Tzeporah Berman - "Climate Crisis and Being The Change"
Tzeporah Berman is Program Director for ForestEthics, an organization dedicated to protecting endangered forests by transforming the paper and wood industries in North America and by supporting forest communities in the development of conservation-based economies. She and her ForestEthics organization have run successful campaigns to stop logging on a million acres of Chilean native forest and to protect millions of acres of forest in Canada.
Her work has helped persuade such U.S. retail giants as Staples and Home Depot to change the forest products they sell, and in doing so they have shifted consumption on a massive scale. Staples, an $11-billion corporation, has changed the paper it carries, and Home Depot has changed the requirements for the wood it markets from Indonesia, Chile, and Canada.
Berman was responsible for the design and launch of the Great Bear Rainforest campaign in 1995. A decade later, she was one of the primary negotiators for the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement. Concluded in early 2006, it is one of the largest conservation agreements ever signed. It protects more than 5 million acres of ancient temperate rainforest and creates an unprecedented alliance between the logging industry, First Nations, the Provincial Government and environmental organizations.
Prior to joining ForestEthics, Berman worked for seven years with Greenpeace International and Greenpeace Canada. During her time with Greenpeace, she became a widely recognized environmental leader. She was the face on the nightly news on behalf of the massive Clayoquot Sound protests in 1993. In addition, she contributed to the development of the Greenpeace forest markets campaigns in Europe and Japan.