Blog: Forests

I've been playing around with Google Earth's KML spreadsheet as we're thinking of ideas we can contribute from the UK office to the Greenpeace layer in the Global Awareness section (recently added: highlights of our marine work), and I was checking out some of the showcased examples of good visual mapping done by other organisations. Amongst them, I came across this little beauty which visually represents the differing rates of deforestation around the world and it's quite, quite brilliant.

We're still working to build a coalition of companies which are determined to reform the palm oil industry so no more forest is lost due to the expansion of their plantations in South East Asia and with Unilever's help we're in contact with other major players in the palm oil trade. However, some are less keen than others to co-operate and need some persuading.

Just one of the many actions we've taken to expose the government's shoddy approach to illegal timber

Over the past few years, we've done plenty of work to highlight the problem of illegally logged timber being imported and sold in the UK - remember the government's repeated foul-ups in this area? It's insane, but we still don't have any laws preventing illegal timber from places like the Amazon and south-east Asia reaching our shores, nor does any other country in Europe.