The environmental impact of AI is becoming harder to ignore, from soaring energy use and water consumption to the rapid expansion of data centres and microchip production. What is being built in the name of innovation is also concentrating power, intensifying surveillance and deepening democratic risk.

The environmental impact of AI: energy, water and emissions

The AI boom is being sold as inevitable progress, but the real question is not whether artificial intelligence can do useful things in theory. It is who owns it, who profits from it, what it is mostly being used for, and who pays the environmental and political bill when the hype turns into microchip manufacturing plants, data centres, rising power demand, water stress, surveillance and attacks on democratic life. 

A Greenpeace Germany report released in 2025 warned that AI’s electricity demand, emissions, water use and raw material needs are all rising fast, and that AI data centre electricity demand could be 11 times higher in 2030 than in 2023 unless governments intervene. A February 2026 report backed by Beyond Fossil Fuels made the greenwashing problem even clearer, finding that 74% of industry claims about AI’s climate benefits were unproven and that it could not identify a single case where consumer generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot were delivering material, verifiable and substantial emissions cuts.

This matters because it punctures one of the sector’s favourite talking points, namely that energy-hungry generative AI can be excused by vague future climate benefits. In reality, the buildout itself is locking in more extraction, more infrastructure and more corporate power, while the largest firms try to present that expansion as climate leadership. 

That is why the debate cannot be reduced to whether AI might do good one day, because the system being built right now is already redistributing power upwards while pushing environmental costs and information risks outwards.

AI data centres and why communities are pushing back

Across different countries, people are fighting data centres not because they are anti-technology, but because they recognise the pattern: land grabbing, noise pollution, pressure on water systems, strain on local grids and the steady erosion of community control over land and infrastructure. In New Brunswick, New Jersey, city leaders removed data centres from a redevelopment plan after public backlash and restored a park requirement, while residents and campaigners explicitly raised concerns about environmental harm, energy consumption, water use and noise pollution. In San Marcos, Texas, the city council voted 5-2 to block a proposed data centre after an hours-long meeting and more than 100 public comments.

In September 2025, South Dublin County Council in Ireland passed a motion calling for a nationwide ban or moratorium on new data centres, or strict conditions including 100% renewables, amid concern that communities are being forced to absorb the economic and ecological costs of someone else’s digital expansion. In the UK, campaigners won permission for a legal challenge against a 90MW hyperscale data centre in Buckinghamshire after the government admitted it had made a “serious error” in approving the scheme.

South Africa shows the growing disconnect between the push for AI infrastructure and the ecological realities of water stress and climate disruption. Australia, meanwhile, shows how rapidly this model is being scaled up globally, with the world’s second-biggest data centre buildout after the United States.

These are not fringe skirmishes. They are early signs of a broader democratic backlash against a model of digital expansion that expects local communities to absorb the costs while distant corporations and billionaires bank the gains.

Resistance is also becoming cultural, not just local. The QuitGPT boycott has gained traction as a symbolic rejection of the idea that ChatGPT should become the default interface for work, knowledge and everyday life. The movement is explicitly a reaction to OpenAI’s deal with the US Department of Defense, and it took on added urgency as the US and Israel began bombing Iran almost immediately afterwards. Dutch historian and author Rutger Bregman has helped amplify it by urging people to cancel their subscriptions, first pointing to more than 700,000 supporters, then more than one million. More than 2.5 million users are now boycotting ChatGPT. 

The opposition to OpenAI and ChatGPT is no longer confined to specialists but is reaching writers, organisers, educators and mainstream audiences who are starting to question what exactly they are being asked to normalise.

Big Tech, AI power and the threat to democracy

If you want to understand why campaigners are increasingly focusing on chips as well as chatbots, start with Nvidia, the American chipmaking giant, and its CEO, Jensen Huang. Nvidia announced a staggering annual revenue of US$ 215.9 billion, underscoring just how central the company has become to the global AI boom. Recent earnings show Nvidia’s business is now dominated by data centres and AI chips, not gaming, with roughly 80% to 90% of revenue coming from data centres while gaming has fallen below 10%. 

Huang has framed AI as “the largest infrastructure build-out in human history” and as foundational infrastructure for the modern world, which is precisely why Nvidia cannot be treated as a passive supplier standing outside the social and ecological consequences of the boom. Without Nvidia’s chips, much of the present generative AI race simply would not happen at its current scale.

Greenpeace East Asia’s October 2025 findings rank Nvidia last on AI supply-chain decarbonisation and argue that the company’s record revenues are being built on a “decarbonisation deficit” outsourced to suppliers in Taiwan and South Korea that still depend heavily on fossil power. 

Greenpeace East Asia’s reporting also highlighted a 4.5-fold increase in emissions from AI chip manufacturing in a single year, showing how quickly the environmental cost of this infrastructure race is escalating. This is not a side effect of the boom. It is part of the industrial model that underpins OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon and the wider rush to scale generative AI as fast as possible.

Amazon tells a similar story. Jeff Bezos’s Amazon made more than US$ 77 billion in profits in 2025 while cutting around 30,000 workers as it ramped up AI spending. This is what “innovation” looks like when it is steered by monopoly power: record profits, job cuts, rising capital expenditure and a false promise that more automation will somehow trickle down into public good.

