Yesterday afternoon, the crew of one of our
ships - the Arctic Sunrise - swung into action in the French port of Caen.
Their mission: to prevent a shipment of Amazon timber, acquired from companies
linked to illegal logging activities, from entering the EU. And after nearly 24
hours, they're still going strong.
The timber is aboard the Galina III and, as it
tried to enter the port, five Greenpeace volunteers (including a group from the
UK)
climbed aboard where they attached themselves to two of the ship's cranes.
Since then, the Galina has been unable to dock to unload its cargo, a mixture of
timber species with wonderfully exotic names: amarelao, macaranduba, ipe,
garapeira, cumaru and jarana to name a few. And as I write, the team on the
cranes is still holding out.
Stung by the recent rise in deforestation
rates in the Amazon, the Brazilian government is cracking down on the illegal
loggers who are ripping up the rainforest; their year-long initiative - known as
Operation Fire Belt - is targeting areas where deforestation has been most
acute.
Posted by jamie — 10 December 2007 at 6:20pm
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There have
been some great developments around our Congo rainforest campaign, as the FT
reported on its website this morning that one of the arms of the World Bank
will offload the shares it owns in a company known to be destroying the forest of
the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The
International Finance Corporation (IFC) has announced that it will divest its
holdings in Olam International, a Singapore-based company which has operations
in the DRC. The Congo report we released earlier this year showed how Olam was
holding forest land granted in breach of the current moratorium which the World
Bank itself helped establish and that it was also trading in dodgy timber. As a
result, Olam has since given back its forest holdings to the DRC government, but
it still buys illegal timber cut by local companies.
Stretching right across South East Asia, from Sumatra and Borneo to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, the Paradise Forests form a wonderfully diverse region.
A traditional landowner stands amid the devastation of a deforested area in Papua New Guinea
With 80 per cent of the world's ancient forests already lost or seriously degraded, it's vital we look after what remains to maintain biodiversity, protect the way of life of local communities, and guard against climate change. But industrial logging, which is often either destructive, illegal or both, has these last areas of ancient forest under siege. So fast is the rate that an area the size of a football pitch is lost every two seconds.
Posted by jamie — 2 July 2007 at 4:37pm
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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.
Posted by jamie — 14 June 2007 at 11:14am
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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.
Beijing, China - Companies supplying China with illegal timber were dealt a major blow today when the world's third largest home improvement retailer, B&Q, announced a scheme to root out illegal supplies and guarantee within three years all products will be from certified responsible forestry programmes.
Two months ago, Greenpeace revealed that many timber species commonly sold in home improvement stores across China come from countries where up to 80 per cent of the logging is illegal and destructive.(1)
This report warns that the tropical hardwood species merbau (or kwila) will be extinct within 35 years or less if action is not taken to stop the destructive logging and trade of the species.
