2024 Gen E Environmental Nonprofit Roundup!
Happy New Year!
❄️ Thank you for being here. We hope everyone was able to take some rest over the past couple of weeks to slow things down, reflect, recharge, and gain clarity on intentions for this new year – just as nature intends for us to do during the stillness of the winter season. Our friends at the Indigenous environmental groups on Gen E know this well, and we are inspired to follow their lead as they remind us to honor the cycles of life on Earth.
💪 And with that, we’re back and ready for the year ahead! Let’s stay focused on protecting what we love about this place, our HOME, and never lose sight that we must continue forward with strength and urgency to cool Her down and safeguard all the natural resources and biodiversity that make our planet the best damn planet in the Universe. We enter this year with a positive mindset and will continue on that wavelength in order to rise above the storms as they come. Below, find some highlights from the work of your Gen E nonprofits in 2024 – go team! Remember, every action matters in our collective quest to restore balance and ideal conditions to our planet. So do what you can, give what you can, just keep going. Together we will prevail, because we must!
Your 2024 Philanthropy At Work…Some Greatest Hits:
🏞 Yosemite Conservancy’s wildlife management focused on bat research, amphibian reintroductions, and bee surveys. They restored habitats, such as the Ackerson Meadow restoration. The once-endangered peregrine falcon’s numbers have doubled in the park since their Peregrine Falcon Protection Program began in 2009. And they reintroduced traditional fire-tending practices in El Capitan grove by supporting Tribal fire practitioners.
✊ Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) launched the Indigenous Women of the Ecuadorian Amazon Reforestation and Restoration Project. In the United States Gulf South, they established a network of Indigenous women working to re-establish old trade routes while adapting and co-designing new future paths for tradeways that strengthen decentralized systems of support, build circular economies, support local biodiversity, and food sovereignty. And they continued their relentless fight to stop and shut down the Line 5 pipeline that threatens the Great Lakes region. Much, much more on their many initiatives with details here.
🏄♀️ Surfrider Foundation’s highlights: 57 campaign victories that passed policies to protect our coasts and ocean, >114,000 lbs of trash removed from beaches and coastal waterways, 2.9M acres of ocean habitats protected through new marine protected areas, 47 restoration events to restore coastal ecosystems, and 55K volunteers engaged in on-the-ground conservation. Lots more here.
🙅 Stand led campaigns to hold corporations accountable to their pledges and to help win political fights. They kept pressure on Lululemon to eliminate coal from their supply chain resulting in a new, expedited renewable energy commitment. They targeted Cargill very publicly to make-good on their promise to end the deforestation they cause in South America, and got a formal commitment from the company. They helped pass fossil fuel divestment legislation in Oregon. These are just a few of the wins from 2024.
🌊 Rozalia Project collected over 22K lbs of ocean trash last summer from 45 cleanup locations across 16 remote islands. They published this interactive research report from an expedition to the Antarctic to study microplastics (yes, they were found).
🦜 One Earth Conservation’s accomplishments of 2024 include: Bilingual Parrot Conservation Corp with 30 participants in 12 countries. In Guyana, the most new data on wild sun parakeets in the world was collected. The first Indigenous wildlife sanctuary for parrots was established in Honduras. And in Nicaragua, July saw the most yellow-naped amazon parrots ever counted.
🌊 After 6 years of R&D, The Ocean Cleanup looks ready to scale. In 2024 they reached the milestone of over 45M lbs of ocean and river waste collected. Watch this video recap of their year to see the tangible impact of removing plastic from our rivers and oceans.
🦌 Northeast Wilderness Trust’s new forever-wild land acquisitions this year brings their total protected acreage in the Northeast to more than 92,000 acres. For their 2025-2030 Strategic Plan, they want to double that to protect and safeguard 160,000 forever-wild acres.
👨⚖️ NRDC reminds you that it sued Trump 163 times during his first term, winning 90% of resolved cases. They are ready to do it again. NRDC was also part of these big wins from the year: 28M acres in Alaska gained restored protections and the endangered beluga whale in Alaska’s Cook Inlet received legal safeguards. New EPA regulations will cut down on toxic pollution from transportation and power plants, helping to clean our air. And a new rule for our drinking water aims to remove nearly all toxic lead pipes within 10 years.
🌲 Last year, the National Forest Foundation and its tree planting partners planted over 5M trees across 31,684 acres of National Forest land.
🚜 Mad Agriculture supported 65 farmers in 17 states across the country, expanding regenerative practices, and helped plant 3,000 trees, as well as seeding 100 acres of prairie strips. They distributed over $500,000 of financial assistance to 40 on-farm projects.
🐢 Indigenous Environmental Network works on several initiatives, all with tons of activity throughout the year. They advance Indigenous-led advocacy at domestic and international forums (and UN COPs) through strong attendance, deliver multiple trainings, publish resources, and form coalitions with allies in support of climate justice and campaign to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Detailed activities of 2024 here.
🧗 The Honnold Foundation brought solar energy access to 18 community organizations, from tribally-led agrovoltaics in New Mexico to rooftop solar installations in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. They invested over $2 million in projects around the world, with a pipeline of at least $10 million in fundable projects each year.
⚓️ At Greenwave, 7,300 people accessed tools, educational content, and community on their Ocean Farming Hub, 24 farmer practitioners and nursery operators forged regional connections through their new farmer cohort program, 51 Kelp Climate Fund farms harvested 757,500 pounds of kelp (a 200% increase in yields!), and 90 businesses joined Seaweed Source.
🛰 EDF’s MethaneSAT, their ground-breaking satellite to track methane emissions, has been gathering data over the year and is set to release a publicly available portal early this year. Their work helped secure $7B in federal funding for climate-smart agriculture, and establish a first-of-its-kind Dairy Methane Action Alliance, joined by 8 of the world’s biggest dairy companies. Find their 2024 Impact report here (way ahead of the curve!).
🌳 From addressing wildfires in Honduras to reforesting critical landscapes in the Philippines and Kenya, Eden’s 2024 recap details specific projects in each region, always collaborating with the local communities to manage and benefit from a restored and protected environment.
🦥 Coalition for Rainforest Nations was instrumental in completing and finalizing Article 6 under the Paris Agreement at COP29 in Baku, also helping to push for increased climate financing for developing countries. They attended COP16 (Convention for Biological Diversity), counseling coalition members on how to protect their habitats and endangered species. They advanced climate leadership in 19 rainforest nations in their coalition, providing training and capacity building support to help governments measure, verify, and ultimately report their rainforest cover and emission reductions data back to the UN so that this data can eventually turn into sovereign carbon credit. Speaking of, they placed the world’s first sovereign carbon credits on the global market, issued by Suriname.
🎭 Broadway Green Alliance’s ‘wrapped’ recap of 2024 is easily digestible in this instagram post. BGA continued to divert 4,300 lbs of theatre prop textiles from the landfill and added 164 new Green Captains who advocate for greener practices in their theatre productions.
🦪 Billion Oyster Project celebrated 10 years of work in 2024: 140M oysters and 19 acres of three-dimensional oyster reef and habitat across 17 sites and 5 boroughs, 2.4M pounds of oyster shells cleaned, stored, and recycled from 83 NYC restaurant partners and diverted from landfills, and 40,000+ students, 689 teachers in over 145 school partnerships cultivating the next generation of environmental stewards.
Cheers to focusing on the positive and to many wins for our planet in 2025!