Beirut, Lebanon, 8 April – I am writing this with a heavy heart and trembling hands, still processing what my family, my team, and my country lived through today.

This morning, my daughter was sitting at her desk, headphones on, focused on an online exam. Then, without warning, the windows rattled and the sound of bombing tore through the air. Within seconds, her screen filled with the terrified faces of her classmates, students and teacher alike – some crying, some running, some frozen in shock, each of them feeling the strikes land near their homes. It broke my heart to see her dissolve into tears, terrified and disoriented, her world turned upside down in a matter of seconds.

What was happening was a massacre.

At least 254 civilians have been killed and 1,165 others wounded across Lebanon this day. The Israeli military carried out over 100 air strikes in just 10 minutes, hitting Beirut, Mount Lebanon, Saida, the South, and the Bekaa simultaneously, without warning. Beirut hospitals are inundated. In a country of fewer than five million people, 254 killed and over 1,165 injured in a single afternoon is catastrophic. These are families. These are defenceless kids and parents.

This took place just hours after a US-Iran ceasefire was announced, a moment of fragile hope that Israel immediately, deliberately shattered by declaring Lebanon excluded from any truce.

I am relieved to confirm that all Greenpeace MENA team members and their families are safe. We have been in contact with every colleague throughout the day.

However, I want to be honest with you: the threat has never felt closer. Strikes hit densely populated civilian neighbourhoods across Beirut, not just the southern suburbs, but central districts, coastal areas, and communities where our team members live. There is widespread panic, fear, and deep frustration across Lebanon tonight. The government has announced tomorrow, April 9th, as a national day of mourning.

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.

Since March 2nd the Israeli military has killed over 1,500 people in Lebanon and displaced more than 1.2 million people. Civilian infrastructure is being destroyed, and the Israeli government now occupies a large part of Southern Lebanon. And today, the single deadliest assault since this war began was carried out in the shadow of a ceasefire.  

We fear, and we must say this plainly: this could be the beginning of another genocide in our region. After decades of Israeli occupation, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, settlement expansion, the genocide in Gaza, and now massacres and systematic destruction of Lebanon, all while the world watches in silence, the pattern is undeniable. International law is not being bent. It is being broken, openly, daily, with no consequences.

This impunity is the problem. And impunity will not end without action.

In the midst of this darkness, I want to take a moment to express my deep pride and gratitude that Greenpeace’s Arctic Sunrise ship is joining the Global Sumud Flotilla to provide logistical support. This is a powerful act of solidarity, a bold, visible statement that our movement stands with the people of this region who have endured decades of injustice and occupation. It matters enormously, and I am proud that Greenpeace has the courage to stand on the right side of history.

And yet, today more than ever, I believe these brave acts of solidarity, as vital and meaningful as they are, are not sufficient on their own. The scale of what is happening demands more. 

We must demand world governments move from  silent complicity or words of condemnation towards real accountability. They must hold the Israeli government accountable under international law, impose arms’ embargoes and meaningful sanctions that create genuine political and economic consequences.

The people in Lebanon and the Middle East deserve an immediate and permanent ceasefire and a just peace grounded in international humanitarian law.

I hope this nightmare ends soon, but I know it will only end when governments of the world do more than watch from the sidelines. 

Stand With Families Forced to Leave Their Homes

Greenpeace MENA is supporting the Lebanese Red Cross in their humanitarian effort.

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Greenpeace’s Arctic Sunrise is joining the Global Sumud Flotilla to support a peaceful civilian mission challenging the blockade on Gaza and demanding safe, unhindered humanitarian access.

The ship’s role is clear: to provide technical and operational maritime support to the people-led flotilla and assist the vessels in safely transiting across the Mediterranean before they complete the last 200 nautical miles onto Gaza’s shores.

This is an act of solidarity, practical support and non-violent resistance, rooted in the belief that when governments fail to protect life and uphold international law, people will still come together to act.

