Friends of the Earth has contributed to many campaigns since its beginnings in the 1970s. Below is a snap shot of our most recent campaigns.

• The Stradbroke Island Sand Mining Campaign was the reason why Friends of the Earth Brisbane formed. This campaign fought to stop the further expansion of sand mining on Stradbroke Island. It raged for many years in partnership with local indigenous groups, and was successful to some degree in limiting expansion aspirations of the company. Although the mining still continues. (1996-2000)
• Genetic Engineering Campaign had three distinct phases, firstly working to raise general community awareness about the environmental and human dangers regarding the technology, secondly to ensure appropriate Australian food labelling standards were put in place, and thirdly to build a national campaign to halt the open proliferation of genetically engineered organisms into the environment. The success of this third phase saw the campaign and key staff shift to Greenpeace. (1998 – 2002)
• Anti-Nuclear, primarily concerned with opposition to nuclear energy in general in Australia. Starting from the Jabiluka Campaign to the Food-irradiation Campaign: particular focus is on community engagement with the issues of international trade in irradiated food and local labelling laws and stronger regulations. The campaign works to maintain Queensland’s nuclear power station free status and limit expansion to uranium mining (1998- current)
• Fraser Island Dingoes Campaign was a short and sharp intervention campaign. Waged in partnership with local indigenous groups of the Fraser Coast and FoE Maryborough. The campaign successfully stopped the culling of Fraser Island National Park dingoes – the last pure blood dingoes of Australia. (2001-2002)
• Just Food Collective which was primarily concerned with ethical food production, community participation and land stewardship within Australia food production sector (Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA). This group started a now external CSA project call ‘Food Connect’. (2001-2005)
• Ecological Debit Campaign, The pre cursor to the Climate Justice Campaign, worked in partnership with many FoE International organisations, the faith based Jubilee 2000 and Drop the Debit campaign. (2001-2003)
• Wild Spaces Collective organises a national film festival that aims to educate and highlight significant environmental or social justice issues that arise around the world or are in our back yard. (2001-2005)
• The Brisbane Social Forum was proudly started by Friends of the Earth Brisbane. Initiation of the forum was in partnership with various other activist or social change organisations. Social Forum is an opportunity for people to explore issues of peace, globalisation, equality, social justice and environmental sustainability. Although this is not officially a FoEB event, we have played a significant part in the establishment and ongoing organisation of the Brisbane Social Forum. (2002-)
• The Waste Bins Project was a small project that campaigned to pressure the Brisbane City Council to install street recycling bins throughout the city. Largely following the lessons learnt from the highly successful Friends of the Earth Sydney Campaign of the 1980’s that now sees household waste recycling bins across the country, this campaign struggled to see action from the council. Not until 2009 did the Brisbane City Council install recycling bin in some locations. (2002)
• The Climate Justice Collective over the many years has had various foci. In general the campaign maintains its goal towards educating citizens of present climate change effects that are being felt by marginalised communities of the pacific region. The initial highly successful component of the campaign worked to mainstream the concept of Climate Justice into the Australian NGO sector, bridging the connection between environmental and social justice fields. Work is also focused on examination of Australian Government energy policies and Federal Aid priorities, relevant to energy use and climate change, successful seeing one of the major parties adopting FoE’s policy position. This collective was responsible for initiating three successive campaigns: Climate Frontliners, Six Degrees Coal and Climate Campaign, Agrofuels Campaign (biofuels). (2003- 2008)
• The Education and Training Working Group is committed to provide high quality training services in the areas of: organisational development and campaign planning and management, to the social change NGO sector. This WG supported the formation of “The Change Agency”. (2003-2006)
• The first Walk Against Warming to be held in Australia was initiated and coordinated by Friends of the Earth Brisbane in 2003. Walk Against Warming is a family community event initiated by the World Social Forum to provide an open, non political, friendly space for citizens to come together around climate change. Following the initial three years of direct FoE management, coordination of successive WAW events was opened to other groups to take on. (2003-)
• Oxley Creek Commons project worked to establish an ecological reserve on land in the heart of Brisbane in Rocklea (near the Brisbane Markets) the project worked in partnership with 5 other major community groups to save the land from private ownership development. This campaign was successful, with the land secured for community purpose, yet the new development outcomes visioned by the project are still to be realised. (2004-2005)
• The West End Gully Project was coordinated out of the FoEB Office. The Gully Campaign was lead for 5 years by community members of the Highgate Hill Action Group, until its merger with the Gully Campaign. The campaign worked to stop the destruction of the last remaining inner city sub-tropical rainforest from the developer chainsaw. This campaign failed with the last remaining ecological site of its kind in Brisbane bulldozed with the Brisbane City Council providing no relocation programs for the identified species (2005)
• The Communities Against the Tunnel (CATT) project worked to support various local community groups campaigning to stop the development of the Brisbane ‘Trans Apex’ tunnel transport infrastructure project. The team supported groups in strategic planning and the use of activist campaign strategise and tactics, turning the community groups in well organised activist organisations. The group successfully won the fight to have worlds best practice filtration systems added to the network. (2006-2007)
• Climate Frontliners (formed from the Climate Justice Campaign) continues largely upon the work of the Climate Justice Campaign which seeks to shift both public and government position regarding our national responsibility to our pacific island neighbours from climate change impacts. (2009-)
• Six Degrees Coal and Climate Campaign (formed from the Climate Justice Campaign). The campaign works with communities and groups across the state to reduce Queensland’s dependence on the coal industry, including expansion of coal mines and expansion of coal exports (2008-)
• Agrofuels Campaign (biofuels) (formed from the Climate Justice Campaign) is working to minimise Australia’s climate emissions through establish a regulatory framework to guide agro-fuel (bio-fuel) plantation development and sector expansion. (2008-)