Despite my best efforts to buy local, seasonal food, I have two non-negotiable vices: coffee and dark chocolate. Not a single day goes by, without me knocking back a shot of espresso and devouring a few squares of 90% dark chocolate.

Lately, though, my daily ritual feels less like a simple routine and more like an expensive indulgence. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who experiences it. If you buy food at a grocery store rather than growing it yourself, you have almost certainly felt the pinch of rising prices.

A recent analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) highlights that in the UK, for example, food prices could be 50% higher than 2021 by November 2026. Globally, the outlook is as gloomy as in the UK. Oxford Economics forecasts food prices could rise up to 11.8% in 2026 and even additional 4.8% in 2027. 

Before food hits grocery store shelves, its price is set in global trading markets. When wholesale prices jump for raw crops like wheat, sugar, soybeans, and corn, higher prices at the checkout counter are guaranteed to follow. Cereals commodity prices rose 17% in one year, while sugar commodity prices increased almost 15%. 

Why is food getting so expensive?

World Food Day’s theme this year reminds us how to “innovate today to nourish tomorrow”, but we should also think about how to nourish people with healthy and affordable food right now. Our modern food system is very fragile. It relies on a long, vulnerable chain of supply that breaks easily when global shocks hit.

These three main drivers are pushing prices up:

• Fossil fuel dependence: Industrial farming relies heavily on oil and gas to run tractors, make plastic packaging, and manufacture chemical fertilisers. When the prices of oil and gas go up, the cost of growing food skyrockets.
  
• Extreme weather: Climate change and severe weather events, like El Niño, bring record breaking heatwaves, devastating droughts, and sudden flooding. When bad weather destroys entire harvests, food becomes scarcer and pricier.
  
• Geopolitical disruptions: Wars and blockades in major trading hubs, such as key shipping routes in the Black Sea or the Strait of Hormuz, hold back critical exports of grain and sunflower oil, squeezing global supplies.

Who loses the most?

Families spend around 20% of their income on food. In low income countries, this even reaches between 40% and 60%. This means food inflation affects people very differently depending on where they live.

For millions of families around the world, this translates directly to skipping meals and, in extreme cases, acute hunger. For others, it means buying basic groceries on credit cards, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) schemes, or bank overdrafts.

Who profits from food prices going up?

While regular families struggle to afford basic groceries, giant corporations and financial traders are making record profits. Fossil fuel giants, chemical fertilizer companies, and massive food trading monopolies are pocketing historic revenues off the back of this crisis. At the same time, financial speculators bet on the future prices of food crops. This market speculation inflates costs artificially, benefiting wealthy investors while everyday people and hardworking farmers pay the price.

How do we fix this food crisis?

We do not have to settle for a broken, crisis-prone food system. A more resilient and more natural solution already exists: agroecology.

Agroecology is a way of farming that works with nature rather than relying on synthetic chemicals. Instead of planting hundreds of acres with just one crop—which can be completely wiped out by a single storm—agroecological farmers grow a diverse mix of plants. If extreme heat kills one crop, others survive to provide a harvest. It replaces industrial factory farming with smaller farms, where fewer animals and crops live together.

We are not powerless. By raising our voices, we can build a fairer, more affordable food system:

1. Demand government action: We can push leaders to lower taxes and offer subsidies on local, organic, and plant-based foods to make healthy eating immediately affordable. Long term, policy needs to fund farmers as they transition toward agroecology.
   
2. Vote with our wallet: Shift the market today by buying local and seasonal foods, shopping at farmers’ markets, and incorporating more plant-based meals into our routine.

When millions of us take action together, governments and corporations cannot ignore the demand for affordable food and a healthy planet. With the right food policies, we can afford basic food, and can even keep enjoying our beloved foods without breaking the bank.

Alessandro Saccoccio is a Co-project Leader at Greenpeace International

One year ago, I went for the first time to Batalha da Matrix. “Batalha” is a lyrical and performance competition between two or more performers (MCs), where they improvise rhymes (freestyle) live and are evaluated by judges and Batalha da Matrix is one of the most traditional, historic, and influential in the state of São Paulo and in Brazil.

The goal of Greenpeace Brazil was to familiarise itself with a territory where communities already make politics through rap and slam. That is how Corre de Quebrada was born: a project that promotes encounters in spaces of cultural expression, such as rhyme battles, poetry circles, but also through debate meetings and conversation circles – and in doing so, unites art to climate justice, to recognise the role of urban populations on the front lines of socio-environmental risks.

Culture from historically under-resourced communities is one of the main forms of expression and transformation of reality. Through art, daily life becomes a narrative, activism and mobilisation. Through that experience of those living in these communities, injustice gains visibility, and collective action gains strength. In this sense, culture is not a complementary element of the strategy, it is the path itself to build engagement, belonging, knowledge, and action.

What we see in a rhyme battle is the concrete expression of the thoughts and feelings of those who know up close the worst impacts of the climate crisis and inequality. According to research by Teto Brasil, 86% of favelas and communities faced at least one extreme climate event in 2025. Communities who are forced to face these challenges and build solutions based on knowledge need to be valued by public authorities in the construction of policies that are mean to work for them.

“The rhyme battle is where we organise our anger, our revolt, where youth show themselves to be catalysts for solutions for the place where they live”, Gaio Jorge, cultural producer and organiser of Corre de Quebrada in Rio de Janeiro, told me. These young people ask that public policies consider their voices, for basic sanitation, safe territories when the rains fall, and not having their studies disrupted or their employment threatened when the streets flood.

Greenpeace Brazil held rhyme battles in five cities in Brazil: São Bernardo do Campo, Belém, during COP30, João Pessoa, Rio de Janeiro, and Recife. The last two battles took place on the Rainbow Warrior ship.

To celebrate one year of the project, we launched a video with big names in Hip-Hop, slam, and community leaders, joining our voices to denounce environmental racism and affirm culture as a legitimate space for political formation and citizenship.

Since we started, we receive daily testimonials that move me deeply because I see that we are building a relationship of exchange, learning, and, above all, trust. “I understand now that it has everything to do with what I live”, MC Magrão told me.

“I became a climate activist. I always experienced these issues, but I only associated everything I experienced to the climate agenda and to the lack of access to rights that guarantee a dignified life, and that we must demand, after I started participating in Corre de Quebrada”, says the MC Mileny, three-time champion of the Brazilian Slam Championship.

To speak of climate justice is to guarantee that the right to dream does not continue competing for space with the daily struggle for survival. And this is only possible when those who feel the impacts of environmental racism stop being seen merely as a statistical data point and start being recognised as leaders of the solutions.

Corre de Quebrada is the construction of this belonging. It is the faces, the voices, and the diversity of each neighborhood in Brazil united to say that the future will not be decided without us. Corre is a living network that refuses to be silenced.

Share the video! Support Corre and help these voices reach far.

Camila Doretto is Engagement Analyst for the Climate Justice campaign with Greenpeace Brazil.

Nearly a year after a ceasefire was announced in October 2025, the Israeli government is still killing and displacing Palestinians in Gaza, restricting essential supplies, from wheelchairs for child amputees to material for homes, and denying people the conditions needed to rebuild lives and recover from the impact of enforced starvation. A ceasefire should protect life. If civilians, including children, are still being killed, aid workers remain in danger and families cannot safely return home, how can we call this a ceasefire?

