What's being said about the environment around the World

Nate Prosser is an online outreach coordinator at a Canadian free legal aid organisation. In this guest blog he writes about a new activist site he started with a friend from Italy after they spent six months as interns in Greenpeace. We are accepting applications for our online communications internship right now. Please apply if you think you'd be a good match and would like to join us in Amsterdam for six months.

I know there was a time when the internet didn’t exist. I do. But this fact occupies that same vague space in my memory as, say, the fall of the Berlin Wall or cassette tapes. For all intents and purposes the internet has always been around for me and my generation; it’s an integral part of my everyday life. It’s no surprise then that online activism has seen a major surge in recent years. Using the internet for activism has always seemed like a natural extension and I’ve had plenty of discussions on the practicalities, techniques, and nuances of online campaigning in the office, classroom, and bars. Ironically enough though I could never find a place online to have these discussions with a wider audience. That’s why Oriana and I, both former Greenpeace interns, decided to create clicktivist.org; a site to share, discuss, and dissect the world of online campaigning.

The project kicked off a few months ago, after several weeks of emails, thousands words of planning, and a dozen Google Docs. The idea behind it is simple: by examining online campaigns and tools we hope we can learn from each other’s successes and failures so that we can create more engaging and more effective campaigns. What inspired this idea, at the source of it, is our shared experience at Greenpeace with the online communications team. This is the story (at least from my point of view) of how Greenpeace played a role in the creation of clicktivist.org.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I found myself standing outside Greenpeace’s international headquarters for the first time. It’s an unassuming building - 3 stories, grey, and not exactly covered in banners - and I had to double check the address to make sure I was in the right place. That was until I stepped inside and was almost immediately whisked into an all staff briefing; it turns out that about 5 hours before I showed up a group of Greenpeace activists had scaled an oil rig off the coast of Greenland - it was kind of a big deal. That set the tone for the next 6 months. I think it was my second day working there when I was asked to help write an email campaign that would go out to all of Greenpeace’s supporters around the world. That’s a lot of people, a lot of responsibility, and a lot a trust. That’s when I knew that the next six months weren’t going to be your regular run of the mill “go make me some copies” type of internship.

I was like a kid in a candy shop working with Greenpeace’s online team. You see, before going to Greenpeace I had spent years studying the uses of digital media for activism around the world. To be able to go into work and see these principles in action was a dream come true. I don’t think it’s any surprise that I wasn’t the only person there that felt that way. Everyday we’d have discussions about online activism. It was during one of these conversations that the idea for clicktivist.org first occurred to me.

The idea came to me - as ideas, some brilliant, many horrible, often do - over a few beers. It was a cold winter night in Amsterdam and a few of us had fled the office for the shelter of a little bar on the Overtoom. The conversation flitted around but quickly settled, as I’m sure many of you are used to, on the topic of “cool things we saw on the internet”; for a group of activists that’s likely to be campaigns as much as lolcats. Someone brought up a campaign featuring irradiated vegetables from Scandinavia, someone else mentioned using text messages in China to campaign against deforestation, an example of thinly veiled innuendo using the size of juvenile fish entered the fray, and I brought up the Persian penchant for anonymous blogging. None of us had ever heard of the other’s examples.

I sat there, beer in hand, thinking “why weren’t we aware of these?” We were in one some of the best positions to see these and yet we were still blind to them. The idea had wormed its into my head.

Soon after my internship ended I, somewhat reluctantly, returned home to Vancouver. I wasn’t done with Greenpeace however. From Vancouver I continued to work as a sometimes-volunteer-sometimes-freelancer for both the local and international offices. Though I was still doing the work I was starved for the conversation.

I alleviated this need through text, IM, Skype, and email across country and continents with people who I had met while working for Greenpeace. One such person was my good friend and (vastly superior) replacement at Greenpeace, Oriana Lauria. We had worked on a few big projects together while in Amsterdam and both enjoyed that experience enough to want to continue working together. The only problem was the Atlantic Ocean and around 9 Canadian provinces in the way. The obvious solution was to use our beloved internet and start a website. We began brainstorming ideas but that process didn’t last long. Oriana suggested a site devoted to online activism and I cursed her for a mind reader before quickly signing on.

From there it was a flurry of activity, emails, and Google Docs to set up and organize the website, and here we are today, with clicktivist.org up and running.

On the website, you can now find everything you need to know (well, not just yet, but we’ll get there!) to be inspired into online activism. That is, digital campaign reviews, latest trends in clicktivism, interviews with experts and, what it’s even more important, a lot of room for your ideas, comments and suggestions.

I hope you’ll find the site useful and join in on the discussion.

Remember: We are accepting applications for our online communications internship right now. Please apply if you think you'd be a good match.

There's a story doing the rounds again,  about how Monsanto, one of the world’s largest profiteers of genetically engineered (GE) food, banned GE food from its own corporate canteens!

Monsanto had its pants pulled down by Friends of the Earth in 1999, who revealed that the company was refusing to serve to its own staff the very same GE food that it incessantly foists upon impoverished nations on the premise that it will save populations from starvation. Although it has never been proved, Monsanto constantly claims that GE food is harmless – so why wasn't it serving it in its own office?

In one canteen, run by external provider, Sutcliffe Catering, a notice read that a decision has been taken to remove, as far as practicable, GE soya and maize from all food products served in the canteen. “We have taken the above steps to ensure that you, the customer, can feel confident in the food we serve", the provider said.

“We believe in choice”, said Monsanto, while the company actually made sure that by not serving GE food in its canteens they did not give staff the opportunity to ‘choose’ whether or not to eat GE food as they de facto ensure that the staff did not get to eat GE food. Yet the same choice isn’t available to farmers around the world, who most of the time have no choice but to plant GE crops, thanks to a seed market that is often dominated by Monsanto.

Once the GE seeds are in the ground, a vicious circle is started; farmers no longer have the opportunity to choose, as once GE seeds have been released into the environment it is not possible to contain or control them, as an individual seed travels with wind or is swept away by rainwater and may set root in soil owned by a farmer who does not at all want to plant GE seeds. In a recent protest in a Manhattan courtroom US farmers said it is no longer possible for them to keep GE seeds off their fields due to contamination.

If Monsanto decided for its staff that it cannot eat GE food, and actually removes the staff’s own right to choose, how come the rest of us cannot have the same opportunity? Over 90% of all processed food in the US - such as breakfast cereal and the chicken nuggets often served to kids -are now contaminated by GE, even if the farmers who produced the food actually did not intentionally grow any GE crops.

In one Monsanto office location, staff was reportedly happy to eat GE food, as they preferred food sprayed with fewer pesticides. However, the widespread and increasingly intensive use of pesticides in association with the use of GE crops poses suspected further risks to the environment and human health, such as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and birth defects. Monsanto's sales pitch to farmers continues to promise  reduced labour and financial savings by simplifying and reducing the costs of weed control. The reality turns out to be somewhat different, with GE crops attracting increasing health, biodiversity and environmental concerns, and the development of weed resistance.

Genetic Engineering, corporate control of people's food and the over reliance on pesticides and herbicides are not the solutions. So what is? Ecological Farming. It's safe. It's do-able. And it's happening now. Help us support farming for the future.

So Monsanto, if you feel so confident in the food you serve up to the rest of the planet – are you serving GE food in your canteen these days?

Read more about ecological farming

Caroline Jacobsson is a Communications Manager at Greenpeace International

Edited and updated, on 10 February 2012