Food and Water Watch

ecs55@duke.edu — Thu, 03 May 2018 03:09:18 +0000

Description:

Food & Water Watch is a nongovernmental organization that advocates for healthy food and clean water for all. With the intention to stand up against corporations that care more about profit than other people, Food & Water Watch advocates for a democracy that protects the environment and improves quality of human lives across the world. The organization acknowledges the inequalities present in our food, water, and energy systems and aims to build a movement with the political power to create a healthy future for future generations through democratic processes to allow all to access the resources they need.

Goals:

Food & Water Watch have goals to rooted in independence, democracy, human rights, and sustainability. They wish to remain a public interest organization, independent of corporate and government influence. Engaging and mobilizing citizens through various manners is a strong goal as they believe political involvement is critical to hold people accountable to ensure a sustainable world with safe food and clean water. The organization has the political will to secure and strive for adequate nutrition and drinking water for all. Additionally, they hope to protect the quality of the environment while trying to achieve access to resources because a sustainability is important to future generations.

Structure:

Wenonah Hauter is the founder and executive director of Food & Water Watch. She has three decades of experience with campaigning and writing on environmental issues relating to food, water, and energy. She trains and mentors organizers and activists around the country and has experience working at both state and local levels to develop policy and legislative strategies to secure accomplishments for communities and the environment across the country. The staff that comprise the team span across the country, in Latin America, and the European Union in offices to work closely with grassroots groups. They are wildly experienced. Membership is a core value of Food & Water Watch as well as individual donors and foundations that hold similar agendas. The organization takes no money from corporations or governments.

Genealogy:

In the Fall of 2005, 12 members of the Energy and Environment Program at Public Citizen created Food & Water Watch. The group first had the intention to create a grassroots movement with the power to protect our resources, and with the support of donors, foundations, and members, the organization has grown to more than 100 staff members. Food & Water Watch has offices across the country and, with the help of supporters and activists, in the last 10 years has achieved accomplishments spanning from helping allies in Europe to convince others to vote in favor of a moratorium on fracking to organizing communities across the country to stop the corporate takeover of public water systems.

Campaigns:

https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/campaigns

Oppositional Forces:

Corporations abusing power to privatize public resources, pollution, governments that enforce policies which do not hold corporations accountable, and a lack of penalties for prosecuted corporations. They are also fighting against factory farming, global trade, GMOs, and fracking.

Type of Organization:

NGO

Tatics Used:

grassroots organizing

events

advocate fair policies

organize for change

take legal action

research and policy analysis

forming coalitions

Information campaigns

Website

Twitter

Facebook

Web Exhibit Created By:

Emma Stein

Public:

true

Caption:

Operation Milagro

mko13@duke.edu — Tue, 01 May 2018 20:48:25 +0000

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

mko13@duke.edu — Tue, 01 May 2018 17:12:05 +0000

Description:

The SSCS is a US-based vigilante marine conservation organization known for its direct action tactics and aggressive work to fight against poaching and whaling. It was founded in 1977 as the Earthforce Environmental Society by Paul Watson after he was expelled from the Greenpeace board of directors due to conflicts over their pacifist approach. Over the last four decades, the SSCS has embarked on a number of campaigns and engaged in a variety of tactics to combat whaling, sealing, and illegal fishing, including using water cannons, shining laser lights, sinking, scuttling, sabotaging, vandalizing, boarding, or damaging ships, throwing stink bombs, and surveillance — in addition to more traditional approaches such as protests, marches, lawsuits, and information campaigns. These strategies have had mixed results, producing several notable successes over the years but also costing them allies who would otherwise share the same goals. Critics say that such extreme tactics will only make offenders more determined to continue, while others have expressed admiration for the group’s determination and dedication to their cause.

The SSCS is perhaps best known from the Animal Planet TV show Whale Wars, which aired from 2008 to 2015 and focused on their fight to stop Japanese whaling ships. Their efforts ended when the International Court of Justice ruled in 2014 that Japan’s whaling program did not qualify as research and ordered them to cease all activity in the Antarctic. However, the show also highlighted many of the SSCS’s more violent tactics, and the organization is still considered a terrorist group by Japan. In 2017, Paul Watson opted to cease surveillance of the Southern Ocean due to the fact that their fleet could not keep pace with the military tracking technology used by Japan

Goals:

This is the SSCS mission statement:

Established in 1977, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) is an international non-profit, marine wildlife conservation organization. Our mission is to end the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the world’s oceans in order to conserve and protect ecosystems and species.

