For over 30 years, RAN has fought to preserve forests, protect the climate and uphold human rights. Justice is at the heart of RAN’s mission, values, and theory of change as an organization.

We understand that the social, economic and environmental issues that the world is facing are interconnected and interdependent. We ground our campaigns in a deep understanding of systems of oppression and challenge the power structures that support those systems. We work in solidarity with communities directly impacted by corporate power –– listening to, learning from, and amplifying the voices of our allies.

As a historically majority white environmental organization with strong connections to institutional funding, we aim to examine the resources and privileges we have and to utilize them thoughtfully, respectfully, honestly and transparently. We prioritize building our relationships with impacted communities and a broad base of constituents across social, economic and political boundaries –– learning about the histories and struggles of impacted communities and other groups as told by them.

Black Lives Matter

Our determination to challenge corporate power for people and the planet has never wavered nor has our commitment to racial justice and equity. While this work has evolved over the last 35 years, let us be as clear as we can be: Black Lives Matter.

We act and speak in solidarity against the systemic violence specifically experienced by Black people in the United States.
We join with those outraged by the injustice in the institutional killing of black people by US police forces. We join with those demanding action and demanding justice.

We simply cannot end the climate crisis or deforestation without addressing systemic racism in the US and around the world. Oppressive systems have led to the deaths of many Black people — those racial disparities lie within the criminal justice system and within the healthcare and environmental injustice systems.

Learn More about RAN's Mission and Values

Environmental Justice

As the Environmental Justice movement reminds us: environmental destruction requires certain land to be sacrificed, which requires certain people to be sacrificed as well. The same systems of power that cause the burning of fossil fuels are the same systems that put those burning coal plants in Black and Brown neighborhoods, leaving those communities to bear the burden of asthma, cancer, and other impacts of living near infrastructure. The Indigenous communities who rely on rainforests in the Amazon are being explicitly targeted so corporations can use their land to graze cattle or plant palm oil.

For years, RAN has followed the Jemez Principles for Organizing to insure our work is as inclusive as possible. In 2016 we also endorsed the Movement for Black Lives Platform and continue to uplift the message of the Movement for Black Lives in their visionary work.

We embrace our role to work every day dismantling the harm done by systems rooted in white supremacy, and the mistakes we will make along the way.
Our daily work is focused on shifting our internal organizational culture, as well as our public facing campaigns, to be anti-racist at their core. In order to fight systemic racial injustice we must continue to hold an anti-racist lens on all of our work and within ourselves.
“What’s race got to do with rainforests?”

The fight against climate change, deforestation, and human rights abuses is inextricably linked to colonialism, systems of oppression and the fight for racial justice. We cannot win real victories for our planet if we are not committed to challenging the fundamental racial inequity Black and Brown communities face every single day. We take their lead, but don’t leave Black and Brown people to fight a system they did not create and uphold. White supremacy fears people power because people uplifting voices with no agenda, only for justice, is powerful. People power is how we win.

For People and Planet — that is the RAN motto. We believe racial inequity underpins all systemic injustice. And, in the simplest terms, there cannot be environmental or climate justice without racial and social justice. To be silent is to be complicit and we will not be silent.