As published in The Guardian on the 18th of April 2013.

Last year $1.75tn was spent on the world's military, according to new estimates released this Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Institute (SIPRI). Seems like a lot? Let me put this into perspective. This amount is the equivalent of Canada's GDP or twice the GDP of the Netherlands.

Nato members together spent a trillion dollars on the military and despite a significant 6% decrease, the US remains firmly in the lead, accounting for about 40% of the global amount. With a considerable percentage of citizens' taxes both in America (where it's up to 47%) and across the globe going towards military expenses, surely people are entitled to question whether this is money well spent to ensure security. And how this spending is more just... Read more >

Less than six months after sailing through the Indian Ocean last year, Greenpeace has returned to the region to help end overfishing and create sustainable tuna fisheries that bring real economic benefits to coastal communities.

The Greenpeace ship Esperanza will be operating in the Indian Ocean for two months to document and record fishing vessels that are operating illegally or using highly destructive and wasteful fishing techniques.

An estimated 24% of the global tuna catch comes from this ocean alone, but the Indian Ocean and the tuna stocks within it are coming under increasing pressure as more and more vessels join the hunt in this multi-billion dollar fishery.

Fishing vessels from wealthier distant nations such as France, Spain, Taiwan, Korea, China, Japan and elsewh... Read more >

In passing the 'Anadarko Amendment' yesterday the Government once again perverted the New Zealand Story by putting big business ahead of New Zealanders.

It is a toady legislation that criminalises crucial aspects of protesting at sea; it's an affront to New Zealand’s democracy and to our long held right and proud tradition of peaceful protest at sea. It is obviously designed to placate foreign oil companies nervous about coming to New Zealand after seeing the rough ride given to Petrobas off the East Cape, but it’s backfired. It’s been so badly done and is so unpopular that it’s really just demonstrated to big foreign oil companies that deep sea drilling in New Zealand is not a safe bet.

New Zealand once sent a cabinet minister with the NZ Navy aboard the HMNZS Otago and the HMNZS Cante... Read more >

TAKE ACTION: Sign the joint statement here.

More detail on the Horizon Research polling here. Read more >

TAKE ACTION: Sign the joint statement here.

Into the Arctic is a digital, interactive map we just launched today with the North Pole at its centre. The map features a number of static and dynamic layers that visualise the beauty of the Arctic, the threats it faces and our struggle to protect it.

The Arctic is under pressure from oil companies seeking to exploit its resources. They see the melting of the sea ice not as a warning, but as a business opportunity. Take a journey into the Arctic and explore for yourself its natural wonders, the threat of the encroaching oil industry, and follow the struggle to Save the Arctic.

Join the North Pole Expedition and follow the team as they make their way to the pole, with frequent, near-live, updates of their position and a geoblog of all the tweets, blogs, pictures and videos. Take a look.... Read more >

Something incredible happened yesterday.

Our four young explorers on a mission with Greenpeace have planted a flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole, at the same spot where a submarine planted a Russian flag claiming the Arctic for Moscow.

After a gruelling week-long trek across the frozen Ocean, over giant pressure ridges and around icy pools of open water, we planted our ‘flag for the future’ 4km beneath the ice at the top of the world and called for the region to be declared a global sanctuary.

The flag is attached to a glass and titanium time capsule containing the names of 2.7 million people who joined the campaign to Save the Arctic. We came to the Pole to say this special area of the Arctic belongs to no person and no nation, that it is the common heritage of everyone on Eart... Read more >

This week, the phenomenal team here has been learning first hand what I’ve been discovering more and more since first coming here 12 years ago: that the frozen North is an unpredictable, uncontrollable, unforgiving place.

The North Pole is a mathematical construct, an imaginary convergence of lines of longitude. But the North Pole — a stationary point — happens to be in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, and its shifting pack ice is subject to the forces of wind, current and tide. This ice movement is known as drift.

We have been living on this frozen ocean for the last week, and like any other team that comes here, we are trying to play mastermind with the drift, moving across an ever-shifting surface to reach the top of the world. Each day we’ve pushed north only to find ourselves back w... Read more >

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The end of 2012 and first months of 2013 have seen a remarkable change in the fight to protect the Arctic from risky and dangerous oil exploration.    Three oil “majors” –  Total,Statoil and Conoco-Phillips - have withdrawn from drilling projects in the far North.    Shell of course has also famously “paused” its drilling in the Chukchi in the Alaskan Arctic after a series of “costly and embarrassing accidents”, though thankfully at least without a major oil spill or loss of life.  This “pause” though allegedly voluntary, would surely have been imposed upon the subsequent publication of the US Department of the Interior assessment of Shell’s 2012 Arctic operations – published just days later, which highlighted inadequate performance in 5  of 7 key areas identified by Interior Department a...