AI, war and manipulation

The political economy of the AI boom should worry anyone who cares about democracy and civil liberties. Tech leaders and companies spent heavily to curry favour with Donald Trump after his reelection, including OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman’s US$ 1 million donation to Trump’s inauguration fund, while reporting also tied OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman to a US$ 102 million Trump war chest drive. 

Palantir and Alex Karp have gone further into the architecture of state power. ICE agreed to pay Palantir $30m to build its “ImmigrationOS” surveillance platform, while Karp defended the company’s work with ICE and later said critics of ICE should be protesting for “more Palantir”, not less. That tells you a great deal about what counts as “progress” when AI, border violence, data extraction and executive power converge.

The debate over AI and war has become sharper too. Anthropic reportedly sought explicit contractual prohibitions on mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, and has been in conflict with the Pentagon over refusing to broaden those terms, while OpenAI struck a Pentagon deal for classified systems and revised it only after backlash, adding stronger restrictions against domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons without human oversight. That does not make Anthropic harmless, but it does show that even inside this industry there are real fault lines over how far companies are willing to go in militarisation and state surveillance.

Amnesty International has called for bans on AI-based practices including public facial recognition, predictive policing, biometric categorisation, emotion recognition and migrant profiling, while Forbidden Stories has investigated firms pitching AI-enabled surveillance tools that can target journalists, dissidents and activists.

Culture and information are being reshaped at speed as well. Deezer says it is now receiving more than 60,000 fully AI-generated tracks a day, roughly 39% of all music delivered to the platform daily. Six of Spotify’s top 50 trending songs in the US in late January were fully AI-generated. Suno was generating 7 million songs a day. Suno chief executive Mikey Shulman gave the game away when he said: “It’s not really enjoyable to make music now. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice”, reducing musical craft to a friction problem for software to remove. Sam Altman’s remark that it takes “20 years of life and all of the food you eat” to “train a human” landed for the same reason, because it exposed a worldview in which human creativity and ecological limits are treated less as values than as inefficiencies.

The biggest AI companies have not just disrupted creative industries, they have been repeatedly accused in court of building their products on unlicensed human work, with lawsuits from authors and visual artists, from major news organisations including The New York Times, and from Hollywood studios such as Disney and Universal alleging large-scale copyright infringement. Whether every case succeeds or not, the pattern is clear: companies that present themselves as engines of innovation have been credibly accused of treating books, journalism, music and art as raw material to be scraped, absorbed and monetised without consent, compensation or democratic accountability.

The same systems are also corroding the information environment. Research from Proof News found that leading AI tools gave inaccurate, harmful or incomplete answers to basic election questions more than half the time, while a separate GroundTruthAI analysis reported by NBC found that popular chatbots answered election queries incorrectly 27% of the time. 

Grok on X has already shown how this can play out in practice. Election officials traced false claims about ballot deadlines and candidate eligibility back to Grok during the 2024 US race, and later warned that such errors could mislead or confuse voters at scale. With more high-stakes elections approaching, that is not a marginal bug. It is a democratic risk amplified by billionaire-owned platforms, automated recommendation systems and synthetic content designed for maximum engagement rather than truth.

Technology for the common good: democratic control, privacy and renewable energy

A different future is possible.

Technology for the common good would mean a society where digital tools are built first to meet real social and ecological needs, not to deepen billionaire control or chase speculative profit, and where AI is not treated as an automatic solution but used only when it is appropriate, justified and not more resource-intensive than simpler alternatives.

It would run on 100% additional renewable energy, disclose its full energy, water and supply-chain footprint, and be designed so communities are not left paying the price through higher bills, water stress or pollution.

Ownership and governance would be far more democratic, with strong public rules, limits on monopoly power, meaningful community consent, and institutions able to steer technology towards climate resilience, public services, biodiversity protection and other shared needs. It would also mean building forms of sovereign AI, where data and models are not simply extracted into distant corporate clouds but remain subject to local democratic control, clear auditability, strict privacy safeguards and public-interest rules. Access would be broad, affordable and accessible by design, and the freedoms it protects would include privacy, freedom of expression, the right to dissent, and protection from surveillance, manipulation and exclusion, so that technology expands people’s power instead of shrinking it.

Fight the billionaire takeover

Take action to fight the billionaire takeover and corporate intimidation.

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Unseen images from Greenpeace’s ship tour are available here showing at-risk sharks being caught, illustrating the need for stronger protection – as ‘RMFOs’ make a power grab on the Global Ocean Treaty

New York, USA, 2 April 2026 – Fishing industry representatives make up to a third of national delegations to key fishing management meetings, with one almost reaching 45% in 2021, a new Greenpeace International investigation reveals. This comes as the future of ocean protection came under attack from a power-grab by fishing industry vested interests at key UN ocean talks.

This news raises concerns of a “rigged system” where the vested interests of industrial fishing trump ocean protection measures, but this cannot be allowed to bleed into the application of the Ocean Treaty which came into force in January, campaigners say.

Lukas Meus, Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe ocean campaigner, said: “It’s outrageous to see just how deeply the fishing industry is embedded within the very organisations that are meant to regulate and manage fishing. At present, the foxes are guarding the henhouse – the system is rigged against ocean protection. 

“The fishing industry has been allowed to set the rules of the game for decades. Governments must now stop caving in to industry pressure and stop allowing vested interests to win out over ocean conservation. 

“We now have the historic opportunity with the Global Ocean Treaty to cordon off big areas of the ocean to allow it to recover – we can’t let the effects of decades of lobbying interfere with this. That’s why we’re calling for a time limit on the organisations that manage fishing to input to sanctuary proposals, this would prevent vested interests stalling ocean protection and tying it up in delays.”

