An update from Indonesia: yesterday, the climber occupying the anchor chain of a ship carrying a cargo of palm oil was brought down, arrested and later released without charge.
Yesterday, we also received the intriguing photo above (later chosen by the BBC for its day in pictures). As it took us in the office a while to get our heads around what was happening, I thought I'd pass on Jamie's explanation:
The small (wet) figure above is a crew member of the Greenpeace ship Esperanza. Darkness has fallen on the port of Dumai (Indonesia) since this photograph was taken several hours ago, but our climber is still there, in the dark, occupying the anchor chain and preventing the tanker from setting off to the Netherlands with its 27,000 tonne cargo of palm oil. As Jamie wrote on the Forests for Climate blog, it takes only one person to stop a giant palm oil tanker.
I’ve scrubbed and showered but there are still traces of mud sticking to me. It’s my own fault - I guess I shouldn’t have gone tramping around the peatlands here in Riau. But the picture above, that’s us: some of the Esperanza’s crew and several Indonesian volunteers pulling our banner tight against the forest wall, the straight line that separates the thriving ecosystem from the barren areas which have been cleared of trees. In case you’re wondering, I’m at the top of the P in ‘STOP’.
Posted by jamie — 5 November 2008 at 4:09pm
-
Comments
It's been a little while since I've updated here about the Esperanza's Forests for Climate tour of Indonesia, but continue it most certainly does. For our exploits crossing from one end of the country to the other and our stop in Jakarta, catch up on the Forests for Climate blog.
But we've arrived in Sungai Pakning, a small port on the coast of Riau in Sumatra, and the Esperanza is anchored in a wide, silty channel running between the mainland and two islands, Pulau Bengkalis and Pulau Padang. The soupy water flowing gently past the ship will be down to the Siak river, the mouth of which is just a few miles south.
Over the past 12 years, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has created a leading global system for credible certification of environmentally and socially responsible managed forests and it has been innovative and adaptive in meting the challenges to transform forest stewardship worldwide. Its success and the reality of rapid growth and demand have lead FSC to face a number of challenges.
Posted by jamie — 22 October 2008 at 11:09am
-
Comments
As the Rainbow Warrior sweeps into town, here on the other side of the planet the Esperanza is sailing through the warm waters of the old Spice Islands. We left Manokwari on Monday and are currently en route to Jakarta, slipping past bewitchingly exotic names such as the Ceram Sea, Buru Island, the Halmahera Sea, Selat Sagewin, the Banda Sea... I could go on.
If you're trying to place these exotic names, you could do worse than download the Google Earth layer which is tracking the progress of the Esperanza through Indonesia (you'll need to install Google Earth first, of course, but there's a plain map version below). I'll be posting highlights from the tour there, and it will update automatically so check it often for the latest stories, videos and other titbits from our expedition.
In this edition of our podcast we bring you far-flung forest news from Indonesia, where Jamie reports from the Esperanza on the 'Forests for Climate' tour, plus another Amazon update from James. But first, closer to home, nuclear campaigner Nathan Argent gives Greenpeace's reaction to the news that the government tried to fix another public consultation on new nuclear power, and ponders the implications for UK energy policy.
After nine days at sea, the Esperanza pulled into Manokwari harbour this morning - that's Manokwari in the Indonesian province of West Papua, not any other Manokwari you might be thinking of. Crowds of people were already on the dock and despite the overcast skies, we received one of the colourful and exotic welcomes I'm becoming accustomed to on this trip, with traditional dancing and singing to greet us when we disembarked.
Reacting to the government commissioned Eliasch review entitled "Climate Change: Financing Global Forests" Greenpeace head of biodiversity Andy Tait said:
"This report shows a dangerous lack of ambition and vastly underestimates the scale of the action needed to tackle climate change. If Gordon Brown accepts these proposals he will give a green light to companies to use forest protection abroad as a cheap alternative to making the dramatic cuts in the industrial and energy sectors that we need here in the UK.
Posted by jamie — 1 October 2008 at 12:19pm
-
Comments
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.
