Pacific Environment

"Pacific Environment protects the living environment of the Pacific Rim by promoting grassroots activism, strengthening communities and reforming international policies."

- Pacific Environment Mission Statement

Pacific Environment is an environmental organization concentrating on the environmental issues surrounding the Pacific Rim. Putting the mission of the group into action, Pacific Environment dedicates one third of its budget each year to funding grassroots organizations that are out there in the forefront of the environmental movement. They confront the many taxpayer-funded banks that back fossil fuel extraction on their policies and procedures. A third way they put the mission into practice is by promoting best practices as far as putting environmental protection and communities first. Finally, they constantly attempt to build, maintain and grow a global environmental movement to unite all movements into one single force to deal with all the current global issues we face today.

Pacific Environment's main and constant focus has been to work with grassroots facilities and organizations that are local and community-based. Their obvious main area of responsibility is that of the Pacific Rim. From China up to the Bering Strait and back down to California, Pacific Environment is committed to promoting responsible fisheries management and protection for forest and steppe ecosystems in Russia, strengthening China's own environmental movement, bringing together Russian and American scientists to help protect the Bering Sea and to creating cleaner and more affordable means of energy production in California.

A brief history of Pacific Environment, the organization began in 1987 under a different name, Pacific Energy and Resources Center. They started with their sights on international energy and resources issues, while gaining the respect necessary to promote the use of international environmental law. Four years later, in 1991 they became the first international organization to bring the spotlight to the threats facing the Siberian taiga, which began a long history of work in Russia. A couple of years later, Russian partners of Pacific Environment along with Pacific Environment, led a campaign that created the Botchi Nature Preserve, protecting valuable forests in the Russian Far East, forests that were already marked for logging.

In more recent years, Pacific Environment with help from their grassroots partners have been able to protect tens of millions of acres of wilderness along the Pacific Rim as well as leading efforts to protect several endangered species such as the Siberian Tiger, Amur Leopard and the Western Pacific Gray Whale. Pacific Environment has also stopped the construction of oil pipelines, mines and dams that were harmful to the environment. Another recent achievement and one that really shows how broad this organizations influence is, is that they have forced several international financial institutions to adopt higher standards for lending with regard to social and environmental knowledge.

What Pacific Environment calls a central tenet of theirs is that they want local and community-based organizations to have just as much of an influence on environmental decision making as that of a larger international organization. In order to achieve this goal, Pacific Environment has already begun by listening to its partners so that they can come up with new approaches to international environmental work and so they can find new ways to provide direct support to community groups around the Pacific Rim. All this is done aside from the direct involvement with international affairs. Pacific Environment sees this as an important facet of their work, bringing together the smaller, community-based organizations together