Greenpeace is calling for urgent measures to be put in place ahead of the first Ocean COP in January 2027 to ensure it isn’t tainted by industry lobbying:

• Impose a maximum 120 day time limit for the review of sanctuary proposals to prevent Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) and fishing industry interests, from stalling the process. RMFOs have always protected the interests of the fishing industry, overseen the decimation of biodiversity and destruction of entire ecosystems, and must not be allowed to tie up ocean protection in delays. 
• Rigorous monitoring of participation, with specific focus on national delegation composition and associated scientific advisory processes. This is necessary to identify and mitigate the “embedding” of commercial actors.
• Implement mandatory disclosure of all delegation affiliations, including a clear register of “technical advisors”. Transparency must extend to all observer participation and advisory committee roles to ensure that scientific recommendations remain independent from corporate influence.

Governments have committed to protecting 30% of the ocean in the next four years, a target that scientists say is the absolute minimum required for the ocean to bounce back from decades of destruction. Making sure that the process of creating sanctuaries isn’t tied up in delays will be vital to this progress.

ENDS

Notes to editors

[1] Link to report: Corporate Influence on High Seas Fisheries Management

[2] Greenpeace International press release: Governments must curb corporate interference in the Global Ocean Treaty at key talks 

[3] Recent unseen images from the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise can be found in the Greenpeace Media Library here. Greenpeace crew witnessed what the result of years of poor RFMO management looks like in the Convergence Zone, an area hotly tipped to be among the first MPA proposals under the Treaty. There are not sufficient safeguards that protect endangered sharks under current rules.  

• The report focused on eight major organisations governing high seas fisheries and their meetings over the last 5 years: The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT), the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO), the North Pacific Fisheries Commission (NPFC), and the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO). 
• Fishing industry representatives include delegates whose primary affiliation is with fleet operators, vessel owner groups, distant-water fishing corporations, seafood processors, tuna companies, national fishing associations, producer organisations, trade bodies, or gear suppliers. 
• The shadowy organisations that govern fishing on the high seas, called Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs), are mainly made up of government representatives with vested interests in commercial fishing. The research focused on eight of these organisations’ key global meetings over the last five years and found that industry makes up on average 28–29% of total delegations. While some commissions cluster around 23–27% and others reach up to 30–35%, the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission even hit 44.2% in 2021.
• By participating inside governments’ delegation structures and technical committees, RMFOs have unbridled access to negotiations and processes that actively shape conservation outcomes. Industry-aligned delegations regularly deploy tactics to delay and narrow conservation measures that could restrict the agenda of the fishing industry. It is in the best interest of the fishing industry that RFMOs retain their power over the high seas’ RMFOs routinely push narratives to undermine the need for high seas sanctuaries that would cordon off areas of the ocean from the fishing industry’s destructive activity.
• The report highlights a particularly egregious example with the EU at the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT): 35–39% of the EU delegation consisted of fishing industry representatives each year. The EU consistently had the highest number of industry representatives of any participant at these meetings, and in all five years assessed, the number of industry representatives exceeded the entire delegation size of any individual non-EU country, meaning that industry outweighed any government representatives. 
• Across the dataset, the delegations embedding the highest numbers of industry-affiliated delegates are consistently major fishing powers. The EU most frequently contributes the largest number of industry representatives across multiple RFMOs, particularly ICCAT, IOTC and NAFO.
  
  Contacts:

Florri Burton, Global Media Lead, Oceans Are Life, Greenpeace Nordic +447896523839, florri.burton@greenpeace.org Greenpeace International Press Desk: +31 (0)20 718 2470 (available 24 hours), pressdesk.int@greenpeace.org

We analysed 37 government responses introduced since 28 February 2026 to the Iran war oil shock. Many risk deepening the fossil fuel dependence that caused the crisis in the first place.

The war on Iran oil shock is exposing fossil fuel vulnerability

This is not just another spike in prices. It is a warning about how vulnerable a fossil fuel-driven economy really is. The International Energy Agency said this war is “creating the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market”, and that is precisely what happens when countries depend on oil and gas. When so much of the global economy depends on a centralised and combustible resource moved through strategic chokepoints, war quickly turns into rising food prices, energy bills, transport costs and wider economic instability.

This is why the crisis is not only about carbon emissions or climate targets. It is about resilience, security and survival. The war has highlighted the inherent vulnerability of fossil fuel-based energy systems, because any disruption to shipping routes or supply chains can ripple across daily life in a matter of days. Governments and policymakers around the world are reacting to the shock, but many of their responses risk reinforcing the very system that made this crisis so damaging in the first place.

What governments should do in an oil price crisis

The most effective response is not to double down on oil and gas. It is to reduce dependence on them. South Korean President Lee Jae-myung put it clearly: “I think this would be a good opportunity to swiftly and extensively transition to renewable energy.”

Countries that generate more of their own energy from wind and solar are less exposed to oil price shocks, disrupted shipping lanes and geopolitical blackmail. The more your government invests in renewable energy, the more secure your country and your pocket will be. That is why renewable energy should be understood not only as a climate solution, but also as a security strategy and a shield against the cost of living crisis.

