FracTracker Alliance team

For A New Decade

In the summer of 2019, FracTracker began work on a bold strategic plan. With the organization’s last formal plan dating to 2013, the effort was long overdue.

Consultations, stakeholder surveys, and scans of issues and trends fed a rigorous, facilitated retreat. More conversations followed, accompanying iterative drafting, until a comprehensive and detailed plan emerged.

Meanwhile the world didn’t stop and wait. A pandemic wreaked havoc. The fossil fuel industry reeled. Demands for equality and justice reigned. The planning proceeded, mindful of these realities.

The strategic plan explores programs and projects; technology; communications; fundraising; safety and wellness; training and capacity; diversity, equity, and inclusion; administration and human resources; and, of course, monitoring and evaluation.

 

We identify four key programmatic goals:

  • Stop fossil fuel activities and infrastructure, including related petrochemical development
  • Increase public understanding of the detriment that fossil fuels and plastics cause people and the environment
  • Protect communities and ecosystems maltreated by fossil fuel and petrochemical operations
  • Strengthen and build civic engagement and alliances working toward cleaner, safer energy solutions

 

These goals, and a thorough enumeration of objectives and tasks, are guided by ten principles:

  1. Respond to the needs of frontline communities
  2. Elevate environmental justice perspectives and human rights
  3. Reveal solutions and success stories
  4. Engage younger audiences in these critical matters
  5. Involve more nontraditional partners
  6. Emphasize ease of use and access to information on our online tools
  7. Aspire for substantive and lasting change
  8. Communicate and coordinate for effective collaboration
  9. Promote and advocate for data transparency
  10. Ground findings in data and scientific evidence

 

Together, they reinforce the aspirations of our new mission statement:

 

FracTracker Alliance maps, analyzes, and communicates the risks of oil, gas, and petrochemical development to advance just energy alternatives that protect public health, natural resources, and the climate.

 

The plan underscores our imperative to partner with groups that seek solutions through regulatory, legal, and legislative action and have our work contribute to the urgent collective effort to equitably decarbonize economies. It is a roadmap, providing focus, but flexibility to remain nimble and responsive to ever-changing threats. We look forward to advancing the activities contained herein, measuring our progress, and most importantly, using our tools to expeditiously create a healthy energy paradigm. Please join us on this journey, and consider helping FracTracker to advance our work through your financial support.

By Brook Lenker, Executive Director, FracTracker Alliance