In 1986, when the first tour by a Greenpeace ship took place in the western Mediterranean, its message was very simple: Mediterranean governments were doing very little to implement their own agreements under the United Nations` Mediterranean Action Plan, launched in 1975. Ten years of good intentions had achieved little in stemming the flood of pollution and destruction of wildlife in the seas. At the doorstep of a new millenium, no real progress has as yet been achieved.

 

The original objectives of Greenpeace work in the region expanded during that time, with the primary aim changing from the implementation of the United Nations declaration, to a call for the effective protection of the Mediterranean region as a whole.

With offices established in Spain, Greece, Italy and France, the need for concerted work in non-office countries became increasingly clear. In late 1994 the Greenpeace Mediterranean office moved to Malta to set up a base for the coordination of Greenpeace activities in all of the Mediterranean countries. Now Greenpeace actively campaigns from Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey and Malta to conduct campaigns througout the region.

Greenpeace Mediterranean is based on the principle that nature knows no frontiers and neither does the pollution that threatens it. In a region fraught with an array of territorial and political problems, this takes on a special significance. Whilst the headquarters is based in neutral Malta, the campaign staff are citizens based in our other countries of operation. This enables us to be locally present and integrated within the societies we aim to influence in the most cost-effective way possible. It also makes a political point of unity in a region where division is the rule.