A good crisis response should do two things at once. It should protect people from immediate hardship, and it should speed up the shift to resilient, renewable-centred energy systems. That means demand reduction, efficiency, support for vulnerable households and faster deployment of clean, decentralised power, rather than new subsidies, tax breaks or infrastructure that prolong fossil fuel dependence.

How governments are responding to the war on Iran energy shock

Since the war began on 28 February 2026, Greenpeace has identified and analysed 37 policies introduced around the world in response to the shock. Some help reduce short-term pain without locking countries further into fossil fuels, some deepen fossil fuel dependence, and others send mixed signals.

A few governments are taking measures that point in a better direction. In the Philippines, public offices moved to a four-day workweek, computers were ordered off during lunch breaks and air conditioning was limited to 24°C, with the stated goal of cutting government energy use by one fifth. Pakistan combined school closures and work-from-home orders with an existing solar boom linked to an estimated US$ 6.3 billion in avoided fossil fuel imports in 2026 at current prices. Vietnam also leaned on work-from-home measures, while its existing solar buildout is estimated to save hundreds of millions of dollars in avoided coal and gas imports this year. In Egypt, the government says it is fast-tracking renewable projects, including the Abydos 2 solar plant and 2.5 GW of new grid-integrated renewable capacity, to reduce costly energy imports and bring down the state’s fuel bill.

Other governments focused on conservation rather than more fossil supply. The IEA is currently tracking these measures globally. Thailand told civil servants to use stairs instead of elevators, reduce air conditioning and wear short-sleeved shirts instead of suits. Denmark’s energy minister urged people to cut back energy use and drive less. At the political level, European Council President António Costa framed the crisis as an argument for accelerating home-grown energy production and the energy transition. In the UK, Business Secretary Peter Kyle said offshore wind and solar should be accelerated to reduce reliance on oil and gas from politically unstable regions.

Why fossil fuel lock-in makes the crisis worse

Too many governments are still responding with policies that keep the fossil fuel system alive. These measures may offer short-term political relief, but they deepen long-term vulnerability.

South Korea imposed a fuel price cap, while also lifting the national cap on coal-fired power generation and considered restarting Russian crude and naphtha imports. Japan capped pump prices and released crude from stockpiles, while Malaysia increased petrol subsidy spending to about US$ 510 million to hold down fuel prices. Brazil cut the federal diesel tax to zero.

This is the contradiction at the heart of many current responses. Governments say they want to shield people from the energy shock, but many are choosing policies that prolong the dependence that caused the shock in the first place.

That exposes a deeper injustice in fossil fuel-dominated systems: billionaires and big corporations profit while people pay the price with their lives, with more extreme weather and with higher bills. Every cent spent on war and fossil fuels is a cent stolen from a fair and green future, and public money should build a liveable planet rather than bankroll destruction. 

Renewable energy is the real solution

Some countries may feel they cannot afford renewable energy in the midst of the current crisis. But that is precisely why clean energy is the solution: it involves lower upfront costs, fewer massive infrastructure investments, and can be deployed much faster.

The alternative is already growing fast. According to IRENA’s Renewable Capacity Statistics 2025, renewables accounted for 92.5% of all new global power additions in 2024, with 585 GW added in a single year. Solar alone added a record 452 GW. In other words, renewables are already the bulk of new power capacity being installed worldwide.

That matters because renewable energy offers more than lower emissions. Decentralised systems based on wind and solar are harder to sabotage, less vulnerable to blockades and shipping disruptions, and better able to keep homes, schools and hospitals running during crises. Real security does not come from pouring more money into militarisation and fossil dependence, but from investing in systems that actually protect people, including clean energy, healthcare and public services.

We need policies that cut fossil fuel dependence and expand renewable-centred energy systems, because that is how communities become more resilient, economies become more stable and the risks of future conflicts are reduced. The best cost-of-living policy for people and the planet is a safe, stable, cost-effective and clean energy system.

Camilo Sánchez is Communications Manager at Greenpeace International, based in Germany. John Noël is Senior Portfolio Manager at Greenpeace International, based in the United States.

Auckland, New Zealand – The world’s largest dairy exporter, New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra has admitted that the packaging on its flagship Anchor-brand butter breached fair trade laws in order to settle a lawsuit brought by Greenpeace Aotearoa in 2024.

The lawsuit alleged that Fonterra misled customers by prominently featuring on its packaging the claim that Anchor butter is ‘100% New Zealand grass-fed’. In reality, Fonterra  allows its cows to eat palm kernel expeller, an imported supplementary feed which has potential links to the destruction of rainforests in Southeast Asia. 

New Zealand is the largest importer of palm kernel expeller, a product of the oil palm industry. The feed has notoriously murky supply chains, and in early 2025, Greenpeace Aotearoa used research from Rainforest Action Network and Nusantara Atlas to link companies selling palm kernel into New Zealand to illegal deforestation in Indonesia’s Rawa Singkil Wildlife reserve. 

Greenpeace Aotearoa Agriculture campaigner Sinéad Deighton-O’Flynn said: “An admission of guilt from New Zealand’s biggest company is a massive win against corporate greenwash everywhere. It’s simple, companies shouldn’t be allowed to mislead customers in order to sell products. 

“Fonterra has admitted that its packaging was likely to mislead consumers. The truth is that its supposed ‘100% New Zealand Grass-Fed’ butter could be linked to the destruction of paradise rainforests in Southeast Asia.

“Fonterra is just the latest in a chain of meat and dairy corporations who have been held to account for their  greenwashing. It’s clear that the writing is on the wall and people are fed up with corporate greed and manipulation.

