Anne Petermann

Global Justice Ecology Project

Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project and Coordinator of the international Campaign to STOP GE Trees. She became involved in environmental issues while in college, where she studied wildlife biology and fine art. On Columbus Day in 1992, Petermann was arrested for the first time at an action commemorating 500 years of genocide in the Americas.

She co-founded the Eastern North American Resource Center of the Native Forest Network in June 1993, acting as its Coordinator until 2003. In the summer of 1993 she participated in an expedition to James Bay, Quebec to document the Cree resistance to the plans of Hydro-Quebec to dam a series of rivers in Cree territory. (NFN played a key role in a Vermont campaign on the issue, including organizing an international day of action against Hydro-Quebec on their 50th anniversary in April 1994. These efforts contributed to Hydro-Quebec abandoning its plans to build new dams in Cree territory.)

Petermann also co-organized the First North American Temperate Forest Conference in November of 1993. This conference included over 500 forest activists from across North America as well as indigenous representatives from six nations. The conference was organized to build bridges between these communities of activists and encourage greater collaboration. Dr. David Suzuki and Winona LaDuke were the keynote speakers.

From 1994 to 1999, Petermann organized NFN’s annual Forest Activist Training Weeks in Vermont where dozens of activists were trained in skills ranging from working with the media to fundraising to orienteering.

In 1996-1997 Petermann coordinated NFN’s involvement in a statewide campaign to stop timber corporations Champion International and Boise Cascade from spraying toxic herbicides on their Vermont forest holdings. NFN’s participation in organizing direct actions and protests on the issue was instrumental in the state of Vermont passing a moratorium on the herbicide spraying in early 1997. Subsequent to this decision, Champion International and Boise Cascade both left the state and the moratorium became permanent.

In October 1999 Petermann co-organized actions at the ministerial meeting of the Free Trade Area of the Americas in Toronto, where she hung a 600 square foot banner against the FTAA on the Toronto Convention Center where the Ministers were meeting.

In January of 2000, Petermann was arrested at the NH Democratic Campaign headquarters of Al Gore during an action in support of the U’Wa people of Colombia whose land was under threat from Occidental Petroleum. The U’Wa had threatened mass suicide if Occidental drilled on their land. Al Gore’s father had served on the Board of Occidental Petroleum and Gore himself held large quantities of stock. This action was covered nationally and triggered other such actions across the country. Occidental did not drill on the U’Wa lands.

From May 2000 to May 2001 Anne won a scholarship from the New England Grassroots Environment Fund to take part in a year-long fundraising course called The Complete Fundraiser, held by the Institute for Conservation Leadership.

In June of 2000 Petermann helped launch the first campaign against genetically engineered trees with a press conference in Boston during protests countering the Biotechnology Industry Organization’s annual conference. The press conference was covered on the front page of the Washington Post.

In July 2001 Petermann co-organized the first ever protest against GE trees at an International Union of Forest Research Organizations “Tree Biotechnology” conference in Oregon. That same month she edited and co-wrote a major groundbreaking report on GE trees entitled, “From Native Forest to Franken-Trees, the Global Threat of Genetically Engineered Trees,” which was distributed to thousands of people.

In September 2003, Petermann co-founded Global Justice Ecology Project. In November 2003, she participated in and documented the mobilization against the Free Trade Area of the Americas in Miami, which was brutally attacked by police. In 2004 she participated in and documented the protests at the Democratic National Convention in Boston and the Republican National Convention in New York City, as well as anti-war marches in Washington, DC. Her photo from a massive women’s march in DC was used for the cover of Z Magazine.

In January of 2004 Petermann co-founded the STOP GE Trees Campaign, helping pull together a meeting with numerous groups from across the country to take unified action to stop the commercialization of genetically engineered trees.

In May 2008 Petermann spoke on the dangers of GE trees at the UN  Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Bonn, where the UN made the decision to warn countries of the dangers of GE trees and urge them to use a precautionary approach. Petermann co-led a campaign there that won support from every NGO and Indigenous Peoples’ Organization, plus the entire African delegation for a suspension of all plantings of genetically engineered trees.

In October 2004 Petermann traveled to Durban, South Africa where she co-founded The Durban Group for Climate Justice which denounces carbon trading as a false solution to global warming.

In 2004 Langelle and Petermann formed a partnership with the indigenous Mapuche group Konapewman in Temuco, Chile, to work jointly to stop the commercial development of GE trees in Chile.

Anne’s writing has been featured in Truthout, Counterpunch, Z Magazine, Earth Island Journal and Seedling, among numerous others. She has been interviewed for print, radio and television from the Le Monde, to The Washington Post to national NPR programs as well as regional programs in Maine, North Carolina and Georgia, as well as hundreds of other media outlets.

She has also presented the dangers of GE trees at dozens of meetings, conferences and events across the US, including two industry conferences, the Landscapes, Genomics and Transgenic Conifers Conference at Duke University in November 2004 and the Sustainable Forest Management with Fast Growing Plantations conference which was sponsored by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations, the US Forest Service and ArborGen in Charleston, SC in October 2006. She has also presented at meetings in Brazil organized by Brazilian networks including the MST (Landless Workers’ Movement) and Via Campesina.

Petermann also spoke out against GE trees and forest carbon offsets at annual UN Climate Conventions (COPs) from 2004 until 2011 when she was permanently banned from participation for organizing and taking part in unpermitted protests against UN Climate COP inaction and promotion of false, profit-oriented “solutions.”

In 2012 she wrote The Green Shock Doctrine, to document the abuses of the UN Climate COP process, and to help expose and examine the deeper issues behind the climate crisis and their links to many of the other crises we are facing.

In 2013 Petermann helped relaunch the Campaign to STOP GE Trees with a new steering committee consisting of leaders in the global forest protection, bioenergy, Indigenous rights and radical activism communities. Later that year, she co-organized the largest ever protest against GE trees at the international Tree Biotechnology Conference in Raleigh, NC in the US.

Currently Anne is helping lead the fight to stop the unregulated release of genetically engineered American chestnut trees into wild forests, a move that could drive the wild American chestnut into extinction.

In 2018, she co-wrote a white paper on the risks of the GE American chestnut titled Biotechnology For Forest Health? The Test Case of the Genetically Engineered American Chestnut

In 2020 she wrote USDA May Allow Genetically Modified Trees to Be Released Into the Wild, an article that was widely distributed around the world.

In 2000, Anne received the national Wild Nature award for environmental activist of the year.

In 2002, the Burlington, VT resource center was awarded the highest honor of the Green Mountain Fund for Popular Struggle.

Anne also sits on the Board of the Will Miller Social Justice Lecture Series.

Area of Expertise/ Specialties:
Anne Petermann speaks out on the dangers and risks of genetically engineered trees and climate false solutions

Contact Anne

ne*******@******************gy.org

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