A major scandal involving the destruction of forests and the abuse of human rights is rapidly unfolding in my country. Right now, I am on the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, at the heart of it.

This morning, activists painted "stop the land grab" on the side of a ship loading timber from land that has been taken from the local communities, and bound for China. The activity was met with hostility from the logging company but welcomed by local communities who want to see an end to a new lease system called 'Special-purpose Agriculture and Business leases' or SABLs.

Before sunbreak yeserday, the Esperanza arrived in a remote and beautiful part of PNG called Pomio district. I’m grateful to finally be here but see many challenges in store over the next few days. Behind this scenic paradise is a c... Read more >

Until last Wednesday, I was in Indonesia. I'd travelled there to work with colleagues in Jakarta and Sumatra on our continuing campaign to end the devastation of the country's magnificent rainforests.

But after an extremely intense few days, I left the country prematurely on Wednesday evening. I had been due to stay longer and had a business visa to allow me to do that, but the advice we were receiving was that if I stayed it was likely to bring more risk to my colleagues working there. I feel very sad about leaving, not least because the last parting gesture from a group of officials at the airport was to place a large red deportation stamp in my passport. I was not even informed I was being deported. I was stopped whilst queuing at immigration to leave the country, interviewed for ... Read more >

In an amusing turn of events today, a scientific study funded largely by climate skeptics has shown that the established scientific consensus on climate change is, in fact, correct.

It comes as no surprise to Greenpeace that the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) programme has found that the world is – wait for it – rapidly warming. The study puts them in agreement with what top climate-science institutions NASA and NOAA, and the University of East Anglia in the UK, have been saying for decades.

The programme – which was largely funded our favourite ‘1%’ oil billionaires the Koch Brothers – intentionally assembled a group of scientists from a range of positions on climate change, including many who had never worked on the issue before. This way, the scientific group could not be ... Read more >

Today, I have the honour of congratulating Greenpeace photographer Daniel Beltra on becoming the Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year. Daniel made his winning picture for Greenpeace, of oil-soaked brown pelicans at a temporary bird-rescue facility in Fort Jackson, Louisiana, while documenting the environmental impacts caused by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

During Daniel’s 15-years with Greenpeace, he has spent long weeks on board ships and in remote locations, becoming a world-class photographer, and a dedicated environmental campaigner . His exhibitions and publications on international projects such as Southern Ocean whaling, global rainforest destruction and ocean defence have become a means for Daniel to voice his environmenta... Read more >

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Credit: NASA

At the weekend my twitter feed was alive with news of the hundreds of thousands of people around the world, including in my adopted city of Amsterdam, taking a stand in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

It is a movement that has quickly spread far beyond the shadows of Wall Street’s skyscrapers, and the reason is simple - all over the world, citizens are tired of profit being put before people and the planet.

Greenpeace is tired of polluting corporations with vested interests dictating policy to governments, without concern for the consequences for those who have to live with them. We are tired of corporations controlling the quality of the air, people’s access to food and the availability of clean, safe energy. As an organisation and... Read more >

Everyday, the people of Japan continue to live with the consequences of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The aftermath has brought many scary realities to day-to-day life: the nuclear contamination of food supplies, the existence of radiation hotspots in public areas, children returning to schools where dangerous radiation levels have been detected.

In response, women from the Fukushima area are organizing a three-day sit-in, beginning on October 27^th, in front of the Ministry of Economy in Tokyo,where they will protest against nuclear power and the threat to life it represents, not only to Japan, but to the whole planet. They are asking for your support, and you can send a message directly to the women via this e-mail address:

Here is the message of suppo... Read more >