The central story is not only the scale of destruction. It is also the courage of people who have resisted genocide, occupation, colonisation and political indifference. Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and the diaspora have continued to organise, document, care for one another, grow food, report the truth, and pursue justice while demanding the full protection of their human rights and the enforcement of international law.

They have been joined by dockworkers, journalists, UN experts, humanitarian workers, artists, filmmakers, students and millions of people worldwide who refuse to let the violations in Palestine be ignored and are demanding governments act to end impunity and complicity.

A ceasefire must mean safety

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The ceasefire that was announced in October 2025 should have opened a path to safety, humanitarian access, recovery and accountability. Instead, it has revealed how easily governments can describe a situation as “peace” while Palestinians remain under Israeli occupation, exposed to military attacks, hunger, displacement and the destruction of civilian life. 

Since October 2023, reportedly more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, more than 1,100 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, and more than 1,670 Israelis and foreign nationals, most of them on 7 October and in its immediate aftermath. Nearly a year after a ceasefire was agreed in Gaza, Israeli forces continue to carry out attacks on the Strip, killing and injuring people in Gaza every day.

According to Gaza Ministry of Health figures cited by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 1,381 Palestinians were killed and 4,757 injured between the 10 October 2025 ceasefire announcement and 16 September 2026. The total includes people killed in attacks, those who died from their wounds and bodies recovered from under destroyed buildings. It is likely incomplete because people remain missing, many bodies are still under rubble, access to affected areas is restricted and Gaza’s health system has been devastated.

For children, the ceasefire has been what UNICEF called a “cruel and deadly illusion.” In August 2026, the agency reported that at least 300 children had been killed in roughly 300 days following the ceasefire agreement. That is, on average, one child killed every day during a period that should have brought safety. 95% of Gaza schools have been damaged or destroyed. Israeli Defence Forces are responsible for an assault on childhood, education and the possibility of a future for Palestinians.

UN reporting has also documented the continued killing of Palestinian women and girls. Between the start of the ceasefire and 28 July 2026, 246 Palestinian women and girls were killed by Israeli air bombardment and military ground operations. 

A ceasefire worthy of its name would mean an end to killing and injury. It would mean access to food, water, medicine, fuel, shelter and functioning hospitals. It would mean children returning safely to school, farmers returning to their land, fishing communities reaching the sea, journalists working without fear and families rebuilding homes rather than burying relatives.

Before October 2023: the long violence against Palestine

The Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023 were abhorrent. The deliberate killing of civilians, the taking of hostages and the abuse of those held captive were grave crimes that must be unequivocally condemned. According to Israeli sources cited by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry, more than 1,200 people were killed on that day, including at least 809 civilians, and at least 252 people were abducted and taken to Gaza as hostages. The UN Commission found that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups subjected hostages to torture, cruel treatment and other inhumane acts, and that several were killed in captivity. All hostages have now been returned, including the remains of those who were killed.

As of September 2026, according to OHCHR, Israel held 9,329 Palestinian prisoners, of which around one third are under ‘administrative detention’, and 1,393 Palestinians, mostly from Gaza, were detained as ‘unlawful combatants’. The routine use of such administrative detention – on security grounds without criminal charge or trial – continues to expose Palestinian detainees to prolonged arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture and other ill-treatment and enforced disappearance.  Palestinians unlawfully detained by Israel must be released, and all people deprived of liberty must be treated humanely and in accordance with international law. 

Any honest account of Palestine-Israel must include the Nakba of 1948, when more than 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced. It must include the military occupation that began in 1967, decades of land seizure, settlement expansion, military rule, segregation and the blockade imposed on Gaza in 2007.

For almost two decades, Israel’s blockade has restricted the movement of people and goods, weakened Gaza’s economy and constrained access to food, fuel, construction materials, health care, agricultural land and fishing waters. Gaza was systematically made dependent on an occupying power that controls many of the basic conditions needed for life while denying Palestinians the freedom to determine their own future.

In July 2024, the International Court of Justice concluded that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful. The Court also stated that other states must not recognise it as legal, or provide aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by that unlawful presence.

Since 2023, the Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu has escalated this longstanding system of domination. Its extreme-right coalition has included ministers who have advocated annexation, settlement expansion, displacement and the denial of Palestinian statehood. The destruction of Gaza cannot be separated from settler colonialism, a system rooted in taking land, fragmenting communities, controlling resources and using force to entrench domination. In the occupied West Bank, this system is enforced not only through state policy and settler violence but also through documented cases in which Israeli soldiers and security forces have facilitated, protected or directly participated in attacks on Palestinians and the forced displacement of their communities.

Nothing on this scale could have happened without outside support. The United States has remained Israel’s principal military and diplomatic backer, while other governments have continued arms transfers, military cooperation, trade and political cover. Governments that arm Israel, facilitate weapons logistics, insure shipments, finance manufacturers or obstruct accountability cannot credibly claim to be neutral observers.

Palestinians resist erasure

Peaceful Palestinian resistance has many forms. It is the work of people who protect life, preserve memory, bear witness, and insist on freedom when systems of violence are designed to make all three impossible.

In Gaza and across Palestine, resistance can mean running a community kitchen, sharing water, teaching children in makeshift classrooms, helping a neighbour find shelter, documenting an attack, caring for the wounded, preserving a family archive, growing food in damaged soil, or foraging for native plants such as za’atar and akkoub despite laws that criminalise or restrict their collection. It can mean keeping music and dance alive or bringing children together to watch World Cup matches outdoors. This is sumud, often translated as steadfastness. It is not passive endurance. It is the active refusal to disappear.

Journalists in Gaza have continued reporting while living through hunger, displacement, bereavement and danger themselves. Their work has provided a record of events when much of the international press could not enter Gaza independently. The International Federation of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists have documented the devastating toll on Palestinian journalists and media workers.

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Among those killed were Hossam al-Masri, a Reuters photographer; Mohammed Salama, an Al Jazeera photojournalist; Mariam Abu Dagga, who worked for Associated Press and Independent Arabia; and Moaz Abu Taha, who worked with NBC News. They were killed in an Israeli attack on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis on 25 August 2025. The same attack also killed other civilians seeking medical care and safety at the hospital.

Other journalists killed include Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, Palestinian journalist and television presenter Hossam Shabat, broadcaster Roshdi al-Sarraj and Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah, who was killed by Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon while reporting on the wider regional escalation. Each name represents a person who continued bearing witness in circumstances that should be unacceptable to every media organisation and government claiming to defend press freedom.

Humanitarian workers, along with those they’re seeking to help, have also been targeted. On 29 January 2024, the five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab was trapped in a car in Gaza City after her family members were killed. During her calls with the Palestine Red Crescent Society, Hind pleaded for help while an ambulance was dispatched to reach her. Hind, her relatives and the two paramedics sent to rescue her were later found dead. Investigations by Forensic Architecture and other organisations found evidence that the ambulance was struck after being given clearance to travel. On 19 August 2026, the Israeli military admitted that its troops had opened fire on the car carrying Hind and six relatives and that they had also fired on the ambulance sent to rescue her. It said it would open a criminal investigation. Hind’s story has come to represent the suffering inflicted on so many Palestinian children. But she must never be reduced to a symbol. Hind was a five-year-old child with a family, a voice and a future. She was a child and should have lived.

