Photo by Greenpeace
Photo on Greenpeace

Diana Ruiz

Senior Campaigner for Forests

Greenpeace

POSITION

Senior Campaigner for Forests

COMPANY

Greenpeace

COUNTRY

USA

SCENE

Environment

SOCIAL

LinkedIn

Twitter

What makes Diana Ruiz a Global Shaker?

Diana Ruiz is Project Leader and Senior Campaigner for Forests and Global Markets at Greenpeace, perhaps the largest environmental campaigning organisation in the world.

In the role, Ruiz has cut a tough figure holding US corporate interests to account for their role in continued deforestation — particularly in relation to palm oil supply chains and the cattle and soy market in the Amazon.

Her roles, and professional commitment to make zero deforestation in Indonesia a reality, have seen her at the heart of some of the strongest awareness campaigns about the plight of deforestation in recent years. She championed the animated viral video ‘Rang-tan: the story of dirty palm oil’, which showed a young orangutan explain to a child about the effects of deforestation in the amazon for palm oil, which kills 25 orangutans every day. Ruiz was on hand to stress that the industry was not on track to stop the use of dirty palm oil, and that the practice was “not slowing down.”

Similarly, she’s taken major sweet corporations to task for promising to divest away from palm oil producers that destroy the environment yet failed to enforce their own rules. In particular, she stressed the need to drop palm oil giant Wilmar, which she describes as the “dirtiest palm oil giant in the world.”

Before this, Ruiz was a part of the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies at the CUNY School of Professional Studies; a Communication Strategist for organisations including Earthjustice; and a Climate Change Researcher at Public Health Institute.

The climate champion holds an undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Vermont, and a Master of International Affairs and Environmental Policy from Columbia University in the City of New York.

“Our forests are precious beyond imagination. We must protect them for the people living in them and people everywhere,” Greenpeace writes on its website.

“Forests regulate the climate and host an extraordinary array of plants and animals.But to a greedy few, forests are just land, waiting to become pastures, plantations, or roads; sources of timber, rubber, or minerals.

“Together we can be forest defenders and work towards their restoration for the benefit of all life on earth.”

Tags: Climate crisis, Greenpeace, reforestation

Last updated: March 21, 2020