“If our governments won’t hold these polluters accountable, people will take to the courts and the streets to do so instead.”

ENDS

Notes:

Fonterra is set to finalise the sale of its consumer brands – including Anchor Butter – to French dairy giant Lactalis later this year.

This admission from Fonterra builds on a growing wave of legal accountability for the meat and dairy industry.

In March 2024, the Danish High Court ruled against Danish Crown – Europe’s largest pork producer – in a landmark greenwashing case, finding that its ‘climate-controlled pork’ labels were misleading and lacked independent verification. 

In 2025, Greenpeace Denmark and Sweden filed formal complaints against Arla, Europe’s largest dairy producer, for systematically overstating its climate progress. The complaints, submitted to regulatory bodies in both Denmark and Sweden, allege that Arla misled the public by claiming a 13% reduction in supply chain emissions since 2015.

Documentation suggests nearly half of this reduction resulted from a 2016 change in calculation methodology rather than actual carbon savings. These complaints are currently under formal review by the relevant authorities in both Denmark and Sweden.

Contacts:

Rhiannon Mackie, Press Officer at Greenpeace Aotearoa, +64 27 244 6729, rhiannon.mackie@greenpeace.org 

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

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

Amsterdam — Greenpeace International and Greenpeace organisations in the US filed on 27 March 2026 a motion for a new trial in North Dakota District Court. This demand for justice follows the absurd and flawed US$ 345 million judgment issued by the same court in Energy Transfer’s SLAPP lawsuit against the Greenpeace parties returned on 27 February 2026. Energy Transfer’s back-to-back SLAPP lawsuits are attempts to erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock Movement, punish solidarity with the ongoing resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline, and intimidate environmental activists from speaking out against Big Oil companies.  

In regard to the Greenpeace defendants’ motion for a new trial, Greenpeace International General Counsel Kristin Casper said:

“Our motion for a new trial should be granted to prevent one of the largest miscarriages of justice in North Dakota’s history. We are demanding the court right the wrongs committed at trial and to ensure the rights and freedoms promised under the US constitution are protected.  

“There is no question the Greenpeace defendants were denied a fair trial — even a concise summary of the errors and injustices that marred the trial runs to over 100 pages. Greenpeace will not rest until justice is served and Big Oil can no longer use and abuse the legal system in North Dakota or anywhere else.” 

Among the numerous egregious flaws documented in the motion for a new trial are:

1. The Greenpeace defendants could not receive a fair and impartial trial in Morton County.
2. Seven out of nine jurors that decided the case had clear biases due to fossil fuel industry ties, experiences with the Standing Rock protests, and/or preexisting negative views of the Greenpeace defendants.
3. Despite the fact that thousands of individuals and hundreds of organisations were involved in actions at Standing Rock and speaking out against DAPL, and North Dakota law clearly requiring damages to be split among everyone who contributed to alleged harms, the jury and the court assigned 100% of the claimed damages to the Greenpeace defendants. 
4. The jury’s verdict was contrary to the weight of the evidence on each and every count. 
5. The jury verdict was tainted by the inclusion of inadmissible, prejudicial information. 
6. The jury was improperly prevented from hearing relevant, admissible evidence that was favorable to the Greenpeace defendants. 
7. The jury was provided erroneous and incomplete instructions and a flawed verdict form.

The motion can be accessed here. 

ENDS

CONTACTS: 

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

Join the Greenpeace SLAPP Trial WhatsApp Group for our latest updates

Here in Denmark, we are often celebrated globally for our green ambitions. But beneath the surface of the landscapes I call home, a toxic secret is seeping into our groundwater. Today, a massive people-powered movement is rising up to challenge the powerful meat and dairy industry, which is also at the centre of water pollution fights far beyond Denmark, from Brazil’s Amazon to Aotearoa New Zealand and many European countries.

Earlier this week, on March 24th, my fellow Danes and I headed to the polls in a highly contested national election that has become known as the “Pig Election.” At the heart of the debate is something fundamental to human health: our drinking water.

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For half a century, successive governments have allowed the industrial agricultural lobby giant, today called Landbrug & Fødevarer (Danish Agriculture & Food Council), to dictate environmental policy through weak, voluntary agreements.

Here in Denmark, as well as anywhere else from the Amazon to Aotearoa New Zealand, Big Ag has privatised the profits and left everyone else to pay the price. Here they have quite literally forced the public to swallow the pollution, handing taxpayers a clean-up bill of 645 million Danish kroner, or about US$ 100 million. This is the extractive industry’s playbook worldwide. But the people of the Danish “bacon country” have had enough.

The tipping point in Denmark’s water crisis

To expose this health-threatening corporate greed, activists from Greenpeace Denmark executed a surprise dawn stunt at Landbrug & Fødevarer headquarters in Copenhagen. Activists redecorated the lobby giant’s facade, replacing their polished corporate advertisements with huge, red hazard symbols.

High above on the roof, activists dressed in suits and pig masks symbolically “produced manure” on portable toilets, reading the lobby’s own fabricated news.

We have campaigned relentlessly against this corporate capture for decades, alongside scientists, communities and citizens who refuse to accept polluted water as the price of doing business. The historic mobilisation we are seeing today is a powerful testament to every activist, scientist, and citizen who refused to give up the fight.