Palestinian farmers and food producers also resist through their connection to land. Gaza’s orchards, farms, greenhouses and irrigation systems have been damaged by military action, restricted access, pollution and the collapse of water infrastructure. By May 2025, satellite assessments cited by UNEP found that 97.1% of Gaza’s tree crops, 82.4% of annual crops and 95.1% of shrubland had been damaged. Destroying agriculture threatens not only meals today but communities’ ability to feed themselves and rebuild tomorrow. 

The destruction of olive trees is part of this wider assault. Olive trees sustain livelihoods and food systems, but they also carry family histories, agricultural knowledge and connections to land across generations. Uprooting or destroying them is not simply environmental damage. It undermines Palestinian food sovereignty, culture and continuity.

Palestinian farmers have documented years of aerial herbicide spraying along Gaza’s perimeter. Forensic Architecture’s investigation found that Israel carried out aerial spraying in Gaza from at least 2014, damaging crops hundreds of metres inside the Strip. A 2019 investigation cited Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture estimates that spraying between 2014 and 2018 damaged more than 13 square kilometres of farmland. The scale and potential long-term impact of the environmental damage have led to calls for it to be regarded as “ecocide” and investigated as a possible war crime.

Similar allegations emerged in southern Lebanon in February 2026. On 1 February, Israel notified the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) that it would carry out an aerial operation near the Blue Line involving what it described as a “non-toxic chemical substance.” Lebanese authorities subsequently said laboratory testing of soil samples from areas including Ras Naqoura, Aita al-Shaab and Dhayra identified glyphosate at concentrations far above normal agricultural levels. Lebanon’s Ministries of Agriculture and Environment condemned the operation as an environmental and health crime that threatened farmland, food security and farmers’ livelihoods. Lebanese authorities and Human Rights Watch have also accused the Israeli military of using white phosphorus munitions in residential areas of southern Lebanon. Such weapons can cause horrific burns, respiratory damage, organ failure and death, as well as long-term harm to the environment. 

As Ghiwa Nakat, executive director of Greenpeace MENA, wrote from Beirut on 8 April 2026, after the Israeli military carried out over 100 air strikes in just 10 minutes, hitting Beirut, Mount Lebanon, the South, and the Bekaa simultaneously, without warning, “Sadly, what we are seeing is the Gaza doctrine expanding to Lebanon: systematic, deliberate, and total destruction of civilian life and infrastructure, carried out with complete impunity.” The Israeli military campaign of human displacement and environmental devastation in southern Lebanon continues.  

Voices, institutions and governments resisting impunity

At the UN, Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, has used her mandate to name occupation, apartheid, corporate complicity and genocide. She has done so despite sustained attacks, public misrepresentation and pressure from governments that would prefer the world to soften its language.

South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice is another defining example of resistance to impunity. The case alleging violations of the Genocide Convention remains ongoing. The Court has not yet issued a final ruling on the merits, but it has issued legally binding provisional measures requiring Israel to prevent acts prohibited by the Convention, enable humanitarian assistance and preserve evidence.

The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. The Court found reasonable grounds to believe they bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts. The ICC also issued a warrant for Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, alleging crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, torture, hostage-taking and sexual violence. Arrest warrants are not convictions, but they are a major step towards individual criminal accountability and a reminder that international law must apply to all parties.

Some governments have also chosen to speak with greater clarity, even if their actions still fall short of what justice requires. Spain has been among the clearest European voices. In September 2026, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez condemned what he called “the genocide that Netanyahu is still perpetrating in Gaza” and reiterated Spain’s support for an arms embargo on Israel and for preventing Spanish territory from being used to facilitate actions contrary to international law. Words must be followed by enforceable measures, including ending arms transfers, trade and financial ties that sustain occupation and violence.

Humanitarian workers have also continued to protect life under impossible conditions. Palestinian staff of UNRWA, local medical teams, emergency responders and aid organisations have distributed food, water, shelter and health care while basic infrastructure collapsed around them. Hundreds of UNRWA personnel have been killed since October 2023, illustrating the exceptional danger facing people trying to sustain civilian life in Gaza.

Israeli authorities have also imposed registration requirements that threatened the work of dozens of international NGOs, including Médecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam, Save the Children, ActionAid, CARE and the Norwegian Refugee Council. The organisations were asked to provide detailed information about Palestinian staff, creating grave security concerns in a context where aid workers and their families face extraordinary risk. MSF warned that the rules could prevent essential medical care, supplies and international staff from reaching Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

In September 2026, Israeli authorities suspended the access of 37 foreign humanitarian organisations to Gaza after they refused to hand over staff lists. The organisations included MSF, Oxfam, CARE, World Vision International and the Norwegian Refugee Council. The UN Secretary-General called for the measure to be reversed, warning that international NGOs are indispensable to life-saving humanitarian work and that the suspension risked undermining already fragile humanitarian progress.

Culture, labour and direct action

Musicians, actors, writers, filmmakers and cultural workers have used their platforms to call for a ceasefire, defend Palestinian rights and reject censorship. Macklemore’s 2024 song Hind’s Hall drew global attention to Palestinian solidarity protests and called for an end to US support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. Actors Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem have repeatedly used their public platforms to call for a ceasefire, humanitarian protection and recognition of Palestinian rights. Their interventions matter not because celebrities should lead a movement, but because public figures with large audiences can choose to amplify voices that institutions try to marginalise.

Like all public figures who are vocal on atrocities in Gaza, from Macklemore and Ruffalo to toddler TV star Ms Rachel, filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor have also faced a concerted backlash for refusing silence. Their documentary NAZA, which won the Special Jury Prize at the 2026 Venice Film Festival, examines the systems behind Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza through interviews with 24 Israeli military and intelligence insiders. The title refers to an Israeli military intelligence acronym used to denote the expected number of civilian casualties in an air strike. Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar responded by accusing the directors of treason and calling for their citizenship to be revoked.

Abraham and Szor previously co-directed the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land with Palestinian filmmakers Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal. That film documented Israeli settler violence and demolitions in Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank. Their work shows the power of cinema to connect the destruction in Gaza to the broader system of occupation and settler colonisation. In July 2025, Israeli settler Yinon Levy shot and killed Awdeh Hathaleen, a Palestinian teacher, peace activist and contributor to No Other Land, in the village of Umm al-Khair in the occupied West Bank.

Workers have also shown what solidarity looks like when it carries material consequences. Dockworkers in Barcelona, Spain pledged in 2023 not to load weapons destined for Israel. Port workers in Piraeus, Greece blocked a shipment of ammunition in 2024. In Italy in September 2025, dockworkers associated with the CALP collective and the USB union in Genoa refused to load cargo onto the Israel-bound Zim Virginia. Dockworkers in Livorno took action shortly afterwards, and French CGT-affiliated workers at Marseille-Fos stopped the loading of military components reportedly bound for Israel.

These workers understand that a weapons supply chain only functions when people load the containers, transport the cargo, insure the shipments, provide fuel and manufacture the components. Refusing complicity is not symbolic. It can interrupt the machinery of violence.

