Tzeporah Berman

Co-Founder of Forest Ethics, and Founder of PowerUp Canada-Canadians for Climate Leadership

From Confrontation to Collaboration to Change: the New Environmentalism

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Tzeporah Berman is a different kind of environmentalist -- one with deep roots in the nascent environmental movement, but also armed with uncanny business and media smarts. At the not-for-profit Forest Ethics, she works with massive corporations to transform their buying habits and reinvigorate their public image. The companies she partners with -- including Home Depot, Dell and Staples, the world's largest paper retailer -- have boosted employee morale, extended the public life of their brands, and saved millions in costs (and in potentially ruinous boycotts). The Globe and Mail calls her "one of the most prominent environmentalists in Canada." In the States, The Utne Reader named her One of the 50 Visionaries Changing the World.

Through her work at Forest Ethics, Berman has helped save over 12 million acres of endangered forests in Canada, the United States, and Chile. She also uses viral campaigns to raise awareness on how embarrassingly wasteful forest destruction truly is: 80% of the forests cut down in Canada, for instance, go to the United States to be made into things like junk mail and catalogs. Other Forest Ethics campaigns include, Do Not Mail, aimed to stop the over 105 billion pieces of junk mail delivered every year, 44% of which goes to the landfill unopened; a Tar Sands campaign; and a campaign to revitalize the financially slumping Sears corporation through environmental leadership.

Her new book, Surf the Backlash, is a book of inspiring stories, a call to action on environmental issues and a plea for a new level of political engagement that transcends party politics and stakeholder 'identities'. Drawing on first hand experiences from almost twenty years on the front lines of environmental battlefronts in North America and beyond, Tzeporah Berman and Mark Leiren-Young calls on us to not only reevaluate our priorities in the face of global warming but to reevaluate our allegiances and prejudices to form new relationships and create new solutions.

In 2008, Berman launched a new citizens engagement initiative, PowerUp Canada-Canadians for Climate Leadership. (She serves as its executive director.) It has found overwhelming support from five former Prime Ministers, prominent business leaders, scientists, and policy experts.

A young star of the environmental movement, Berman appeared in Leonardo DiCaprio's documentary The 11^th Hour. She was also nominated for the Schwab Social Entrepreneur Award, and named by the BC Royal Museum as one of the 150 people who have changed BC's history. She has been featured in The Globe and Mail, Green Living and The Vancouver Sun, among other publications.

In her uplifting keynotes, she draws from her groundbreaking work -- in the boardroom, in the legislature and in forests -- to show us that the notion of activists vs. corporations, of good vs. evil, no longer applies in the age of global climate change. It's about creating dialogue, and finding the solutions that will be mutually beneficial to all. "It's not about whether or not it's nice to have forests anymore," she says, "It's about our future."

VIDEOS

LINKS

Forest Ethics

PowerUp Canada

ARTICLES

"Strange Bedfellows" - The Economist

"If a Tree Falls in the Forest, She Knows" - Globe and Mail

"Enivro Heroes: Tzeporah Berman"

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