The result of this decades-long corporate negligence? Toxic pesticide residues are now found in over half (55.7%) of Denmark’s drinking water wells. Massive amounts of nitrate from industrial manure are leaching into the groundwater, significantly increasing the risk of colorectal cancer for our local communities.

Why this is bigger than Denmark

What is happening in Denmark is not an isolated fight, but part of a much broader global struggle over who gets to control food systems, water and public health. Big Ag desperately tries to paint environmental action as unpopular, but the numbers tell a different story.

A staggering 95% of the Danish public is now demanding better protection of our drinking water, and 9 out of 10 voters support a ban on pesticides, on top of our groundwater, according to a recent opinion poll. This is no longer a niche environmental issue.

People across the world have had enough of Big Ag. From soy-driven deforestation in the Amazon to battles over industrial dairy and nitrate pollution in other countries, more and more communities are rising up to protect their water, land and health from corporate exploitation.

Drinking water and the treatment of pigs became the defining issue in the Danish election. There is now a large parliamentary majority that has promised to implement the ban on using pesticides on top of our groundwater, that the Danes have demanded. And there is a large majority in favour of reducing the health limit for nitrate in our drinking water, which will protect people from increased bowel cancer risk.

We will hold the new Danish government accountable to the mandate the Danes have given, and we will be paying close attention to see that the promises made during the election actually turn into real change.

Clean water needs a different food system

We need a food system that works with nature, not against it. We are fighting for a transition to ecological farming, a future where food production nourishes both people and the planet, where rural communities thrive, and where access to clean, unpolluted drinking water is a human right.

That means confronting the global model of industrial meat and dairy production that drives water pollution, climate emissions and deforestation across borders. When communities stand together, Big Ag loses its power. The Danish elections prove that systemic change is politically viable when we demand it with a unified voice. It is time to move beyond symbolic gestures and build the power needed to protect our homes.

Industrial agriculture is destroying our planet and our health, no matter where you live. You are part of a winning, global movement, and it is time to act.

Stop Big Meat and Dairy

It’s time to cut through corporate lies, cut agriculture emissions and shift towards sustainable agroecology.

Sign now!

Christian Fromberg is a Political Campaigner at Greenpeace Denmark.

ARUSHA, Tanzania – Greenpeace Africa has submitted an amicus curiae brief before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AfCHPR), arguing that climate destruction is a systematic, ongoing violation of the rights of people across the African continent.

“This case is about justice for frontline communities already bearing the costs of a climate crisis they are least responsible for,” said Eugene Perumal, Governance and Legal Advisor at Greenpeace Africa. “Across the continent, communities are already living with the consequences of decisions made without their consent. We are asking the Court to affirm that governments must protect people and to draw a hard line against this ongoing corporate impunity.” 

The submission situates the climate crisis within a broader pattern of extractive economic models imposed across Africa, from fossil fuel extraction to mining, deforestation and industrial agriculture. Greenpeace Africa argues that these industries threaten the rights to life, health, food, water, and a healthy environment, and that governments have binding duties under the African Charter to prevent harm, ensure transparency and public participation, and provide remedies to affected communities.[1]

Greenpeace Africa argues that allowing multinational corporations to expand without meaningful environmental safeguards constitutes a fundamental failure of the State’s duty to protect the rights to life, health, and a satisfactory environment.

The submission also highlights the growing risk posed by industrial livestock expansion – a relatively new but rapidly emerging threat on the continent. Unlike traditional pastoralist and smallholder systems, industrial meat production concentrates environmental damage, drives deforestation, and shifts control of food systems away from local communities toward multinational corporations.

As part of this broader trend, the brief references the planned expansion of JBS, the world’s largest meat company, into Nigeria. The proposed US$2.5 billion investment in industrial meat processing illustrates how global agribusiness is seeking to establish a foothold in African markets, raising concerns about environmental impacts, lack of public consultation, and the long-term implications for local food systems and livelihoods.

Invoking Article 21(5) of the African Charter – which obliges States to “eliminate all forms of foreign economic exploitation, particularly that which is practised by international monopolies” –  the submission argues that the facilitation of extractive corporate expansion, without transparency, public participation, or environmental impact assessment, constitutes a direct failure of its duty to protect. 

The submission draws the landmark precedent of  SERAC v. Nigeria (2001), arising from Shell’s catastrophic oil operations in Ogoniland, which established that states have a positive duty to regulate corporations, conduct and publish impact assessments, and guarantee meaningful community participation before major industrial development proceeds. 

Elizabeth Atieno, Food Campaigner at Greenpeace Africa, said:

“The projects being approved today will determine who controls our land, our food systems and the health of our planet in the future. We look to the Court for a powerful advisory opinion that cements the rights of African communities to say no to extractive agriculture, and sends a definitive message to corporate exploiters that their time for operating with impunity on this continent is over.”

ENDS

Notes:

[1] For a summary of what the African Court heard on Monday 30 March, see Greenpeace Africa release. For access to Greenpeace Africa’s Amicus Curiae submission to the African Court please contact Greenpeace Africa via the contact information below.

This proceeding is part of an unprecedented global quartet of parallel advisory proceedings before the world’s four highest international courts, expected to produce the most authoritative rulings on climate and human rights law in history.