Civilian flotillas have repeatedly taken to the Mediterranean to challenge Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza and demand safe, unhindered humanitarian access. In 2025, the Global Sumud Flotilla brought together more than 50 boats, drawing on the experience of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the Global Movement to Gaza, the Maghreb Sumud Flotilla and Sumud Nusantara, a people-led initiative involving Malaysia and other Global South countries. It followed earlier Freedom Flotilla Coalition missions, including the Madleen and Handala, and showed that the demand to break the siege is carried by people from many countries, movements and communities.

In 2026, the movement returned with an even larger Global Sumud Flotilla, involving more than 70 vessels, over 1,000 participants and organisers from more than 70 countries. Greenpeace’s Arctic Sunrise sailed alongside the flotilla, providing technical and operational support to this peaceful civilian-led mission. These repeated journeys make a simple point: when governments allow a population to be cut off from aid, civil society will keep organising to challenge the blockade and demand that humanitarian access, international law and Palestinian life are not treated as optional.

In the United Kingdom, the repression of Palestine Action has become a warning about the shrinking space for protest. The British government proscribed Palestine Action under terrorism legislation in July 2025. Amnesty International reported that more than 3,300 people were arrested for peacefully protesting the ban and holding signs that opposed genocide and supported Palestine Action. In February 2026, the High Court ruled the proscription unlawful, but the Court of Appeal later upheld the ban in June.

Governments should not use counterterrorism powers to punish dissent, deter peaceful protest or make solidarity with Palestinians legally dangerous. The right to protest is central to every movement that has challenged colonial violence, racism, militarism and corporate power.

Turn solidarity into consequences

The most powerful answer to political forgetting is collective action. Palestinians have resisted erasure for generations. We must stand with the wider movement for Palestinian freedom and to confront the systems that make this violence possible. Militarism, fossil-fuel power, colonial extraction, corporate impunity and racism are not separate crises. They reinforce one another.

Greenpeace Italy documented 17 fuel shipments from Italy to Israel during the assault on Gaza, including deliveries to companies linked to the Israeli armed forces. This is not an isolated national story. Oil Change International’s Behind the Barrel research found that 25 states sent 323 shipments of crude oil and refined petroleum products to Israel between 1 November 2023 and 1 October 2025, totalling 21.2 million tonnes. The research found that Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan accounted for 70% of crude-oil shipments, while Russia, Greece and the United States were the largest suppliers of refined petroleum products. The United States was the sole supplier of JP-8 jet fuel, a fuel used by military aircraft.

A September 2026 briefing by Oil Change International and the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), found that the oil traders Vitol and Heritage Petroleum FZCO collectively delivered 22 million barrels of crude oil to Israel between October 2023 and June 2026. That represented 11% of Israel’s crude-oil imports during the period. The investigation shows how supply chains can be sustained not only by states and major producers, but also by lesser-known private intermediaries operating across borders and under limited public scrutiny.

Greenpeace Nordic has also called attention to the role of Norwegian oil interests. Its research links Equinor’s continued involvement with companies including Delek Group and Ithaca Energy to the wider fossil-fuel economy that helps fund and enable Israel’s military system and calls for an end to business relationships that risk supporting violations of international law.

Oil traders, shipping firms, insurers, banks, investors and governments must face investigation and accountability for any role in enabling, supplying or profiting from military violence. A fossil-fuel industry that is already driving climate breakdown and biodiversity collapse cannot be allowed to treat mass violence, occupation and the destruction of civilian life as another profitable market.

What solidarity demands now

From Aotearoa / New Zealand to Canada, Italy, Nordic, Spain and the UK, Greenpeace organisations are campaigning for governments to stop arming Israel, stop arming genocide, stop fuelling war crimes, and to end Israel’s ongoing illegal occupation of Palestine.

Greenpeace supports a future in which Israel and Palestine live side by side in peace, within recognised borders, consistent with international law and relevant UN resolutions. Greenpeace condemns all forms of violence, captures, massacres, human rights violations and grave international crimes, and calls on the international community to end its culpability and inaction. We call for the release of Palestinians unlawfully detained by Israel. Greenpeace calls for an unconditional and permanent ceasefire and the unhindered delivery of aid by the UN and other humanitarian organisations. In addition, we call for the imposition of targeted sanctions and a comprehensive arms embargo, enforced by the international community. And an end to the illegal occupation of Palestine.

The wider, global solidarity movement is also calling for:

A permanent, immediate and enforced ceasefire that actually ends the killing.

Unrestricted and sustained humanitarian access across Gaza, including food, water, fuel, medicine, shelter, sanitation and healthcare.

An end to Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza, unlawful occupation, settlement expansion and settler-colonial dispossession of Palestinians.

A comprehensive arms embargo that ends the flow of weapons, components, military technology, logistics, financing and military cooperation that is enabling genocide.

Targeted sanctions and full accountability for Israeli officials, including Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, and every actor responsible for grave violations of international law.

An end to trade, investment and corporate relationships with Israel that sustain illegal settlements, occupation, military violence or environmental destruction.

Investigation of fossil-fuel companies, traders, shippers, insurers and financiers that may power or profit from violations against Palestinians.

Protection for Palestinian journalists, humanitarian staff, medical workers, human-rights defenders and independent UN experts.

TL;DR: JBS – the global meat empire linked to widespread Amazon deforestation – is planning a massive US $5 billion expansion into Southeast Asia, which could threaten the climate, fragile ecosystems and Indigenous lands in Indonesia. Greenpeace Netherlands is taking JBS to court to block the company’s nature destroying expansion – and we need your support to stop them.

When you think of global warming, you probably picture smoke billowing from coal power plants or tailpipes of gas-guzzling cars. But behind closed doors, one of the biggest drivers of the climate crisis isn’t an oil company – it’s a global meat dynasty.

You might not know its name, but JBS is the largest meat processor on Earth. JBS has capacity to slaughter tens of thousands of cattle and pigs, and millions of chickens every single day. In doing so, Greenpeace Nordic estimates it pumps out more superheating methane gas than fossil fuel giants ExxonMobil and Shell combined.

For years, investigative reports have linked JBS’s supply chain to massive deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, Indigenous rights violations, and brutal labour conditions. Now, evidence suggests the company is planning the biggest meat sector expansion we know of, setting its sights on new frontiers in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

To understand where JBS is headed, we have to look at the trail it has already left behind.

JBS’s legacy of forest destruction from the Amazon to Australia 

JBS isn’t just a dominant force in the Americas – it is also Australia’s largest beef processing company.

A recent investigation by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) reports a startling fact: agriculture in Australia now drives more land clearing than palm oil in Indonesia in recent years. Bulldozers routinely flatten native Australian forests to create cattle pastures, the report finds, destroying critical habitats for native wildlife like koalas and washing sediment onto the fragile Great Barrier Reef.

Australia is the world’s second largest beef and bovine meat exporter, after Brazil – and the top one when looking at fresh or chilled beef. About two thirds of Australian beef and veal are exported. If you buy a beef burger at a fast-food chain in Japan, South Korea, or anywhere across East Asia, there is a chance that meal is connected to lost koala habitat in Australia.

Over three quarters of Australian live cattle are exported to Indonesia. Now, JBS wants to take its model even further into Southeast Asia.

