Greenpeace activities achieve spectacular results but saving the planet isn’t cheap. An inflatable zodiac boat used in a peaceful direct action can cost upwards of $80,000. A campaigner on the ground protecting out precious forests needs equipment, security training, telecommunications and more.
Here are some examples of how gifts in Wills have changed the world.
Protecting our Forests
From the world’s largest butterfly to the last remaining orangutans, the diversity of life in our ancient forests is staggering. Yet each year 13 million hectares of forest are destroyed, often illegally. Greenpeace is working at the frontlines of forest destruction in the Amazon, the Congo, the Paradise Forests of the Pacific, Indonesia and in Canada’s boreal forest.
One of many successes:
It took many years of concerted protests, actions and negotiations by Greenpeace but it was worth the effort – in 2010 the Boreal Forest Conservation Agreement was established protecting two-thirds of Canada’s vast forests from unsustainable logging. Greenpeace worked tirelessly with other organisations to ensure the protection of an area of pristine forest twice the size of Germany. It stores billions of tonnes of carbon and is critical to the survival of the endangered woodland caribou.
Defending our Oceans
For centuries, the oceans have been considered an inexhaustible resource from which people could take as much as they wanted. Many marine ecosystems are at the point of collapse and will be destroyed unless we act quickly to protect them from the most serious threats. With its own fleet of ships, Greenpeace takes to the high seas to defends whales, dolphins, fish and other threatened ocean species.
One of many successes:
Commercial whaling banned Without our efforts the planet’s largest living creature, the blue whale, might well be extinct by now. Despite the 1986 ban on commercial whaling, the Greenpeace fleet has had to intervene many times to save whales. In 2008 alone our ships saved 100 whales from certain death by harpooning. Now our efforts include turning the people of Japan against whaling.
Saving our Climate
Climate change is the most formidable challenge of our time and our legacy to future generations depends on the action we take today. Greenpeace is a pioneer of climate protection, fighting to reduce greenhouse gases, promoting renewable energies, championing low emission farming and showing how international funding can protect ancient forests for our future.
One of many successes:
Climate-changing shale oil industry stopped
In 2004 we celebrated a major victory for the environment as the controversial Stuart Shale Oil Project in Queensland was shut down indefinitely after a six-year campaign by Greenpeace. Shale oil is one of the most environmentally damaging ways of getting fossil fuel out of the ground and is also a major climate changer. It puts the environment and local people’s health at risk and the Stuart Shale Oil Project would have spelled disaster for our iconic Great Barrier Reef.