At the World Economics Forum in Davos last week, no one was denying that we face serious economic, social and environmental crises. When even the Financial Times runs a series of articles on "Capitalism in crisis", it´s obvious that it’s not just the "Occupy WEF" protesters, who I joined in their igloos outside the meeting, that are asking fundamental questions about how we do business.

What Davos failed to do, however, is provide adequate answers. The talk was mainly about symptoms, not the core of the problem. No question, issues such as the size of the Euro firewall or bankers’ bonuses are important. But if we are to deliver an economy that brings prosperity for all - without destroying the planet, we need to achieve a much more fundamental change than putting together few hu... Read more >

Our VW campaign has passed a significant milestone, as the Jedi ranks swell to over 500,000. That's an incredible half a million people demanding that Volkswagen gets behind the sort of climate laws we need to save our planet.

So thank you for signing up, recruiting your friends and keeping up the pressure on VW - it's been absolutely amazing.

It seems an appropriate time to take a quick look back over the last six months and pulling together the timeline above, I realised how much we've acheived. VW is the largest car company in the world, as well as one of the largest companies full stop, so this campaign was never going to be a short one. But we know the pressure you've been piling on is having an effect within VW and in the rest of the car industry.

We still wan... Read more >

It took seven years, teams of young campaigners and hordes of devoted supporters, but September 2011 the Chinese government finally said it was suspending the commercialisation of genetically-engineered (GE) rice.

See the full story in Greenpeace East Asia's online magazine.

The origins of rice cultivation can be traced to the valleys of China's Yangtze River, with some estimates putting it at over 7,000 years ago. In that time, rice has become an integral part of Chinese life and culture. It dictates the lives of millions of farmers in the Chinese countryside, feeds over a billion Chinese citizens each year and is synonymous with Chinese cuisine and culture. And Yunnan, in southwestern China is where much of this rice originates from.

Back in 2004, the GE rice campaign was one ... Read more >

“This is Campbell Plowden, Whale Campaign Coordinator for Greenpeace.  I’d like to let you know that the Soviet Union is going to send two icebreakers to help clear a path for the whales trapped in Alaska.”  

 24 years ago Greenpeace found itself caught up in the midst of a Cold War drama, as the American and Soviet governments came together to rescue three gray whales trapped in the sea ice off the Alaskan coast. The amazing story has been transformed into the feature film ‘Big Miracle’ by Universal Studios, starring Drew Barrymore as a Greenpeace activist.

To get the inside story on what really happened we got in touch with Campbell Plowden, who, in 1988 was head of the Greenpeace USA Whales Campaign. In a fascinating extended account, Campbell, now working to protect the Ama... Read more >

If I bump into Professor Klaus Schwab, who started and still runs the World Economic Forum here in Davos, I will challenge him on the purpose of the event. Schwab has described the WEF as “a platform for collaborative thinking and searching for solutions, not for making decisions”.

The Davos meeting may not be a bastion of democratic or transparent democracy and participation, but it is a place where solutions should be discussed and plans made to tackle the cacophony of crises that our planet in faces. But important decisions can also be taken here, decisions by corporations, politicians or CEOs.

The time has come for this gathering of powerful people to address the escalating public frustration over growing inequity both between and within countries. It is time they explained ... Read more >