July 2014

Four of us hunch over a screen with the radio operator. We're looking at AIS (Automatic Identification System) information, a tracking system used to locate vessels. 
In fact, anyone can see a basic version of this information online. But there's a reason we're freezing our arses off here in the Arctic rather than checking the information, slipper-clad, from our sofas. 

Pulp and paper company APRIL, along with its sister companies, is the greatest threat to the Indonesian rainforest. These amazing forests are some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet - and they're vital to regulating the world's climate.

Together we can end illegal logging and the destruction of the world's forests, and protect the rights of the indigenous peoples and wildlife that depend on them. Join the movement to protect the world's rainforests.

But first, here's the six biggest porkies that APRIL are telling everyone to stop customers deserting them:

Secretary of State for the Environment Mr Owen Paterson has been sacked, and ‘the countryside’ is reportedly FURIOUS. As is traditional, the spokesmen for ‘the countryside’ and their alleged fury are climate sceptics writing in the Telegraph - and none of those climate sceptics writing in the Telegraph is more furious than Owen Paterson himself.

Early on Wednesday morning, on an industrial estate in the Czech Republic, our campaign to convince much-loved toy company LEGO to break their partnership with Arctic oil-drillers Shell, moved into a new phase of escalation. Greenpeace activists re-branded LEGO’s Czech factory - one of their three main production centres around the world - with a Shell logo, an oil spill, and giant unhappy minifigures, cleaning it up. 

Another fracking application, another town. I’m not sure the ‘Not For Shale roadshow on tour’ t-shirt is ready to compete yet with the One Direction world tour t-shirt. But we’ve already appeared in Chichester, Midhurst, and today is Thursday so it must be sunny Preston.

While my colleagues have been doing big, bold and brash things like confronting oil drilling in the Arctic and taking on Tescos over their slipped commitments on sustainable tuna, I was reading reports by the European Commission and poring over the minute details of European Regulation. Doesn’t sound very Greenpeace, does it?

Some of the biggest companies in the palm oil industry just launched the Sustainable Palm Oil Manifesto. They say its a step forward - but we say it's greenwash that won't stop them trashing Indonesia's rainforests.

Customers are suspending contracts with Indonesia’s second largest pulp and paper company APRIL after we exposed its destruction of rainforests and fire-prone peatland.