On an annual budget dwarfed by those of the companies we target, RAN has helped convince dozens of corporations including Home Depot, Citigroup, Boise Cascade, and Goldman Sachs to change their practices. We've helped to protect millions of acres of forests in Canada, Indonesia, Brazil, Chile and beyond.
2008
RAN and allies convince ANZ, Australia's third largest bank, to not fund Australian logging giant Gunns Ltd's controversial Bell Bay pulp mill project in Tasmania. The pulp mill would have accelerated the conversion of Tasmania's native and old-growth forests to woodchips for export to Japan.
RAN successfully pressures Boise Inc. to cease purchasing wood fiber logged from the traditional territory of the Grassy Narrows First Nation in northwest Ontario without the Indigenous community's consent. Shortly after, AbitibiBowater, the largest paper company in the world, agrees to stop logging on Grassy Narrows land and throughout Canada's 2.7 million-acre Whiskey Jack Forest.
Ontario's premier announces a commitment to protect 56 million acres of old-growth forests in the northern boreal, the largest conservation agreement in North American history.
2007
Toronto Dominion becomes the first Canadian bank to adopt a comprehensive environmental policy to guide its financing and operations. It is also the first bank to recognize the rights of Indigenous peoples to free, prior and informed consent over industrial projects in their traditional territories.
2005
JPMorgan Chase releases a comprehensive environmental policy that takes significant steps forward on climate change, forest protection, and Indigenous rights.
Working closely with RAN, Goldman Sachs becomes the first global investment bank to adopt a comprehensive environmental policy, calling for urgent action by public policy makers and regulators to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
2004
RAN declares victory after a four-year campaign as Citigroup announces its "New Environmental Initiatives", the most far-reaching set of environmental commitments of any bank in the world.
Bank of America announces its new climate and forest protection policies on the eve of a planned National Day of Action coordinated by RAN.
2003
After three years of relentless RAN campaigning, Boise releases "Boise and the Environment", a policy that makes it the largest American forest products company to eliminate the logging and purchasing of wood and paper products from endangered forests.
After pressure from RAN activists, FleetBoston Financial transforms a Chilean logging company's bankruptcy into permanent protection for close to 150,000 acres of endangered temperate rainforest.
2001
Boise cancels $160 million Cascada Project in southern Chile, slated to be the world's largest chip mill.
RAN and a coalition of allies, First Nations communities and logging companies announce the largest rainforest conservation measure in North American history, protecting more than 3.5 million acres of Canada's Great Bear Rainforest.
Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum withdraws from the U'wa tribe's ancestral land in northeastern Colombia.
2000
RAN convinces Centex Homes, Kaufman & Broad, and Ryland Homes to stop using wood from endangered old-growth forests in new home construction.
1999
Home Depot, the world's largest wood products retailer, announces its commitment to stop selling wood from endangered forests.
Within the next year, home improvement retailers Wickes Lumber, HomeBase, Menard's, Lowe's, 84 Lumber and Payless Cashways all commit to phase out wood from endangered forests.
1998
Mitsubishi Motor Sales America and Mitsubishi Electric America pledge to end use of old-growth forest products and phase out use of tree-based paper and packaging products in favor of alternative fibers.
MacMillan Bloedel, Canada's largest logging company, announces that it will end its contentious practice of clear-cut logging in old-growth forests.
Twenty-seven Fortune 500 companies including IBM, Kinko's and Hallmark commit to go old growth-free.
1997
British-based RTZ, the largest mining company in the world, and Canadian mining giant ODIN both announce plans to abandon their operations in Ecuador.
1996
The Brazilian government issues an order that officially recognizes the Indigenous land rights of the Panara people within their traditional territory in the Brazilian rainforest.
1994
Hollywood's major studios agree to phase out the use of lauan, a tropical forest hardwood used in set design, and switch to alternative wood products.
True Geothermal abandons its plans to build a controversial power plant and withdraws from the last Hawaiian lowland rainforest.
1992
U.S.-based Stone Container's plans to build a rainforest chip mill that would decimate 2.5 million acres of Honduras' virgin pine forests are halted.
Brazilian government declares Yanomami lands permanent Indigenous territory.
RAN helps support Ecuadorian Indigenous people's march to secure title to 2.5 million acres of their ancestral rainforest lands.
1991
Dupont-owned Conoco pulls out of a multimillion dollar oil development project within Yasuni National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
1989
U.S.-based Scott Paper forced to cancel a $653 million Indonesian pulp mill that would have clear-cut 2 million acres of rainforest on the Indonesian island of Irian Jaya.
1988
Funding canceled for the development of the Nam Choan dam, which threatened to displace local rainforest communities in Thailand.
1987
RAN's first grassroots market campaign yields success when fast-food chain Burger King cancels $35 million worth of Central American rainforest beef contracts, a major milestone in the fight against converting rainforests to cattle ranches.
1986
Kicking off a worldwide movement to highlight the destructive lending practices of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, RAN hangs its first banner off the World Bank's Washington, D.C., headquarters.