Inside JBS’s Asian joint venture worth US $5 billion 

JBS plans to combine its entire Australian and New Zealand operations into a new joint-venture with Danantara, Indonesia’s newly formed sovereign wealth fund. Together, they aim to supersize industrial meat production across Southeast Asia.

The proposed joint venture would establish a holding company registered in the Netherlands – a country frequently used as a tax haven and JBS’s corporate headquarters since 2025. The venture aims to raise US $5 billion for further JBS expansion. This almost doubles JBS’s previous known expansion plans, which was already the largest identified industrial meat expansion in the world.

Why would a national wealth fund choose this moment to pour billions into industrial livestock? 

The answer may be connected to Indonesia’s deeply controversial Food and Energy Estate program.

In regions like South Papua, the Indonesian government has reportedly been using state pressure and even its military to terrorise and intimidate Papuans, as it advanced a project to clear millions of hectares of Indigenous land. Officially launched under the banner of “national food security,” the project sparked resistance from Indigenous communities whose ancestral forests, wetlands, and savannahs are threatened by mega-farms for sugarcane, rice, palm oil, and cattle ranching. This was documented by the powerful new documentary ‘Pig Feast’, co-produced by Greenpeace Indonesia, which was widely viewed across the country despite reported efforts by Indonesian authorities to prevent it being screened.

A 2025 Greenpeace Indonesia report calculated that clearing just 560,000 hectares for planned sugarcane plantations in South Papua would release 221 million tonnes of CO₂ – the equivalent of driving 48 million cars for a full year. Rapid industrial land clearing also increases the risk of severe droughts, forest fires, water pollution, and widespread flooding.

While official documents have not explicitly named JBS as a direct partner in the Papua project, the timing raises serious questions. Danantara oversees key state enterprises involved in the Food and Energy state program, and JBS’s new joint venture aims to fund and expand multi-protein production through acquisitions and greenfield investments across the region, reportedly initially focused in Indonesia and likely to involve beef, poultry and possibly aquaculture. While Indonesian officials have indicated that the government will stop clearing forests for rice fields – a testament to the courageous resistance of local people – officials have clarified that they are not confirming that all projects in the food estate will be stopped.

Reacting to this, my colleague Kiki Taufik, Global Head of the Indonesian Forest Campaign, stated that “Papua is not a wasteland or a new land bank for industrial expansion; its forests are home to Indigenous Peoples, a source of food and water, a stronghold of biodiversity, and the foundation of Papua’s future.” Kiki went on to call for the government to “halt projects that threaten natural forests, critical ecosystems, and customary territories” and restore so-called “degraded lands”, centering local communities in decision making, instead of imposing extractive activities on these lands, affirming that “there is no path to food sovereignty and sustainable development at the expense of forests, Indigenous Peoples’ rights, and Papua’s future.”

Connecting all these dots reveals a troubling picture: a global meat giant linked to rampant rainforest destruction and Indigenous and labour rights violations partnering with a state fund that is reportedly connected to tropical forest clearance on Indigenous lands with military backing.

Corporate monopolies vs. real community resilience

Big agricultural corporations often claim that massive industrial farms are necessary to feed growing populations – and that is, predictably, the headline in JBS’s PR about the deal.

However, independent research from groups like IPES-Food and the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa shows that global corporate farming actually threatens food security rather than protecting it.

Why global conglomerates create vulnerability:

• Systemic fragility: A food system controlled by just a small handful of global corporations is easily disrupted by trade conflicts, fertiliser shortages, climate disasters, and market speculation. We’re seeing this play out in real time with Trump’s tariff wars, extreme heatwaves and the US-Israel war on Iran causing sharp price spikes and leaving nations vulnerable to sudden shortages.

• Profit-driven priorities: Large agribusinesses are required to maximise profit for shareholders in the short-term. They do not exist to promote human nutrition, equitable distribution, or sustainable land management. They have a perverse incentive to bulldoze precious ecosystems to produce meat, animal feed, ultraprocessed foods and even fuel, putting corporate profits above the health of people and planet. What’s even worse, the industry actually profits from the scarcity and disruption mentioned above.

Protecting food sovereignty is the path forward

Rebuilding our food systems gives us a practical, real-world toolkit for survival in times of increasing instability. True food security and nature resilience do not come from building massive industrial factory farms or handing control of local land and ecosystems to foreign corporations.

When we invest in traditional and nature-friendly farming methods, we can massively cut methane emissions and actively heal the land to protect our communities:

• Space for nature: A planet-friendly approach uses less land, making space to heal and restore ecosystems, itself a form of defence and resilience in the face of climate change and other instability.
• Natural cooling: Planting native trees and cover crops creates natural shade canopy, shielding livestock, crops, and farmers from severe heatwaves.
• Flood protection: Restoring deep root systems anchors topsoil during heavy downpours, preventing destructive landslides and soil erosion.
• Drought and fire resilience: Building organic matter in the soil turns farmland into a natural sponge – holding onto vital moisture during dry spells and absorbing excess water during floods; equally, returning damaged or dried out peatlands to a healthy waterlogged state reduces fire risks and keeps carbon stored, including by blocking dams and shifting industrial plantations off the land.
• Ecological balance: Diversity on farms brings back pollinators and natural predators, keeping agricultural pests in check without relying on chemical pesticides.
• Healthier diets: Traditional, diverse foods and seed varieties are highly adapted to local circumstances so are often more resilient and healthier.

Farmers, Indigenous leaders, and local communities around the world are already doing this critical work on the ground, with direct benefits for farmers and rural people. However, these sustainable practices are being undermined by the rapid expansion of industrial agribusiness. Governments should be supporting farmers practicing nature-friendly farming, not sinking millions into industrial factory farms.

We want a future built on resilient community led food systems. Take action today

We are standing at a critical turning point. Will the future of Southeast Asia, Nigeria and other frontiers for agricultural expansion be built on resilient, community-led food systems, or – like other regions – handed over to the billionaires running the world’s most destructive meat empire?

The choices we make today will shape food systems for decades. While mega-corporations have deep pockets, organised communities have the power to stop them in their tracks. And Indigenous communities in Papua are already resisting, with Greenpeace Indonesia supporting them on the ground.

But we can also take action at the source. Greenpeace Netherlands is taking JBS to court in their Netherlands base to challenge their aggressive expansion plans – which would result in more deforestation, emissions and human rights abuses – before the bulldozers can reach the forest floor. Sign the petition and support our legal action today.

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Amanda Larsson is the Global Project Lead for Big Ag at Greenpeace Aotearoa 

Along the coast of southern Thailand, in the neighboring districts of Chana and Thepa, there is a name for the stretch of sea that begins just beyond the shore: Talae Na Baan, the “Homefront Sea” – it  tells a lot about the relationship between the small-scale fishing communities who live there and the waters they have lived alongside for generations. 

The sea puts food on the table and provides an income, but it is also woven into family histories, memories and a sense of home. The relationship goes both ways: communities have created no-fishing zones, built traditional Zung-Kor artificial reefs that provide shelter for marine life, established crab banks to help populations recover, and monitor the health of coastal ecosystems themselves.

Khairiyah “Yah” Rahmanyah, the daughter of a fisherman from Ban Suan Gong, in Chana, knows this relationship intimately.  She grew up with the sea shaping almost every part of her life.

