
Brower, Greenpeace developed in a more evolutionary manner.«

8. • In the mid-1970s independent groups using the name Greenpeace started
springing up world wide. By 1977 there were 15 to 20 Greenpeace groups
around the world. At the same time the Canadian Greenpeace office was
heavily in debt. Disputes between offices over fund-raising and
organizational direction split the global movement as the North American
offices were reluctant to be under the authority of the Vancouver office
and its president Patrick Moore.

9. • After the incidents of Moruroa, David McTaggart had moved to France to
battle in court with the French state and helped to develop the
cooperation of European Greenpeace groups. 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 organization. The European Greenpeace paid the debt of the
Canadian Greenpeace office 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
organization, which would take responsibility for setting the overall
direction of the movement with each regional office having one vote.
Some Greenpeace groups, namely London Greenpeace (dissolved in 2001)
and the US-based Greenpeace Foundation (still operational) however
decided to remain independent from Greenpeace International.

10. Priorities and campaigns
• On its official website, Greenpeace defines its mission as the following:
Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning organization that acts to change
attitudes and behaviour, to protect and conserve the environment and to promote
peace by:
• Catalysing an energy revolution to address the number one threat facing our planet:
climate change.
• Defending our oceans by challenging wasteful and destructive fishing, and creating a
global network of marine reserves.
• Protecting the world’s remaining ancient forests which are depended on by many
animals, plants and people.
• Working for disarmament and peace by reducing dependence on finite resources and
calling for the elimination of all nuclear weapons.
• Creating a toxin free future with safer alternatives to hazardous chemicals in today's
products and manufacturing.
• Campaigning for sustainable agriculture by encouraging socially and ecologically
responsible farming practices.