Rainforest Action Network head visits

The founder and president of the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), a rainforest activist group, discussed "Restructuring the Global Economy: Eradicating Bretton-Woods and Creating New Institutions," on March 14 as part of the 2002 Symposium on Foreign Affairs. The event was held in Shriver Auditorium.

Randall Hayes, the head of the Rainforest Action Network, proposed what he called an "eco-Marshall plan that would look at restructuring the rule making process of the global economy."

Hayes claimed that there are two competing systems currently dominating the governing of the world economy: the United Nations (UN) and the groups from the post-WWII Bretton-Woods Conference, including the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

"We can't have two competing systems, and the UN is more democratic and accountable than the Bretton-Woods institutions," said Hayes in an interview before his speech. "The whole WTO process takes power from governments and puts it in the hands of transnational corporations."

Thus, Hayes said, "The most important environmental policy is economic policy. It is global commerce that is killing the rainforests."

To counter these problems, Hayes claimed that capitalism must be "humanized and ecologized."

"If ecological principles were incorporated into capitalism itself, it would be acceptable," he said. "We have to reverse globalization. Economic localization is the anecdote. We have to democratize the global rule making process."

In response, Hayes has developed a "three-part package," consisting of the elimination of the Bretton-Woods institutions, the reform of the UN and the creation of five additional agencies in the UN to deal with economic issues. Hayes felt the elimination of the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF are essential to the preservation of the environment.

Hayes blamed several characteristics of modern society for the environmental dilemma facing the world: anthropocentrism, "unlimited linear economic growth in a world that works in cycles," "technology worship," domination of mass media, "concentration of power of corporate executives and loss of democratic structures" and the loss of time perspectives.

Hayes then proceeded to describe the feats of his environmental action organization, RAN, which he founded in 1984.

"Its mission is to save the rainforest and to support the rights of rainforest dwellers," said Hayes. "We do this through education, grass roots organization and non-violent direct action."

Hayes estimates that he has been arrested 10 to 15 times for civil disobedience.

Hayes' organization can recount various successes in the preservation of the environment. RAN led a national boycott against Burger King in the '90s, forcing the company to cancel a $35 million contract with beef suppliers who raised cattle on cleared rainforest terrain.

His environmental activism grew out of his master's thesis, which was an award-winning film, The Four Corners: A Nation Sacrifice Area. "Four Corners was in reference to a Colorado plateau about the size of West Virginia," he said. There, coal and uranium mining devastated ancestral Native American land.

The film "put pressure on powers at the state and federal levels to clean it up," said Hayes. It also was awarded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences award for "Best Student Documentary.