Tackling climate change

Let’s not beat about the bush. All these threats are serious, but climate change might just be the biggest threat mankind has ever faced, particularly in Africa. Africans aren’t responsible for climate change; the industrial nations are the worst offenders. But it is Africans who will pay the steepest price.

The energy sector is the worst offender, creating almost 66 percent of all greenhouse gases. Yet in South Africa, where the government is faced with a major energy supply problem, the answer seems to be the building of more coal-fired energy stations, a 'solution' which only serves to worsen the problem.

Greenpeace is locked in a desperate struggle to change people’s minds, especially the minds of the country’s leaders. We need to change the view that nuclear power is a cheap and effective solution to our energy problems. We want to start a revolution in the thinking around energy, promoting the use of renewable energy sources, and saving the continent and creating jobs in the process.

Find out more about the climate campaign

Saving the forests

In central Africa, the rainforests in the Congo Basin provide the livelihood for 40 million people. These communities depend on the forests for their food, their medicines, as well as the materials used to build their homes. Additionally, this region is home to 270 species of mammals, among them the endangered gorillas, Bonobo and chimpanzees. The okapi and forest elephant are just two of the 39 species of animals found only here. These forests aren’t being protected for the people living here, they’re being destroyed.

Now Greenpeace is working locally and internationally to protect this special environment before it is too late. Called 'Forests for Climate', the initiative will teach the world how it can make financial sense to leave the forests as they are, rather than chopping them up forever.

Find out more about the forest campaign

Stopping the plunder of the oceans

Off the west coast of Africa, the battleground is underwater. Governments here have given massive European fishing fleets permission to come in and suck their waters dry of the fish that sustain their people.

These nations don’t have navies to monitor fishing fleets, so what was meant to bring foreign currency into the economy has ended up as nothing less than modern piracy on the high seas. Fewer people here are eating fish than their grandparents did as the traditional fishing grounds of West Africa are being looted for the dinner tables of Europe.

Find out more about the oceans campaign