The house I live in, the clothes that I wear, my shoes, my school uniform, my tuition fees, even the bike and the toys I own, it all comes from the sea. My whole life of happiness, fond memories, every story that made me who I am, are all from the sea.

Today, Yah is a young leader and environmental communicator with the Chana Rak Thin movement. She grew up fighting alongside her community to protect their coastline from industrial development, including a gas pipeline project that threatened local ecosystems and led to her father’s arrest after a peaceful protest, and more recent plans for a deep-sea port.

A very different landscape tells a similar story. In the Brazilian Amazon, Apurinã families in the Caititu Indigenous Territory in the Amazonas State are using agroforestry to restore degraded land, grow food and medicinal plants, and keep traditional knowledge alive. There, too, protecting biodiversity is closely tied to the people who live in the territory and to the knowledge, rights and ways of life that have shaped it.

Chana and Caititu are very different places, but they bring us to a question the world is now confronting at a much larger scale: what does it really mean to protect nature?

30×30: Beyond the numbers

In 2022, governments adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), including a commitment to protect and conserve at least 30% of the world’s land and sea by 2030, and to put at least 30% of degraded ecosystems under effective restoration by the same year. Together, these 30×30 targets are about much more than the amount of territory covered. 

For conservation, this means areas that are effectively conserved and managed, ecologically representative, connected and equitably governed, recognising Indigenous and traditional territories where applicable, while recognising and respecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. For restoration, it means helping degraded ecosystems recover in ways that enhance biodiversity, ecological integrity and ecosystem functions. For both, Direct Access Financing is essential to support community-led conservation and restoration, and must be recognised as a prerequisite for the successful implementation of the KMGBF 2030 targets.

Four years later, the challenge is turning that promise into reality

This October, governments are meeting at the UN Biodiversity conference, CBD COP17 in Yerevan, Armenia for the collective review of progress in implementing the global biodiversity framework. The conference comes at a crucial moment: halfway between the agreement reached in 2022 and its 2030 deadline for the implementation of its 23 targets.

Chana and Thepa show what is at stake. Communities are already managing and restoring their coastal ecosystems and seeking formal recognition for the areas they protect. Yet without stronger legal recognition, these areas remain vulnerable to industrial development. Delivering 30×30 therefore means not only recognising these community-led solutions, but ensuring that their rights and governance systems are recognised and protected too.

What real protection in action looks like

In the Caititu Indigenous Territory, Apurinã families are showing another side of what protecting biodiversity can mean. Caititu lies on the edge of one of the Amazon’s major deforestation frontiers, surrounded by growing pressure from cattle ranching, agribusiness, fires and land speculation. Yet much of its forest remains standing, with its ecological functions still largely intact. In areas that have been degraded, communities are using agroforestry to help bring the forest back.

Across 21 villages, 37 agroforestry systems now combine crops such as cassava, banana, açaí, cupuaçu and medicinal plants with forest restoration. An Indigenous fire brigade helps protect the territory during the dry season, while women and elders pass knowledge about plants, cultivation and healing to younger generations.

Through Agroforestry Systems, we guarantee food and wealth for our tables. It has strengthened our knowledge of planting and medicinal uses,” says Maria dos Anjos Apurinã, known as the “Queen of Agroforestry Systems.

Caititu and Chana show what the huge added value of Indigenous and community-controlled ecosystem management can look like in practice. And similar solutions are already taking shape around the world.

Across the world, Indigenous Peoples and local communities are already leading solutions to protect and restore ecosystems and biodiversity. Greenpeace’s new Real Community Solutions Map is an interactive platform that brings some of these experiences together, showing how rights, community leadership, financial support and healthy ecosystems can go hand in hand.

As governments work to turn 30×30 into reality, these solutions deserve to be recognised, supported and learned from.

The Real Community Solutions Map

Explore the Real Community Solutions Map (full screen) to discover how local-led solutions are making a global impact. 

Jaqueline Sordi is the Communications Lead for the Tropical Forests campaign at Greenpeace International

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Amsterdam, Netherlands – 12 Greenpeace activists have scaled three barns at a controversial megafarm development in northeast Croatia, painting a 500m² slogan reading ‘Stop This Shit’ onto the roofs in protest at the threat that animal waste from the facility poses to a nearby biosphere reserve.

Dániel Nyitray, Campaigner at Greenpeace International, said: “Industrial meat giants like MHP are expanding aggressively all over the world, fattening the pockets of billionaires, while poisoning rivers and drinking water with toxic animal waste. Communities everywhere are fed up – and these activists have taken action today to send a clear message: stop this shit! We deserve clean air, drinkable water, and a food system that nourishes people, not corporate greed.”

As the protest took place, activists from Zelena akcija (Friends of the Earth Croatia) and Prijatelji životinja (Animal Friends Croatia) dressed in business suits installed a 3.5m high inflatable chicken outside the gates of the facility. One activist sat on a makeshift toilet atop the gates, representing both corporate indifference to local concerns and the enormous amount of animal waste the megafarm will produce.

The protest targeted a project on the Croatian border with Hungary by poultry giant MHP, Europe’s largest chicken producer, which is expected to produce 1.8 million chickens a year once operational.  The facility is expected to begin operations imminently. Local groups are concerned that the 1 million litres of waste the plant will produce annually threatens to pollute local soil, air and waterways, amongst other detrimental environmental impacts. 

Dora Sivka, President at Zelena akcija (Friends of the Earth Croatia), said: “The grassroots movement against megafarms and slaughterhouses in Croatia, which brings together 10 local initiatives and is supported by 160 European NGOs, has already voiced a clear ‘No’ to such projects through multiple protests. What makes it even more tragic is that the first of 24 planned projects begins operations right next to the Amazon of Europe, one of Europe’s most important protected wetlands!” 

The development has generated strong local opposition due to its construction just a few hundred metres from the Veliki Pažut reserve, part of the Mura-Drava-Danube Biosphere Reserve, a 930,000 hectare UNESCO protected wetland known as the ‘Amazon of Europe’ due to its incredible biodiversity and vast river corridors.[1] The reserve, which spans five countries, is home to a range of important species including the highest breeding density of white-tailed eagles in Europe and is a crucial habitat for over 250,000 waterbirds.[2]

Luka Oman, President at Prijatelji životinja (Animal Friends Croatia), said: “Every megafarm is built on immense animal suffering that extends to the environment and to the people. Behind us, chickens bred to grow unnaturally fast are packed into sheds so tightly that they don’t have room to spread their wings. These intensive conditions create ideal circumstances for the spread of infectious diseases, threatening wild birds in the ornithological reserve just 320m away. The responsible authorities must respect the will of citizens and stop the horror of megafarm expansion across Croatia.”

The project is part of a significant effort by the poultry industry to expand within Croatia. In April, MHP withdrew from a multi-site mega project near the city of Sisak, Moslavina county, following months of intense public protests, including in Croatia’s capital, Zagreb. The project would have become one of Europe’s largest megafarms, producing 100 million chickens a year and quadrupling the country’s annual chicken production. Another investor, Premium Chicken Company (PCC), has expressed its intention to proceed with all its planned projects.

