Laurel Sutherlin is the senior communications strategist for Rainforest Action Network. He is a lifelong environmental and human rights campaigner as well as a naturalist and outdoor educator with a passion for birds and wild places. Follow him on Twitter @laurelsutherlin.
Laurel is a naturalist and environmental educator with an endless love for birds, forests and wild places. He is also a lifelong environmental and human rights activist with decades of experience using bold and creative tactics to nonviolently stand up to some of the most powerful forces on the planet that are destroying nature or oppressing people. Laurel works on all of RAN’s campaigns in messaging development, communications strategy and content writing. He develops and implements creative tactics to earn high-impact media as well as other public-facing approaches to pressuring campaign targets to achieve RAN’s campaign goals.
“The footage of Minnie Mouse in handcuffs being taken away in a police car going viral… Seeing Cargill announce a comprehensive, global deforestation-free commodity policy on the floor of the UN… Sitting with local grandmothers shutting down 4 BofA bank branches simultaneously in Charlotte, NC… Hearing Obama say the words ‘keep it in the ground’ as he rejected KXL. These are the things I live for.”
Descendants of the founders of Procter & Gamble (P&G) are urging their fellow shareholders to vote against current members of the board of directors, due to the company’s failure to address unsustainable sourcing of wood pulp and palm oil from climate-critical forests in the Canadian boreal and southeast Asia. Environmental advocacy organizations NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), Rainforest Action Network (RAN), and Friends of the Earth US all support the recommendation.
Rainforest Action Network has welcomed the publication of Unilever Principles in Support of Human Rights Defenders and guidance for existing commitments and requirements. The document defines the consumer goods powerhouse’s commitment to support Human Rights Defenders that are under increasing risk in agricultural supply chains and contribute to healthy civic space in the regions it operates or sources commodities from. Most importantly, it lays out a step-by-step guide to the implementation of a dedicated policy on protecting Human Rights Defenders. This is a global first for a multinational corporation that has a significant footprint in the tropical rainforest regions where Human Rights Defenders are under increasing attack and civic space is shrinking.
As part of finance day of COP27 the Rainforest Action Network exposed startling facts on banks in Net Zero Banking Alliance. Wall Street’s biggest banks are financing client companies who are actively expanding fossil fuels at ever-increasing levels. Read the report here, as first reported by Marketwatch.
From the Natural History Institute. This webinar is part of the series "Savoring and Saving the World: Facing the Future in This Present Moment," hosted by Dr. Tom Fleischner and sponsored by Slater & Rutherford, CPAs.
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All eyes should be on the salsa dancing capital of the world, Cali, Colombia, where representatives of 190 nations are joined by a broad swath of global civil society and international Indigenous delegations to participate in the United Nations Biodiversity Summit (aka COP16). We largely know what must be done to avoid the most catastrophic outcomes on the horizon. It’s just that nobody with real power sees any short-term gain from doing these things.
We must shift the foundational dialogue from viewing nature through a transactional lens to embracing a holistic understanding of biodiversity. This includes listening to and incorporating the knowledge of traditional and Indigenous communities into our policies and economic models. We must transform the current landscape of corporate impunity into one where accountability prevails.