October 2005

Home to the greatest variety of life on Earth, the Amazon is both the largest rainforest and the largest river basin in the world, covering over 6,000 square kilometres. In a normal year the region receives over two metres (seven feet) of rainfall. Yet since January 2005 this fabled 'land of waters' has been affected by an increasingly catastrophic drought, estimated to be the worst for 40 years.

Shortly after 7.30 this morning, Greenpeace volunteers blockaded the entrance to the Department for the Environment,Food and Rural Affairs DEFRA offices on London's Millbank, in protest at the tonnes of illegal timber continuing to flood into the UK from the world's last rainforests.

With the pressure on from the nuclear lobby to build a series of ten new reactors, the Environmental Audit Committee of the House of Commons is holding an inquiry into future electricity production in the UK. The inquiry, Keeping the Lights On: Nuclear Power, Renewables and Climate Change, is being seen by many as the preliminary to an expected energy review in early 2006 which might result in proposals for new nuclear power plants.