| 1986 |
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Daniel Katz, a 24-year-old China specialist for a Wall Street law firm, attended a small rainforest workshop in New York City and came up with the idea for the Rainforest Alliance. More information.
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| 1987 |
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In April, the Rainforest Alliance was created and officially incorporated as a nonprofit. |
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Organized by Katz, Ivan Ussach and a dedicated group of volunteers, the first major rainforest conference was held in October. Seven hundred people attended the NYC event, entitled "Tropical Forests: Interdependence and Responsibility." Overnight, tropical rainforest destruction became a hot media topic. More information.
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| 1988 |
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The Rainforest Alliance's first area of focus was education. Dozens of volunteers visited schools, colleges and community groups, toting slide shows, fact sheets and, occasionally, a peregrine falcon. Several thousand members joined. The Alliance published the first issue of its newsletter, The Canopy, to keep the facts flowing.
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The "Periwinkle Project" was created. Named after the rosy periwinkle, a rainforest plant that is used to treat leukemia and Hodgkin's disease, the project aimed to educate doctors and pharmacists about the intrinsic medicinal value of tropical flora. More information.
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| 1989 |
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The SmartWood Program was established -- the first worldwide forest management certification program from which an entire certification industry has sprung. Forest management operations that adhere to the program's environmental and social guidelines are allowed to use the SmartWood label on the wood that they sell.
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Rainforest Alliance Supporter Elysabeth Kleinhans endowed a fellowship for scientists studying alternative uses of forest products -- the Kleinhans Fellowship. More information.
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| 1990 |
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The Conservation Media Center (née Tropical Conservation Newsbureau) was established in Costa Rica by Diane Jukofsky and Chris Wille. More information.
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SmartWood certified its first forest, located in Indonesia.
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Outside Magazine named the Rainforest Alliance one of the nation's top 25 environmental organizations.
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In an effort to preserve thousands of acres of endangered Costa Rican rainforest, the Rainforest Alliance staged the "Great Radio Rainforest Rescue." The radiothon, which ran for 12 hours in six cities, raised $365,000 and reached five million listeners across the country. The funds were applied toward an innovative "debt-for-nature swap." The Grateful Dead, Ringo Starr, Jackson Browne, Aerosmith, Grace Slick, David Byrne and dozens of others helped make the event a success.
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| 1991 |
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The Conservation Agriculture Program (née ECO-O.K.) was established, becoming the first certification program for tropical agriculture. Farms that meet the program's strict social and environmental standards are allowed to use the ECO-O.K.® seal in the marketing of their products. More information.
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| 1992 |
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Impressed with the Rainforest Alliance's energy, vitality and results, the world's foremost authority on Amazonian natural history, Dr. Michael Goulding, formally joined the Alliance staff and directed the Amazon Rivers Program -- which researched and promoted the conservation of Amazonian aquatic wildlife and its habitats.
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The Rainforest Alliance was accepted as a member of Earth Share, a fund-raising coalition of more than 40 environmental groups that manages workplace giving campaigns for its national environmental charities, just as the United Way raises funds for its health and human service charities.
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| 1993 |
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Attorney Charles Zerner, a Southeast Asia specialist, established the Rainforest Alliance's Natural Resources and Rights Program to help integrate tropical biodiversity conservation with issues of social justice. The project conducted research, collaborated on field projects, and generated policies that support the needs of local communities in biologically diverse areas, including tropical forests and coral reefs.
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SmartWood's initial guidelines became the standard for timber certification with the founding of the Forest Stewardship Council. This nonprofit organization is the accreditation body that monitors certifiers such as SmartWood to ensure that they comply with a set of international forest management standards.
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| 1994 |
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SmartWood expanded its operations to include temperate and boreal (northern) forests in the U.S. and Canada. The SmartWood Network was formed, bringing together a collaborating group of independent, nonprofit organizations focused on forest monitoring, evaluations, assessments and forest product certification.
