Photographs illustrating the environmental problems we're facing provide one of the most powerful tools we have for our campaign work. Whether it's an image of the beauty that still remains or one of the havoc we humans so often create, sometimes one photo really can explain it all.
Posted by jamie — 24 February 2009 at 10:57am
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Some rather grim images were sent out from our picture desk yesterday. Taken on Sunday by Ardiles Rante, they show the devastation caused by fire in the peatland forests outside Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau province in Sumatra. So that's another few thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide sent up into the atmosphere, and seeing photos like these make me realise our ongoing campaign to protect these forests from the ever-expanding palm oil industry is even more essential.
This map shows the state of Mato Grosso in Brazil and highlights some of the effects of the cattle industry on the Amazon rainforest. You can see how the slaughterhouses (the black dots) are strung along the roads through the state, which have cut through the green areas of forest and savannah.
Click on the Greenpeace placemarkers for more information and photos.
Our colleagues in Indonesia have been very busy this
week - with visiting foreign dignitaries and an outrageous decree from their own
government following in quick succession.
Posted by jamie — 20 February 2009 at 12:42pm
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One of the great things about working for an
international organisation is that my inbox is constantly filling with emails
from around the globe detailing what other Greenpeace offices are working on. A
thread I've been following particularly closely is the stream of messages
coming from the Arctic Sunrise which is currently back in Brazil on a two-and-a-half month tour of the country.
The purpose of the tour - which goes under the
name of 'Save The Planet Now... Or Now!' - is to highlight the important role Brazil (as the fourth largest emitter of
greenhouse gases on the planet) can play in fighting it in the lead-up to the
UN climate change negotiations in Copenhagen this December.
For about three years now, we've been working on curbing the impacts of the soya industry on the Amazon rainforest in Brazil which, before the current moratorium was put into place, was replacing the forest with plantations on a massive scale.
However, there's another agricultural sector cutting deep into the forest which we're also going to tackle: cattle ranching. To assess the scale of the problem, Greenpeace researchers in Brazil have produced a new set of maps showing how the Amazon region has suffered.
The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has, at long last, completed a review of the logging industry. Although there are some positive results, at the same time it has allowed an expansion of the industry to more than twice the recommended size.
Back in October last year, the government announced the results of a three-year review of logging contracts that had been issued. Logging companies which had contracts cancelled were then allowed to appeal against the decisions and this week's announcement is the final result of that process.