Sea Shepherd uses innovative direct-action tactics to investigate, document, and take action when necessary to expose and confront illegal activities on the high seas. By safeguarding the biodiversity of our delicately balanced ocean ecosystems, Sea Shepherd works to ensure their survival for future generations.

Structure:

The SSCS is governed by a board of trustees, whose members are:

Paul Watson: Founder, President, and Executive Director
Pamela Anderson: Chairwoman
Pritam Singh: Vice President
Peter Rysman: Secretary-Treasurer
Tambrey Laine: Director

It also has several advisory boards focused on different aspects of their operations. These are:

The SSCS also has a set of laws and charters that they claim to follow.

It is important to note that the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Sea Shepherd Global are two different organizations. The SSCS is based in the US, whereas the SSG is an international umbrella organization that coordinates efforts between regional and national groups in over 20 countries. The SSG website explains:

“These groups are united by a common mission through the Amsterdam-based Sea Shepherd Global, established in 2013, which coordinates finances, communications, logistics and a fleet of five ships to cooperate on direct-action marine conservation campaigns around the world. Sea Shepherd Global is a non-profit registered in the Netherlands as “Stichting Sea Shepherd Global” led by CEO Captain Alex Cornelissen. Sea Shepherd Global operates autonomously – both fiscally and legally – from the US-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS).”

Campaigns:

The Wikipedia page “Sea Shepherd Conservation Society operations” has a comprehensive list of SSCS campaigns over the years, divided into categories based on their main focus: fishing, sealing, or whaling.

Ideological Composition:

The SSCS considers the 1982 United Nations World Charter for Nature to be its personal mandate to take action. In 1995, Paul Watson successfully cited the charter as part of his defense when he was charged with felony mischief by Canadian authorities; he was acquitted by “reason of colour of right,” which is a legal defense defined as “an honest belief that an act is justifiable.”

The SSCS also adheres to an Equality Statement, which was likely introduced after the organization was accused of racism due to its focus on Japanese whalers. The statement reads:

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society operates internationally without prejudice towards race, color, nationality, religious belief, or any other consideration except for an impartial adherence to upholding international conservation law to protect endangered marine species and ecosystems.

Those illegal operations that we oppose routinely attempt to accuse Sea Shepherd of being anti-Japanese, anti-Native American, or anti-Scandinavian etc, for our opposition to illegal whaling or the killing of dolphins. We are accused of being anti-Canadian or anti-African for opposing the slaughter of seals. We have been accused of being anti-Latino for opposing illegal South American shark finning operations.

Nothing could be further from the truth. We do not oppose Japanese or Norwegian whaling we oppose illegal whaling as defined under international conservation law. We do not oppose Canadian or Namibian sealing, we oppose the killing of seals.

Sea Shepherd operates outside the petty cultural chauvinism of the human species. Our clients are whales, dolphins, seals, turtles, sea-birds, and fish. We represent their interests.

Our volunteer crewmembers come from all over the world including from the nations that we are forced to oppose such as Japan, Norway, and Canada.

We are not anti-any nationality or culture. We are pro-Ocean and we work in the interests of all life on Earth. We only oppose criminals and criminal operations.

Communication Strategy:

The SSCS is noted for being very media-savvy; it has an active social media presence and frequently invites journalists and members of the media along on missions and campaigns. It also gained a significant amount of visibility from Whale Wars, which brought awareness of their activities into the mainstream. In particular, Paul Watson is known to aggressively court journalists and intentionally escalate and dramatize confrontations and stories to attract media attention. He also has a tendency to stretch or even invent facts to support his objectives; in fact, he advises readers in his book Earthforce! to fabricate information as needed, as long as they present it confidently “like Reagan” — in his opinion, bringing attention to an issue is more important than being factually correct.

Type of Organization:

nonprofit

activist

volunteer organization

Tatics Used:

Information campaigns

Propaganda

sabotage