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| 1995 |
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The Conservation Agriculture Program's Banana Project made the front page of the Wall Street Journal when it became the first conservation program ever to receive the coveted Peter F. Drucker Award for Nonprofit Innovation. According to Drucker, "The Rainforest Alliance has found a way to save the rainforest while increasing both the crop and the income of the banana farmers, once the greatest enemy of the rainforest."
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SmartWood developed the innovative Resource Manager model, certifying individuals who are then hired to manage forestlands for several clients but have no legal right to the land -- making certification more accessible to small landholders.
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| 1996 |
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Guatemala's El Jute farm became the first ECO-O.K.-certified shade-grown coffee farm and the coffee became available in the U.S. through European Roasterie in Minnesota.
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SmartWood launched the "SmartWood Rediscovered" program, encouraging the reuse of wood by awarding its seal of approval to acceptable sources of reclaimed wood -- such as wood retrieved from landfills, rivers, lakes and demolition projects -- as well as products made from this wood.
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Gibson, the world's leading manufacturer of guitars, began manufacturing the world's first certified guitars. The guitars made their debut at Smart Sounds: Music For The Planet™, a sold-out concert to benefit the Rainforest Alliance featuring performances by Jackson Browne, Rosanne Cash and Carly Simon, among others.
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The Presidential Award on Sustainable Development was given to the Menominee tribe of Wisconsin, a SmartWood-certified forest management operation.
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The Conservation Media Center launched "The Race to Save The Neotropics," a project that electronically linked conservationists around the world -- through an email listserve discussion -- to evaluate the success of conservation initiatives.
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| 1997 |
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All of Chiquita's Costa Rican banana farms received ECO-O.K. certification.
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SmartWood completed the first certification of public land in the United States (60,000 acres of forestland at the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts).
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| 1998 |
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SmartWood-certified paper became available with the certification of Lyons Falls Pulp & Paper, a paper mill in upstate New York.
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A coalition of leading conservation groups -- including the Rainforest Alliance -- officially formed the Conservation Agriculture Network (CAN) to manage the ECO-O.K. agricultural certification program.
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The first orange farms to meet CAN standards were certified. Located in Costa Rica, the farms are managed by Grupo Del Oro, S.A. Del Oro also signed a precedent-setting "environmental services" contract with the neighboring Guanacaste Conservation Area (GCA) - in effect compensating the GCA for the ecological value it provides the adjacent Del Oro farms.
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ECO-O.K. orange juice, made from oranges grown on Del Oro's certified farms, became available in Costa Rican and U.S. supermarkets. In the U.S., the juice is produced by Johanna Foods of New Jersey and is sold under the name Tree Ripe Valencia Select.
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El Progreso, a cooperative of farmers in Ecuador, received the first CAN certification of shade-grown cocoa. |
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CAN partner group in Brazil, IMAFLORA, completed a two-year process of bringing together sugar cane farmers, social and environmental organizations, unions and other worker's groups, and scientists to develop standards for well-managed sugar production.
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"The Race to Save the Neotropics" steering committee -- comprised of leading conservationists around the world -- issued a project "Consensus Statement" that encourages the Neotropical conservation community to make monitoring and evaluation an integral part of every project's design.
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| 1999 |
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The Conservation Agriculture Program and SalvaNATURA, CAN's partner in El Salvador, launched the "Coffee & Biodiversity Project." The project's primary objective is to use certified shade-grown coffee farms as buffer zones and create biological corridors between various national wildlife areas. |
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Wet Wood Underwater Fiber Recovery, Ltd. of British Columbia received SmartWood Rediscovered certification for their retrieval of logs that have been submerged in a Canadian lake for over a hundred years.
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"Jungle Gum," made with certified chiclé, became the first non-timber forest product to be SmartWood-certified.
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While saving tropical flora and fauna makes good economic sense, we believe that we have a moral obligation to both future generations and the species themselves. We are all part of the problem, but we can all be part of the solution. More than a decade after we began, the Rainforest Alliance remains committed to removing everyone's hand from the chainsaw.
