Salonga National Park Aerial - Democratic Republic of the Congo. A river flows through the Salonga National Park, located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the Congo River basin. It is Africa's largest tropical rainforest reserve. With its 33.350 km2, the park is larger then Belgium. The park's wildlife is under threat from large scale illegal poaching operations. Logging is expanding in the rainforest southwest of the park's boundaries.
The environmental threats facing Africans are real and critical and Greenpeace needs to be based in the countries facing these threats to succeed. Without ensuring that the continent's natural resources and biodiversity are protected from over-exploitation and devastation caused by climate change, African people will get poorer and further development will be unsustainable. But solutions for a healthy environment and healthy communities are possible.
Greenpeace has been actively challenging environmental destruction in Africa since the early 1990s, including campaigning to end destructive logging in the Congo Basin rainforest, one of the world's last intact forests, and working to stop the plunder of West African waters by industrialised nations' fishing fleets and pirate fishing.
The Congo Basin rainforest
Some 40 million people depend on the Congo Basin rainforest for essential food, medicine and other non-timber products as well as for energy and building materials. It is home to 270 species of mammals, including the endangered gorilla, chimpanzee and bonobo, and 39 species unique to the region, including the okapi and forest elephant.
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By opening our offices in South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Senegal, Greenpeace is at the heart of areas pivotal to challenging some of the most urgent environmental problems facing Africa today: climate change, destruction of vital rainforests and overfishing.
Working in partnership with local organisations, we hope to give Africans a stronger voice by channelling African ideas, expertise and leadership internationally and create truly global solutions for a greener future.
All three offices will primarily be staffed by Africans. As with other Greenpeace offices throughout the world, we will have a combination of staff from the region and from other parts of the world, reflecting the interconnected, international nature of the global campaign to protect the environment.
To combat the environmental problems facing the world, Greenpeace is in over 40 countries across Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and the Americas making us the world's largest environmental campaigning organisation. As a global organisation we can match solutions to problems on an international scale.
What we are doing in Africa
In Africa, Greenpeace's core campaigns focus on tackling dangerous climate change, halting tropical deforestation and ending the plunder of Africa's oceans.
Tackling climate change
In South Africa we are campaigning for an energy revolution based on adopting ambitious renewable energy targets, and moving away from heavy reliance on coal and misplaced belief that nuclear power is a cheap energy option in world threatened by climate change.
Saving the forests
Some 40 million people depend on the Congo basin rainforest for essential food, medicine and other non-timber products as well as for energy and building materials. It is home to 270 species of mammals, including the endangered gorilla, chimpanzee and bonobo, and 39 species unique to the region, including the okapi and forest elephant. Rather than being a source of development, logging makes the region's population poorer. Greenpeace is working in partnership with local organisations to protect the forest for local people and wildlife. It is also campaigning for an international financing mechanism, "Forests for Climate", which makes safeguarding intact forests more economical than their wholesale destruction. Learn more here
Stopping the ocean plunder
African coastal nations have been selling the right to fish in their waters to foreign industrial fleets in an effort to support local economies, raise foreign currency and increase food supply. But poor governance, overfishing and illegal fishing combine to destroy the wealth of Africa's oceans and people. Instead of providing coastal communities with a vital source of protein, fish from African waters ends up on rich countries' dinner tables. The plunder must stop. Greenpeace is calling for a drastic reduction in illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, reduction of foreign fleets' fishing capacity in African waters and creation of marine reserves to ensure the survival of Africa's coastal communities and diversity of its marine life.
To find out more visit www.greenpeaceafrica.org