Contacts:

Ferdinand Omondi, Communications and Story Manager at Greenpeace Africa, +254 722 505 233, fomondi@greenpeace.org 

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

Greenpeace Africa Press Desk: pressdesk.africa@greenpeace.org 

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

This past week, Greenpeace Spain and other Greenpeace offices around the world have been involved in a week of activities as part of the Global Housing Action Days project, an initiative aimed at drawing attention to the importance of safe, affordable, sustainable housing on a liveable planet. 

Here’s why this issue is so important.

A home is much more than a roof over our heads. Our homes are the bedrock upon which we build our sense of safety and stability, protect and care for our families and loved ones, and form communities around us. Beyond secure access to housing, secure tenure and basic services, homes must protect us from energy price shocks and energy poverty – and be part of the solution to the climate emergency. Poor energy efficiency in our homes and fossil fuel dependence for heating and cooking worsen both energy security, and the climate crisis.

1. Limiting global warming to 1.5°C is essential to keep our planet habitable

To mitigate the worst impacts of the climate crisis, we must quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This means stopping the burning of gas, oil and coal – in short, all fossil fuels – and reducing energy demand through improved home insulation. The good news is that it is possible. We have plenty of solutions for improving energy efficiency in homes, the only thing missing is the political will to support and implement these solutions.

2. Homes can be part of the solution to the climate crisis

Many homes in Europe are still dependent on gas for cooking or heating – making buildings both a cause of the climate crisis and part of the solution. Moving our building stock away from dependency on gas means that, instead of being major emitters of greenhouse gases, buildings can get their energy from renewables and feed it into the grid. At the European level:

• Buildings consume 40% of all gas in Europe (much of it imported from countries like Russia, the US and other non-democratic countries that fuel wars).
• 33% of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions come from homes, due to gas, oil and electricity used for heating, cooling and hot water.

3. Our homes are a public health issue

For example, in Spain, 20.8% of the population lives in energy poverty (defined as spending more than 10% of household income on energy bills), almost double the European rate of 10.6%. This means many people cannot adequately heat their homes in winter – due to high energy prices, poor thermal efficiency and limited incomes – nor can they adequately cool them in summer, when tens of thousands heat-related deaths occur in the EU each year.

4. Our current housing system continues to generate profits for polluters, tyrants and speculators

Energy prices have risen by an average of 66.3% in Europe between 2021 and 2025. While fossil fuel companies declare multi-million-dollar profits and their executives pocket eye-watering bonuses, Europe becomes increasingly dependent on a constant supply of expensive fossil fuels from abroad. This policy allows leaders like Putin or Trump to expand their energy domination, politically subjugate the EU and its countries through energy blackmail and fund their geopolitical games, including war. All of this while we keep wrecking the planet by burning gas.

Beyond that, our homes have become a financial asset for billionaires’ profits and massive touristification, putting demand and prices out of control and making access to housing an impossible dream for millions of people.

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5. There are solutions – and there is money

European governments should refurbish homes to create zero-emissions buildings that generate their own clean energy from renewables, such as heat pumps and shared photovoltaics with neighbours and the wider community, and prioritise vulnerable groups so that they reap the benefits of the transition.

A key step to make this a reality is to implement a fair tax on the super-rich and their real estate financial vehicles. This could unlock resources for a green future for all by funding the transition to sustainable heating and cooling in people’s homes.

For all these reasons, the housing, cost of living and climate crises are interlinked. We need large-scale home refurbishment to free us from gas and guarantee access to decent, affordable, sustainable and cosy housing for all.

We need policies that protect people, not the profits of polluters and speculators.

To protect people, the planet and peace, governments must break free from their reliance on fossil gas imports and ramp up efforts to support sustainable home refurbishment.

A fair and green future is within reach. We must stop letting billionaires profit from destruction and start making them pay for solutions.

Maria Prado is the Campaign Coordinator at Greenpeace Spain

Tax the Super Rich

Act now to call on the super-rich to pay their fair share

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Fossil-fuelled fighting, Trumpified towers, and pooping piggies, here are a few of our favourite images from Greenpeace work around the world this week.

Namibia – Four activists from the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior paint ‘THEY PROFIT, WE PAY’ down the side of the hull of the gigantic PetroJarl Rosebank FPSO, off the coast of Namibia. The Rosebank project is a planned offshore oil and gas development west of the Shetland Islands in the North Atlantic.

Belgium – Activists project a golden facade and the words “TRUMP TOWER” onto the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, mimicking one of President Trump’s skyscrapers, with a Greenpeace message urging EU leaders meeting to stop capitulating to his demands. The Greenpeace Belgium activists were protesting the EU’s continued dependence on the US for oil and gas imports, the removal of protections for the environment, public health and privacy, and the lack of resistance to the US’s breaches of international law.

Namibia – Greenpeace activists protest a gigantic ship on its way to tap new oil as part of the Rosebank development. The Rosebank project is a planned offshore oil and gas development west of the Shetland Islands in the North Atlantic. It is the largest undeveloped oil field in the UK, containing roughly 300–500 million barrels of oil equivalent. PA major partner in the project is the Israeli fossil fuel company Delek.

Denmark – Three piggy activists, dressed in black suits and pig masks, sat on toilets on the roof of the Danish Agriculture & Food Council, the country’s largest agricultural lobby. Meanwhile, other activists dressed as lobbyists ‘redecorated’ the headquarters’ windows with large, red poison symbols, highlighting the health risks of drinking water contaminated with pesticides and high nitrate levels. The action is part of Greenpeace Nordic’s response to the Danish federal election which occurred this week and saw industrial pig farming and its impact on drinking water become one of the main issues of the election.