The expansion within Croatia reflects a dramatic rise in global chicken production as consumption soars worldwide.[3] Chicken production worldwide has risen by almost 60% since 2006 to over 76 billion animals a year, according to the Financial Times. MHP, owned by Ukrainian billionaire Yuriy Kosiuk, slaughters over half a billion chickens alone each year.[4]

ENDS

Photos and video: Photo and Video from the action are available to download via the Greenpeace Media Library.

Notes:

[1] EcoMission (2022), Studija o utjecaju na okoliš farme za tov pilića – Farma Veliki Pažut, Općina Legrad, Koprivničko-križevačka županija 

[2] Amazon of Europe (2026), The Biosphere Reserve: General Information

[3] Financial Times, How chicken conquered the world, 26 Aug 2026

[4] Financial Times, The man who built Europe’s chicken factory, 1 Sep 2026

Contacts:

Joe Evans, Agriculture Global Comms Lead at Greenpeace UK,  +44 7890 595387, jevans@greenpeace.org

Greenpeace International Press Desk, +31 (0)20 718 2470 (available 24 hours), pressdesk.int@greenpeace.org.

As governments, civil society, lawmakers and international financial institutions gather in Thailand for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Annual Meetings this week, they are convening against a backdrop of escalating extreme weather events around the world that makes the question of securing sufficient climate finance to fund solutions impossible to ignore.

Bangkok, the host city for the meetings, recently declared a flood disaster as thousands had to flee from their homes. This summer, Europe experienced devastating heatwaves and wildfires. Just weeks ago, catastrophic floods and landslides in Nepal killed more than 1,250 people and left thousands missing, prompting the United Nations and humanitarian partners to launch a US$49.6 million emergency appeal. 

These disasters are a reminder that sufficiently financing necessary climate action is not an abstract debate for future negotiations. People are already paying dearly for an accelerating climate crisis, while facing escalating food prices and higher energy bills. Yet the countries facing the greatest climate vulnerabilities remain trapped by repressive rules and conditions that constrain fiscal space, impose high debt burdens and pressure their governments to reduce public spending, while the wealthiest polluters are profiting from these crises without paying their fair share.

How is economic justice connected to climate justice?

As the climate crisis worsens, global policy responses are lagging behind the urgent need for securing sufficient funding for mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage. Redesigning our domestic and global tax systems is central to shifting the burden of cost to the wealthiest polluters and for mobilising necessary resources for climate action.

The IMF and World Bank occupy a powerful position in the global financial architecture, and must adapt and respond to today’s polycrisis rather than further exacerbating it. Their approaches must reflect the realities countries face today, rather than further restricting public spending and deepening fiscal pressures. Their role should be helping countries reach their sustainable development goals and not further distancing them from it. 

For decades, government budget cuts and higher taxes (austerity) have been central to the economic advice forced upon developing nations by the IMF and the World Bank, trapping them in a destructive cycle. The way governments raise revenue matters as much as how much revenue they raise. Many developing countries rely heavily on regressive indirect and consumption taxes and further exploitation and extraction of natural resources. Indeed, World Bank research shows that in several developing nations, steep taxes on basic goods leave low-income households bearing the brunt of the tax pressures. 

Ordinary people should not be expected to carry an ever-increasing  share of this burden while budget cuts and unsustainable debt strip away public investment meant to build a fairer and more resilient future those public funds  are meant to secure.    

How is the climate crisis linked to  extreme wealth?

While those who contributed the least to the crisis are bearing the greatest impacts, the wealthiest and biggest polluters often get away with not paying their fair share. Recent research by Greenpeace Africa highlights a critical factor that is too often ignored in climate finance debates: who owns the assets driving global emissions?   

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Greenpeace Africa’s report, Understanding the Climate Debt of Extreme Wealth, finds that climate responsibility is far more concentrated when emissions associated with ownership and investment are considered.

In 2022  alone, the investments of the world’s richest 0.01% were associated with an estimated US$992 billion in climate debt, compared with US$405 billion in consumption-based climate debt. 

This finding challenges traditional approaches to climate policy. Climate accountability cannot be understood only through what people consume. It must also account for what  they own, where they invest and which economic activities their wealth enables and profits from.

Addressing this reality requires placing the taxation of high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) and major corporate polluters at the center of the agenda. It means dutiful implementation of the polluter pays principle in our tax systems. It means looking at wealth and capital ownership alongside income, and ensuring that those who profit the most contribute more towards addressing the climate damage their investments caused. 

How do fair global tax rules protect people and the planet? 

We need fairer tax systems that shift the burden to those who cause harm and profit from it, rather than relying on regressive consumption taxes. We need public investments that strengthens climate resilience and helps impacted communities rebuild,  instead of being undermined by debt and austerity. Crucially  we need international tax rules that address harmful tax practices strapping countries of billions of earned public revenues, and those that empower countries  to hold multinational corporations accountable and raise the revenues they need.

This is why the negotiations for a strong and ambitious Global Tax Treaty at the United Nations (also known as United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation) matter.

The UN process is working towards a global framework that can shape how taxing rights are allocated, how countries address cross border tax issues and how international tax cooperation works. It offers a historic  opportunity to fix global tax rules so that they serve all nations equitably, enabling them to tax the wealthiest polluters  and mobilize public resources.

Ultimately, this framework can give governments the authority to make the wealthiest polluters pay for the harm they have caused, unlocking trillions of dollars to fund just transition, renewable energy deployment, resilient infrastructure for impacted and vulnerable communities, and essential public services we all need.

These discussions can not happen in vacuum or isolation, they must be brought directly into the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok. These two institutions are currently perpetuating false solutions. In order to fund our future  for generations to come, governments must be allowed to redesign their tax policies so that it benefits the majority and not just the wealthiest minority of people. Only by doing that will we stand a chance to achieve climate justice and a safe future for the people and the planet.  

Ucizi Ngulube is a socio-environmental and tax justice campaigner with Greenpeace Africa.

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In 2022, nearly 200 countries came together and agreed on the Global Biodiversity Framework, a multilateral agreement with a clear message: our natural world is in deep trouble, and we have to save it. The countries set a target to protect 30% of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030.  This was meant to do for nature what the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement does for our climate. But the latest global assessment of the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework falls short of reducing mass extinction of species. 

Aside from ensuring a liveable environment on our shared planet, protecting biodiversity should be in the core interest of big businesses to secure longer-term prosperity. We are therefore holding Ikea and other companies accountable to step up and lead by example to be part of the solution. 

The Problem: They are all moving too slowly

While politicians move at a snails pace to write these goals into law, destruction hasn’t paused. Logging companies are still cutting down trees in the very places proposed for future protection. Right in the middle of this is Ikea, the world’s biggest furniture store, which sells itself as green and sustainable. And yet wood from some of Europe’s precious and most biodiverse forests is ending up on its shelves.

Forests we can’t get back

This isn’t just a hypothetical threat. It is happening right now. In Romania, a precious forest was set to become a strictly protected zone. But loggers got there first and clear-cut the forest before any legal protection could be established. That forest and its biodiversity is now gone. It will take hundreds of years for that ecosystem to grow back. Now, the land has been removed from the protection list, as there is no longer any forest left to protect.

