Blog: Forests

In June, Oscar-winning French superstar Marion Cottilard - currently playing in Inception at all good multiplexes - took a trip to the Congo rainforest with Greenpeace campaigners to see for herself the effect that the logging industry is having on the forest and the people who live there.

Glastonbury is the big fixture in our festival calendar but throughout the summer our events crew are setting up shop at other big country bashes. They're getting people involved with our campaign to save the rainforests (see our new forest defenders making monkeys of themselves in the slideshow above) as well as providing plenty of activities to provide an alternative to the music stages.

Latitude and Womad have been and gone, but this weekend it's their first visit to the Big Chill. If you're heading that way look out for the Banksy backdrop where you can put yourself in the picture and declare your support, like hundreds of other people have already done.

Guest blogger Laura Kenyon from our international office reveals the latest evidence we've collected showing how Sinar Mas breaking its own commitments on protecting rainforests and peatlands.

The short answer: not likely.

In fact, not only will they not be likely to come 'clean', but today we are releasing fresh evidence that Sinar Mas's notorious forest-destroying practices continue unabated and in direct violation of the company's own environmental commitments on protecting forests and peatlands.

All is not doom and gloom in Brazil. The soya moratorium, which Greenpeace helped establish in 2006, has been renewed for another 12 months, which means another year of soya traders refusing to do business with farmers growing crops on newly deforested land. In addition, companies like McDonalds, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, Marks & Spencer and the Co-op have reaffirmed their commitment to the moratorium, ensuring that they continue to demand non-Amazon soya at the consumer end too.

There's no denying that the moratorium has been a success. Since it was established four years ago, deforestation rates in the Amazon have decreased while soya yields have increased, showing that (as Paulo Adario from our Brazilian office put it) "production and conservation can go hand in hand".  

With last year's agreement between three of the largest slaughterhouses in Brazil to prevent cattle ranching making further in-roads into the rainforest, we've made great strides in breaking the link between agricultural production and deforestation. But the current attempts to change the forest code could undo much of the success of recent years so there's no rest for the wicked just yet.