Source
Automatically imported from: http://commons.somewhere.com:80/rre/1996/Rainforest.Action.Networ.html
Content
This web service brought to you by Somewhere.Com, LLC.
Rainforest Action Network web site
``` [This is a really well-done Web site.]
---
This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to rre-help@weber.ucsd.edu
---
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 10:09:15 -0800 From: ranmedia@ran.org (Mark Westlund)
[...]
WWW Advances Environmental Activism by Mark Westlund, RAN Media Director
Rainforest Action Network (RAN), in its campaign to save the world's
rainforests, has a three-part function: education, direct action, and
grassroots organizing. Our web site
We are generating an average of 14,000 hits per week, which means many people are coming into our environment... and hopefully are leaving with a strong sense of the urgent rainforest issue.
Since "Action" is RAN's middle name, the Action Alert occupies a prominent place on the home page. We update the text monthly to keep the page fresh, and to reflect current campaign goals. Recent alerts have focused on pirate mahogany logging on Indian land in the Amazon basin, Georgia-Pacific's questionable timber purchases from Guyana, the wrong-doings of Shell Oil and the Nigerian government in Ken Saro-Wiwa's execution, and the creation of a wildlife preserve in British Columbia for the rare white bears that live there. What makes our Action Alert particularly effective, however, is that each installment concludes with a letter of protest to the targeted rainforest destroyer. In the case of the Saro-Wiwa alert, for instance, the virtual activist sends E-mail to President Clinton, urging an embargo on all Nigerian oil products. With the mahogany alert, the letter goes by way of fax-server directly to Brazil's Minister of the Environment. The letter template can be edited on line, or transmitted as is. Just click the "Send" button and there you are: You've made an honest to goodness political statement.
Our statistics show that nearly one person in ten who visits the site uses the Action Alert fax/E-mail feature. This is an extremely high rate of return, especially when compared to an old-fashioned direct mailing piece that might generate a mere 1 to 3 percent response.
Web technology allows us to focus attention on specific campaign targets more effectively than passive media does. For instance, RAN has a long-standing boycott of Mitsubishi Corporation, due to the Japanese conglomerate's rapacious world-wide timber trade. The Mitsubishi Corporation home page made several preposterous claims about the company's concern for the environment, which we took them to task for. We constructed a duel: Our site posted refutations to their claims one by one, with documentation, and in each case linked back to their site, which caught them in their falsehoods. In an information-age coup de grace, the RAN site then offered users the ability to send a message with their own opinion back to Mitsubishi Corporation on MC's own comments page. Apparently, the response was voluminous enough to prompt MC to dump the pages with their eco-boasting, and redo their site. Our stats showed that Mitsubishi was hitting our pages fairly heavy for the weeks before their page "redo." In addition, our webmaster reports that the RAN site is generating on the average of 500 faxes a week to the Mitsubishi Corporate offices.
This points to the fact that, on the web, the playing field is more level, and corporate greenwashing can be more effectively countered. We notice that Shell and Texaco have been studying our site, too. This is probably because RAN is speaking truth to power about their devastating environmental records in the third world. Shell in particular should worry. We have designs on them for something similar to the Mitsubishi duel. They've been saying silly things about their involvement in petrochemical development in Nigeria, and insinuate that the November executions of human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others was the result of activists protesting too much!
Our entire site is educational, I think, in keeping with the organization's mission; however, some areas are decidedly so. The Rainforest Information section is all about education, as is the Kid's Corner. Rainforest Information answers commonly asked questions, from rates of destruction, to medicinal uses or rainforest fauna, to the kind of products that come from the rainforest. The children's' section is geared for a young computer user, and features easy-to-read text, and plenty of graphics.
Each of our five campaigns (Amazonia, Rainforest Wood, Mitsubishi Boycott, Wood Reduction Clearing House, and World Bank) has its own section, which includes campaign overviews, and specifics about why particular rainforest destroyers are the target of these campaigns: Mitsubishi, MacMillan Bloedel (British Columbia clearcut villain), Georgia Pacific, Texaco, Maxis and others. The sections are updated regularly to reflect campaign developments, and information about what like-minded groups in the effected regions are doing. In these updates, we have links established to related web sites. Again, whenever possible, we provide a fax or E-mail link for users to make comments directly to allied groups, government officials, or corporate offenders.
The third part of RAN's mission in developing grassroots organizations on a regional level, and the web site (coupled with a mailing list) acts as a kind of meeting house. Our grassroots outreach program, or Rainforest Action Groups (RAGs), have a section alongside the campaigns. We post notes from the council meetings, articles submitted by the groups, and news of particular interest to our regional affiliates.
Most important, however, is the search engine and E-mail directory that allows the user to find and make contact with the nearest RAG. If there is no RAG in the user's part of the world, and the interest is there, the user can sign up as a RAG online.
Users can also sign up online as RAN members-we have a secure server for charge accounts (and we are in the process of establishing First Virtual). Certainly, the money issue is one of the big hurdles for Internet users; the more comfortable everyone becomes with putting their credit information out into the ether, the more memberships we'll get. That said, I'm impressed with our performance. I understand that the memberships generated from our online JOIN page covered the initial investment of machines and staffing in the first 5 months of its operation. What's more, we are getting an extremely high percentage of international members that join through the web site. Perhaps people in Japan, Sweden, and Germany are less afraid of new technology than are Americans.
At the bottom of the page, we have a rainforest quiz. If you surf wide and deep through our site (and retain enough of the minutia!), you can correctly answer all the questions. Happy surfing for the rainforests!
100 % Recycled Electrons ```
This web service brought to you by Somewhere.Com, LLC.