About Cook Inletkeeper
Cook Inletkeeper is a community-based nonprofit organization that combines advocacy, education and science toward its mission to protect Alaska’s Cook Inlet watershed and the life it sustains. Inletkeeper’s monitoring and science work builds credibility with scientists and resource managers, its education and advocacy efforts enhance stewardship and citizen participation, and together, these efforts translate into Inletkeeper’s ability to effectively ensure a vibrant and healthy Cook Inlet watershed.
Vision
Thriving and equitable communities in a resilient Cook Inlet watershed.
Mission
PROTECT ALASKA'S COOK INLET WATERSHED AND THE LIFE IT SUSTAINS
Goals
- Accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to an equitable, renewable energy future;
- Protect healthy habitat and clean water;
- Promote sustainable local economies and strong communities; and
- Increase our organizational effectiveness at achieving our vision.
More About Us
Values
Clean Water: Inletkeeper’s first priority is to protect water quality and quantity, because we all need clean water. Lasting livable wage jobs, strong local economies, and human health all depend on clean water. Inletkeeper embraces the inherent connections between people, the economy, and clean water.
Human Rights: All people –including future generations - have an equal right to the essential necessities of life including clean water, clean air, clean energy and healthy food. Inletkeeper recognizes and embraces these values as basic and fundamental human rights.
Local Control: Local people have a right and a responsibility to guide the course of their communities. Inletkeeper believes decisions made at all levels should involve the local community and reflect the interests of the local people who are most affected by those decisions.
Science: Scientific knowledge and facts are essential for guiding responsible and honest policy decisions. Inletkeeper is committed to integrity and bases its actions on timely and accurate information and sound science derived from defensible methods. Inletkeeper openly shares its science and knowledge with the public, media and policymakers.
Right-to-Know: Alaskans collectively own our public water, land and air resources. While we have a fundamental right to clean air and clean water, we have a corresponding right-to-know timely and accurate information about toxic pollution that may be contaminating our food sources, our drinking water and other public resources.
Economy: Inletkeeper recognizes a fundamental disconnect between a perpetually growing economy based on finite natural resources. In the short term, Inletkeeper strives to internalize the external costs and impacts of development to achieve true cost accounting. In the long term, Inletkeeper recognizes the need for broad based economic reforms that break the illusory pursuit of perpetual growth, and embrace the need for truly sustainable economic models.
Corporations: Inletkeeper believes only natural persons should enjoy constitutional protections, including the rights and privileges afforded by the Bill of Rights. Corporations are not natural persons; they are legal fictions. In response, Inletkeeper strongly supports a constitutional amendment stripping “personhood” from corporations.
Energy: Alaska and the U.S. remain mired in an undue reliance on fossil fuels, which is polluting our air and water, sickening our residents and changing our climate. Our quest for fossil fuels leads us to war and diverts resources from essential services (health care, family planning, education, etc). The finite nature of fossil fuels makes it all the more important for Alaska and the world to pivot quickly to carbon-neutral, renewable energy supplies.
Climate Change: Climate change poses the gravest threat to our natural world since the beginning of recorded time. Inletkeeper recognizes no debate on the existence of a changing climate, or whether humans are playing a causative role aggravating it. While Inletkeeper will invest considerable efforts to mitigate climate change, it will also work increasingly on adaptive management strategies that will protect people, water quality, and fish and wildlife as climate change ensues.
