A shipment of illegal timber is on its way to Europe
A shipment of illegal timber from the Amazon rainforest is on its way to Europe. We've discovered that the timber is bound for the port of Rotterdam - and it arrives tomorrow.
We've caught sawmills in the Amazon rainforest trading illegal timber. Now a shipment of illegal timber from one of those sawmills is on its way to Europe. If we act quickly, we can force the authorities to take action.
The timber industry in the Brazilian Amazon is currently a key
driver of forest degradation and a catalyst for deforestation.
Logging, particularly for valuable timber species including
Ipê, is the first phase in the deforestation cycle, drives
colonisation of once remote intact forest areas, and is a
major source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Rainforest close to the city of Altamira. A Greenpeace team is in the area to witness the "Cachoeira Seca" (Dry Waterfall) Indigenous land, where illegal logging and land grabbing has been occurring.
Today Greenpeace published a 2-year investigation that shows how the logging industry threatens the Amazon rainforest. These photos show the illegal logging that's ransacking the forest and show what's at stake if the logging continues.
The Brazilian government has made several attempts to take control of logging in the Amazon. But despite high-profile crackdowns, the trade in illegal timber is vast and growing.
It's been a long time coming but
finally - finally! - the European parliament has voted overwhelmingly in favour
of a law banning illegal timber from entering the European Union. Like many
other organisations, Greenpeace has been campaigning on this for years - 10
long ones, in our case - so to see this become a reality is an amazing tribute
to the thousands of people who emailed, donated or took direct action.
The European
Parliament today voted to ban the import of illegal
timber.
Sarah Shoraka,
forests campaigner for Greenpeace, said: "This great new law will help to save
the forests in places such as the Amazon, Congo and Indonesia, and all the
wildlife that live there, like tigers, orangutans and
bonobos.
Posted by jamie — 1 October 2008 at 12:19pm
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I've mentioned before about how I love wandering through the Greenpeace photo library (it's on a big server, so any wandering is purely figurative) - there's always just one more enticing folder to explore. And it's hardly surprising, when our campaign work takes photographers to some stunning locations and places them at the heart of the action. Some have even won major international awards for their work, both with Greenpeace and independently.
Posted by jamie — 25 September 2008 at 1:38pm
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If you submitted your own Forest Love video in response to ours, you might catch a glimpse of yourself in the new video we've put together below which we're going to deliver to European Commission president José Manuel Barroso in Brussels. The commission are due to vote on legislation to ban illegal timber in Europe and hopefully that will take place in mid-October, but the date has changed several times over the past few weeks so who knows?
As we wait for the European
Commission to consider
legislation to prevent illegal timber from entering Europe, a Greenpeace
team in Papua New Guinea
have stepped in to prevent a ship from loading up with wood of dubious
provenance.
The ship, Harbour Gemini, was loading timber at
Paia Inlet in Gulf
Province, when four
activists from our ship the Esperanza climbed a loading crane to hang a huge
banner reading 'Protect Forests, Save Our Climate'. Looking on were groups of
local people in boats, while others held their own
peaceful protests at the port and nearby logging camps.