Blog: Forests

Right now, a group of Greenpeace climbers are perched on top of a set of cranes in the port of La Rochelle on the French Atlantic coast. They've been there since Wednesday night and as well as admiring a no-doubt magnificent view, they're also preventing a ship unloading its cargo of timber which has come from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

With Blair's recent departure, recollections of 1997 in the media have been dominated by two things: his ascension to power and the Spice Girls. On the other side of the world in China, that same year was important for a couple of other reasons. Most famously, the lease ran out on a small but strategic piece of land called Hong Kong and the British Empire lost one of its last outposts as ownership return to the People's Republic of China.

But on that same piece of land, about the same time Chris Patten was bidding a teary farewell, something else significant happened (at least, we like to think it was) - Greenpeace China opened its doors. The importance of this particular office to the organisation can't be underestimated and, as this video shows, many of our campaigns can't help but take China's astonishing economic and social development into account. And with China now possibly the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, the next ten years are going to be even busier over there.

Not only are homes in the UK gradually becoming greener, their Asian equivalents could also heading in the same direction now that B&Q is removing all products containing illegal timber from their shelves in China.