20
April 2008 - Tuna stocks in the Pacific
are running out due to overfishing from
illegal and commercial fishing fleets.
About 60 percent of
the world’s tuna stocks come from the Pacific,
and scientists believe that two key species
– bigeye and yellowfin – are in danger of
becoming overfished.
To help stop this Greenpeace
is touring the Western Pacific Ocean in
the ship, Esperanza, to gather evidence
of illegal and excessive tuna fishing practices.
On Sunday, Greenpeace
took action against the US purse seiner,
Cape Finisterre, in a pocket of international
waters between Pacific Island countries
known as the Pacific Commons. Activists
painted the side of the vessel with the
words “Tuna overkill” and held a banner
reading ‘Marine reserves NOW’. The fishing
vessel was asked to leave the area immediately.
A few days ago, Greenpeace
confiscated a Fish Aggregation Device (FAD)
we found in the Pacific Ocean. Fishing fleets
use FADs to lure schools of tuna to a specific
spot so they can be quickly caught in huge
nets. However, juvenile bigeye and yellowfin
tuna as well as other fish are killed as
bycatch when caught in the nets.
We also deployed a banner
reading ‘Marine Reserves Now’ near the bow
of a Korean purse seine vessel called Olympus,
while we asked it to leave the area. The
ship is owned by Korea’s largest tuna company,
Dongwon Industries Co. Ltd, which is suspected
of being involved in illegal fishing in
2006.
Watch video of the action
at our Australian site
Update, 21 April 2008
Greenpeace activists boarded a Taiwanese
longliner, the Nian Sheng 3, to inspect
the contents of the hold. As well as tuna,
the activists discovered a dozen sacks with
hundreds of frozen shark fins and tails.
Shark finning is one of the practices that
would be banned in a marine reserve. It's
shockingly wasteful: only the fin is removed
for the Asian shark-fin soup market, with
the entire shark returned to the ocean,
sometimes as a carcass, sometimes alive.
We escorted the vessel out of international
waters, but this practice will not stop
in the Pacific Commons until these waters
become Marine Reserves -- you can help by
signing our petition.
Shark fins found aboard
the Nian Sheng 3
Greenpeace Pacific campaigner
onboard the Esperanza Lagi Toribau said
that advances in technology meant large
ships (floating factories from countries
as far away as the US and Europe) could
catch as much fish in two days as the fishers
of some small Pacific Island countries catch
in a year.
"As tuna catches
in other oceans have declined because of
overfishing, the floating factory ships
are looking to move into the Pacific, making
it harder for local fishing fleets to catch
tuna which is a vital food source for the
region," Toribau said.
Greenpeace’s solutions
Greenpeace is calling
on the Australian Government to support
the Pacific Island nations to make fishing
in the region sustainable by turning some
of the Pacific’s international waters into
no-take marine reserves. This will allow
tuna stocks and all other marine life to
recover from overexploitation.
Greenpeace is also calling
for a 50 percent cut to the fishing effort
in the Pacific to ensure there is tuna left
to catch in the future.
Greenpeace advocates
the creation of a network of marine reserves,
protecting 40 per cent of the world's oceans,
as the long-term solution to overfishing
and the recovery of our overexploited oceans.
What you can do
You can help ensure
the survival of the Pacific’s tuna stocks
by demanding that retailers and chefs stop
stocking unsustainable tuna products such
as bluefin, bigeye and yellowfin, which
are now threatened in all oceans. You can
also sign our petition demanding that 40
percent of the world's oceans be set aside
as no-take marine reserves.
+ More
Unilever's 'Monkey Business'
- Greenpeace swings into action
21 April 2008 - International
— It's been a busy morning for Greenpeace
activists across Europe, many of whom have
been dressing up as orang-utans to draw
attention to Unilever's "monkey business".
Today, we're launching the next stage in
our campaign to protect the rainforests
of Indonesia from the expansion of the palm
oil industry.
Our research shows that
Unilever, maker of Dove and many other well-known
brands, is buying palm oil from companies
that are destroying valuable rainforest
and peatland areas; bad news not only for
the millions of people who depend on these
for their way of life and endangered species
such as the orang-utan, but also for the
global climate.
In the United Kingdom,
at the Unilever factory at Port Sunlight,
near Liverpool, sixty Greenpeace activists
occupied the production lines, while in
London employees at Unilever's HQ were greeted
on their way to work by screeching mating
calls and orang-utans clambering all over
the building. At Unilever's Rotterdam HQ,
in the Netherlands, six activists scaled
the waterfront building and hung a banner
reading, "Unilever, Don't Destroy the
Forests". In Rome, another ten orang-utans
stopped Unilever employees entering their
Italian HQ. Jumping out of a huge box marked,
"Stop Dove from Destroying Rainforests,"
the orang-utans handed out flyers outlining
the palm oil situation and demanding a moratium.
Why Unilever? For a
start, Unilever is one of the largest users
of palm oil in the world, funnelling up
to 1 in every 20 litres produced from Indonesia
into some of its many products. This means
Unilever has a huge influence on the way
palm oil is made.
Further, as chair of
the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO),
Unilever has even more clout. The RSPO is
a group of retailers, manufacturers and
suppliers whose aim is to create standards
for the production of sustainable palm oil.
As things stand, however, it's little more
than a greenwashing operation, as card-carrying
members of the RSPO continue to be involved
in the destruction of Indonesia's rainforests.
Following its creation
in 2002, the RSPO set up a certification
scheme, but six years later not a drop of
certified oil is yet available. Even when
certified palm oil does become available
later this year, there's nothing to prevent
it being blended with non-certified palm
oil. This will make it impossible for RSPO
members to guarantee that their palm oil
does not come from recently deforested areas.
All this was documented in our 'Cooking
the Climate' report, produced last November,
in which Unilever featured prominently.
Since then, we've collected fresh evidence
of Unilever's role in deforestation.
Today's actions coincide
with the release of our new report, 'How
Unilever's suppliers are Burning Up Borneo'.
The report details how some of Unilever's
key palm oil suppliers - Sinar Mas, Wilmar,
Sime Darby and IOI among them - are devastating
forest and peatland areas in Central Kalimantan.
Not only are millions of people who live
in or rely on the forests for their survival
being put at risk, but as these areas are
destroyed many endangered species are at
even greater risk of extinction, including
Sumatran tigers, Javan rhinoceroses and
orang-utans.
There are also devastating
consequences for the climate. As the forests
and tropical peatlands of Indonesia are
destroyed and converted into oil palm plantations,
huge volumes of greenhouse gases are released,
accelerating climate change. Indonesia is
the third largest emitter of these gases
in the world, in large part due to the destruction
of its forests at the hands of the palm
oil industry.
This is not great going
for a company that paints itself green and
responsible: take a look at Unilever's website,
where it makes a big deal of its efforts
to be both environmentally and socially
responsible. As our report shows, when it
comes to palm oil the reality is very different!
We want Unilever to
clean up its act, not just with the palm
oil it uses in Dove but in all its products.
To start the ball rolling, we've devised
a three-point action plan for Unilever:
support an immediate
moratorium on the destruction of rainforest
and peatland areas in Indonesia to grow
palm oil;
stop trading with palm oil suppliers who
are involved in this destruction; and
pressure the RSPO to also support a moratorium.