Germany – Nine activists are protesting for stronger climate action and greater energy independence ahead of the expected cabinet decision on the Climate Protection Act. On a 100-square-metre banner hung from a construction crane next to the Federal Chancellery in Berlin, the activists are demanding in German: “Freiheit statt fossile Politik”, –“Freedom instead of fossil fuel policies”.

USA – On the opening day of Nvidia’s GTC (Global Technology Centers) conference, Greenpeace USA drove a triple-billboard truck to deliver a direct message to CEO Jensen Huang: ‘Hey Jensen, your graphics processors that are fuelling the AI boom are overheating. So is the planet.’

Netherlands – With a massive projection on the Eye film museum in Amsterdam, Greenpeace Netherlands calls on the government to impose an extra tax on the war profits of oil and gas companies. According to Greenpeace, the proceeds should be used to compensate lower-income households for their energy bills and to accelerate the transition to solar and wind energy in order to end the dependency on fossil fuel industry.

Greenpeace has been a pioneer of photo activism for more than 50 years, and remains committed to bearing witness and exposing environmental injustice through the images we capture.

To see more Greenpeace photos and videos, visit our Media Library.

This week, a heavy smog hangs in the air of Johannesburg, South Africa, the city where I live, as I scroll through the World’s Billionaires List: The Richest in 2026 published by Forbes. 

The list seems unreal and out of touch with my version of reality. Hundreds of billions of dollars attached to people’s names. Numbers so large it feels like something out of a simulation rather than the real world. 

It made me think of my parents. How I’ve spent most of my life watching them work so hard to provide for our family as best they could and still not gain the financial security that would allow them to retire comfortably.

For many of my childhood years, I stayed with my grandmother during the week and only saw my parents on weekends. I was a baby, completely unaware of the world around me and the reality that my parents had to be away working so we could get by. 

Fast forward 29 years and my parents are still working. I don’t think they’ll ever really have the opportunity to stop, or even slow down as much as they deserve to.

Meanwhile, a tiny handful of people are hoarding insane wealth. While their lifestyles and investments are fuelling the climate crisis we are living through. Leaving people like my parents and I on the hamster wheel, trying to make ends meet as the planet around us heats, burns, and fills with smoke.

Billionaire wealth is taken, not made

One narrative we often hear about billionaires is that they worked incredibly hard for their wealth. Hard work may well be part of their story (well, at least some of them) but it takes more than just effort to become a billionaire. It often comes with access to resources, networks, opportunities that make that level of wealth possible in the first place. 

It depends on systems that allow extreme wealth to accumulate at the very top, through ownerships, investments, favourable tax structures and economic breaks that reward capital far more than labour. And once that wealth is secured, those same systems often make it harder for younger generations to access the opportunities that made it possible in the first place, effectively pulling the ladder up behind them. In addition, to not being taxed at a fair rate, in proportion to their wealth. 

Tax inequalities: the billionaires vs the people

There is no lack of money, only a failure to make the richest of the rich pay their fair share.

Let’s take Elon Musk, for example, he is reportedly richer than the “poorest” 693 billionaires on the planet combined, that’s insane. 

Yet according to research from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Musk’s company, Tesla, reported $5.7 billion in U.S. income in 2025 and paid zero federal income tax on those profits. 

Compare that to families like mine, where ordinary workers can pay up to 41% of their income in taxes.  

In South Africa, where inequality runs deep, many families work incredibly hard just to stay afloat while still paying their dues. People like my parents, who’ve paid taxes their entire working lives, contributing to communities and the protection of our planet. It sometimes feels like we can swim, but we’re still treading water. You’re not drowning, but you’re not really moving forward either.

All while the very wealthiest continue to profit and make money even in their sleep while benefiting from systems that reduce how much they are required to contribute back to the societies they benefit from. 

What if we used that money to fund the future we’re trying to build?.

Tax the super-rich to protect people and the planet

Billionaires are not only accumulating immense wealth, they are also major contributors to the climate crisis. Research by Oxfam International found that a person in the richest 0.1% produces more carbon pollution in a single day than someone in the bottom 50% produces in an entire year. As they grow richer, the climate crisis gets worse with 2025 being the third hottest year on record.

It is clear that those who profit – and pollute – the most should be taxed their fair share to clean up their mess and to contribute to the collective good. It is morally indefensible that the collective responsibility of tax contribution to fix pressing climate and social problems should fall on hardworking families like yours and mine.

By taxing extreme wealth, it could unlock money to help fund real, practical solutions in the places where people actually live. In my city, that would mean better air quality, greener options for public transport, a better working waste disposal and even investing in resources and education on building systems that protect our planet. Working hospitals, basic service delivery, the list goes on. 

For me, it would mean living in a society where public systems actually support us instead of making life harder. 

By taxing extreme wealth, we could have access to a plethora of resources that would improve people’s lives and help address some of the biggest challenges we face, including climate change impacts.

It really can be that simple.  

Our parents might not get to fully benefit from these changes in their lifetimes but hopefully we and our children will and maybe the best way to honour everything our parents worked for is to fight for changes that would make the system fairer and greener for all.  Together, let’s urge governments to tax the super rich and fund a green and fair future. 

Tax the super-rich

Together, let’s urge governments to tax the super-rich and fund a green and fair future.

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Naeemah Dudan is a Digital Specialist for Greenpeace Africa, based in South Africa.