What needs to happen now

This destruction has to stop.  We are demanding Ikea immediately stop buying wood from some of Europe’s most valuable forests. These areas must be saved from exploitation and officially protected by law. To facilitate this, Greenpeace offices have mapped out these critical zones. There is no guesswork—Ikea knows exactly where not to log. As the biggest player in the game, Ikea has the power to change everything. If they step up and stop buying from these forests, the rest of the industry will follow, forcing politicians to finally act.

We need to protect these forests today, before more and more of them vanish forever.

Frida Bengtsson is the Head of Programme with Greenpeace Nordic in Sweden

Bucharest/Stockholm – Ikea, one of the world’s largest consumers of wood, is fuelling the destruction of Europe’s most valuable forests while hiding behind flawed certification schemes, a new report released today by Greenpeace Nordic shows. The report, The Missing Manual: What Ikea Must Do to Protect Europe’s Forests, reveals a huge gap between Ikea’s promises to use its size and scale to make a positive difference and its operational realities on the ground, and that the company fails to measure the true environmental footprint of its supply chain.[1]

Frida Bengtsson, head of Greenpeace in Sweden said: “Ikea says it wants to use its size to make sustainable wood sourcing the global norm. That ambition must start with a clear commitment: no wood from forests that need protection. Ikea has the power to help change an entire industry. It needs to lead by example, starting with the wood in its own furniture.”

Despite corporate obligations under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), market giants remain unaccountable. With world leaders meeting at the UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP17) in Yerevan next week, Ikea’s practices offer a sobering reminder that voluntary promises are failing to save Earth’s precious nature, including forests in Europe.

“Governments are failing to protect our forests, but let’s be clear: industry giants are driving the global nature crisis. Every two seconds, a tree is felled to feed Ikea’s supply chain, making them both one of the biggest beneficiaries and one of the biggest threats to our forests. It’s time for Ikea to show what their commitment to transform the forestry industry means on the ground; for now it’s not more than a statement of good intentions. Stop hiding behind flawed certifications: true corporate leadership means keeping your saws out of precious forests,” added Bengtsson.

An accompanying field investigation by Greenpeace Romania, Europe’s Vanishing Forests (Part 1): How Ikea is Driving Forest Destruction the Carpathians, provides damning evidence from the Romanian Carpathians: investigators documented the clear-cutting of an ecologically critical, biodiverse forest area to produce popular Ikea items like the SNIGLAR bed and BEKVÄM step stool.[2] Despite being slated for strict protection in early 2025, the Rusca Montană forest was logged in 2026 and then stripped of its proposed conservation status before legal protections could take effect.

Valentin Salageanu, spokesperson for Greenpeace Romania said: “This isn’t responsible forestry; it’s an ecological tragedy. We walked through areas proposed for strict protection, only to find endless fresh stumps where precious, biodiverse forests stood months ago. Ikea’s hunger for wood is grinding up Europe’s natural heritage. This has to stop today.”

Greenpeace is calling on Ikea to immediately stop sourcing wood from forests with high biodiversity, that qualify for protection, and to institute binding, board-level biodiversity targets across its entire global supply chain. They are also urging Ikea to track and ensure the health and resilience of forest ecosystems, while actively supporting political frameworks to protect at least 30% of land—including 10% under strict protection—by 2030.

Greenpeace Nordic and Greenpeace Romania submitted drafts to Ikea for review and comment prior to publication. In their response Ikea returned to noting their compliance with local legal requirements and FSC standards while largely rejecting the report’s key conclusions and recommendations for an immediate logging moratorium in the proposed protected areas. Ikea did not contest the clearcutting of the forest that “was considered for possible future protection” nor the supply chain linkage to Ikea’s products.

ENDS

Photos and Videos available from the Greenpeace Media Library.

Notes:

[1] The Missing Manual: What Ikea Must Do to Protect Europe’s Forests

[2] Europe’s Vanishing Forests (Part 1): How Ikea is Driving Forest Destruction the Carpathians

Contacts:

Daniel Bengtsson, Communications lead, Greenpeace Nordic, +46 70 300 9510, daniel.bengtsson@greenpeace.org

Greenpeace International Press Desk, +31 (0)20 718 2470 (available 24 hours), pressdesk.int@greenpeace.org

Bangkok, Thailand – As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank annual meetings commence in Bangkok, Thailand faces widespread flooding, and people are left to deal with the devastating fallout of a financial system that continues to let the wealthiest polluters continue to profit while they pollute. As governments and international financial institutions gather to address pressing global challenges, it is very clear that securing sufficient funds for climate action and nature protection must include taxing the wealthiest polluters.

Pichmol Rugrod, Plastic-Free Future project lead, Greenpeace Thailand said: “The floods affecting communities across Thailand show how the costs of a changing climate are increasingly being borne by ordinary people – through damaged homes, lost income and livelihoods, and public money needed for recovery. This is what climate debt looks like in people’s lives. Those who have contributed the least should not continue to pay the highest price, while the wealthiest polluters continue to profit and pay nothing. As global financial leaders meet in Bangkok, taxing the wealthiest polluters must be identified as part of the solution, with the revenues used to support affected communities and fund climate action.”

In 2022 alone, investments by the world’s richest 0.01% in carbon-intensive industries were associated with an estimated US$992 billion in climate costs incurred, a figure comparable to global climate finance requirements. To claim money to develop proper solutions for the people and hold those most responsible for climate damage accountable, countries must be able to find ways to tax the wealthiest polluters.

Gerance Mutwol, Fair Share project lead, Greenpeace Africa, said: “As the climate crisis worsens, policy responses are falling far short of the urgent need for funding for mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage. It is outrageous that ultra-wealthy polluters continue to profit from investments in and ownership of highly polluting industries driving the climate crisis, while international financial institutions continue to put debt repayments and fiscal austerity ahead of protecting communities.

“To fund a fair and resilient future for generations to come, governments must be able to redesign tax systems so they benefit the majority, not just the wealthiest. Governments must support a strong UN Tax Convention to close tax loopholes that drain national budgets, protect countries’ taxing rights and ensure tax systems support sustainable development goals and not work against them.”

Greenpeace International is calling for the IMF and World Bank to move beyond recommendations for austerity to taxation of high-net-worth individuals and the profits of corporate polluters like fossil fuels companies, in order to unlock much-needed funding for countries to act on climate. We are calling on governments to use the UN Tax Convention to build fairer global tax rules, end harmful tax practices that deprive countries of billions in revenue, and make the wealthiest polluters pay for the climate and environmental damages they cause to  fund a fair and green future.[1]

Together with over 200 civil society organizations, trade unions, and climate coalitions from across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, Greenpeace Africa is participating in the International Peoples’ Assembly taking place on 12-13 October at Ambassador Hotel Bangkok. 

ENDS

Notes:

[1] The Global Tax Treaty, also known as the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, is the first genuinely inclusive forum for delivering fair and inclusive global tax rules. Unlike under the OECD, every country has an equal vote, and decisions are taken by majority rather than consensus. The next round of negotiations (INC-6) will take place in Nairobi, Kenya, from 30 November to 12 December. Read our media briefing from INC-5 here.

Contacts:

Greenpeace International Press Desk, +31 (0)20 718 2470 (available 24 hours), pressdesk.int@greenpeace.org