Environmental Defense Fund

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Environmental Defense Fund or EDF is a United States of America|US-based nonprofit environmental advocacy group. The group is known for its work on issues including global warming, ecosystem restoration, oceans, and human health. It is nonpartisan, and its work often advocates market-based solutions to environmental problems. They tackle the most serious environmental problems with Strong science, Innovative markets, Corporate partnerships, and Effective laws and policy

[edit] Key Initiatives

EDF focuses on four areas each with several active initiatives: Land, Water, & Wildlife, Oceans and Human Health

• Land, Water & Wildlife:EDF's projects aim to restore habitat and protect vital river systems, expand incentives for good stewardship of private lands, and transform federal farm subsidies to reward conservation
  • Agricultural Reform
  • Land & Species Protection
  • Rivers and Deltas
  • Fighting Reforestation
• Oceans: Our oceans are in decline from overfishing, habitat destruction and pollution. To bring the resilient oceans back to abundant life, EDF is focused on
  • Fishing Responsibly
  • Fish Farming
  • Protecting Ocean Habitat
  • Seafood and Heath: see the Seafood Selector
• Heath: EDF has many initiatives to promote human health:
  • Living Cities: Under this initiative, EDF works with local groups and officials to devise market solutions to cut congestion, clean the air and promote green development
  • Nanotechnology
  • Air Quality
  • Chemical Safety

[edit] History

The founders of Environmental Defense Fund, including Art Cooley and Charles Wurster, Dennis Puleston, and Robert Smolker discovered in the mid 1960's that the osprey and other large raptors were rapidly disappearing. Their research uncovered a link between the spraying of DDT to kill mosquitos and weakening egg shells of the large birds. They started Environmental Defense Fund to seek a ban on DDT in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. They were successful. They then campaigned to ban DDT statewide and succeeded as well. They then took their efforts national.

The group is headquartered out of New York, with offices nationwide, and scientists and policy specialists working worldwide. It is directed by Fred Krupp who has served as its president since 1984.

The organization advocates using sound science, good economics and good law to find solutions that work.

[edit] Key Accomplishments

Key accomplishments of Environmental Defense Fund include:

• 1967 - A small group of scientists forms the organization and sets out to win a nationwide ban on DDT (in 1972), which had been harming wildlife and was found in human mother's milk.^[1]
• 1970 - Efforts bring all hunted whales^[2][3] onto the U.S. endangered species list.
• 1974 - An Environmental Defense Fund study of Mississippi River water^[4][5][6] helps pass the Safe Drinking Water Act,^[7][8][9] establishing the first comprehensive health standards for water nationwide.
• 1985 - Helped convince federal regulators to phase out lead from gasoline,^[10]leading to a dramatic decline in childhood lead poisoning.^[11]
• 1986 - Pushed McDonalds to institute biodegradable food-packaging containers.^[12]
• 1987 - Played a key role in the treaty to phase out the use of CFCs, chemicals that many researchers believe damage the Earth’s ozone layer.^[13][14]
• 1990 - Designed Title IV of the Clean Air Act, which incorporates market-based methods to cut air pollution and acid rain.^[15][16] The measures reduce sulfur dioxide pollution faster than expected, and at a fraction of the cost.^[17][18]
• 1995 - Designed the Safe Harbor plan^[19][20]that gives landowners new incentives to help endangered species on their property.
• 2000 - Seven of the world's largest corporations join Environmental Defense in a partnership to address global warming, setting firm targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.^[21][22]
• 2001 - Helped create the 1,200-mile-long Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve.
• 2004 - The first FedEx hybrid electric trucks hit the road, the result of a four-year partnership with FedEx to transform truck technology. The new vehicles cut smog-forming pollution by 65%, reduce soot by 96%—and go 57% farther on a gallon of fuel.
• 2006 - Co-authored the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 with Natural Resources Defense Council.^[23][24]
• 2007 - Co-founded United States Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of major corporations and environmental groups supporting action on global warming, including a market-based carbon emissions cap. (Corporate participants include GE, DuPont and Duke Energy; non-profit groups involved are Pew Center on Global Climate Change, Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Resources Institute, a co-founder).^[25]
• 2007 - Helped negotiate an environmental platform of KKR's buyout of TXU.^{[26][27][28][29]}

• For contributions to the Endangered Species Act, including inventing the Safe Harbor concept

• For initiating the recent campaign to remove the O'Shaughnessy Dam in Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park^[30][31][32]

• Regional offices more focused on local issues and policies include: Austin, TX; Boulder, CO; San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Sacramento, CA; Washington, D.C.; Raleigh, North Carolina; Boston, MA

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