This mission builds on earlier flotilla efforts to break the silence around Gaza. In 2024 and 2025, previous flotillas challenged the blockade and drew international attention to the humanitarian crisis. In September 2025, the Sumud Flotilla sailed with 42 boats and 462 people before Israeli forces intercepted and forcibly boarded the vessels about 70 nautical miles off the Gaza coast, cutting communications and jamming signals. 

The 2026 flotilla continues that same spirit of civilian resistance, but on a larger scale and with renewed determination to demand humanitarian access and justice.

Why this matters now – children, medics, journalists, aid workers, humanity

Gaza has been subjected to a scale of death and destruction that is almost impossible to absorb. Between 7 October 2023 and 14 January 2026, 71,439 Palestinians were killed in Gaza and 171,324 injured, according to Gaza health ministry figures reported by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

As of mid-February 2026, around 1.4 million of Gaza’s 2.1 million people were displaced, with many living in roughly 1,000 makeshift sites. Even after the October 2025 “ceasefire” announcement, OCHA said hundreds more Palestinians were killed, with the reported toll since that announcement rising to 689 by late March 2026.

The genocide in Gaza has also been marked by the killing of the very people trying to save lives and tell the world what is happening – aid workers and journalists.

Amnesty International said at least 408 aid workers had been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023, including at least 280 UNRWA staff and 34 Palestine Red Crescent Society staff. The New Humanitarian described Gaza’s aid worker death toll as unprecedented, noting that in just three months the number of humanitarians killed there exceeded the deadliest year ever recorded globally for aid workers. 

Press freedom groups have described this as the deadliest conflict for journalists since CPJ began recording such data in 1992, and a June 2025 public appeal said nearly 200 journalists had been killed by the Israeli military over 20 months. 

In a small, enclosed territory, that concentration of civilian killing, displacement, hunger and attacks on medics, aid workers and reporters has become a defining feature of the war. And it’s spreading.

As Ghiwa Nakat, executive director of Greenpeace Middle East and North Africa says, “The devastation inflicted on Gaza has become a dangerous doctrine of impunity, now spreading to Lebanon through massacres, relentless destruction, and deepening human suffering. The Greenpeace ship is joining this people-led mission to demand safe, unhindered humanitarian access to Gaza and to challenge the illegal blockade that continues to devastate civilian life. We stand firmly against war crimes, deliberate starvation, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and ecocide. This flotilla is a call to governments around the world to end their silence, protect humanitarian action, and act with urgency and principle to uphold international law, human dignity, and justice.”

War is scarring lives, ecosystems and the region for decades

War does not only destroy homes and families. It poisons land and water, wrecks food systems, leaves mountains of toxic rubble and turns recovery into a struggle that can last for generations.

Analysis estimated that the first 120 days of the war generated a mean 536,410 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, with 90% linked to Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza. The same analysis highlighted heavy metal contamination and severe damage to air, water and land, and found that by May 2024 around 57% of Gaza’s cropland had been damaged.

Across the region, war and militarisation are tearing through ecosystems, livelihoods and public health, from Gaza to Lebanon, Iran, and beyond. That is why peace, justice and environmental protection cannot be separated: a liveable future depends on all three.

What you can do

Follow the Global Sumud Flotilla and share verified updates, especially on Instagram and Facebook, so that Gaza is not pushed out of view.

Support calls for a permanent ceasefire, unhindered humanitarian access, a comprehensive arms embargo and an end to the illegal occupation of Palestine.

You can take action by signing petitions, including:

• Greenpeace Nordic – Tell Equinor to end the partnership with Ithaca Energy and cancel the Rosebank oil field
• Greenpeace UK – Stop British-made weapons being used in Gaza
• Greenpeace Spain – No más armas para el genocidio en Gaza
• Greenpeace Aotearoa – Call for sanction on Israel
• Amnesty International – Lift the blockade on Gaza and stop the genocide
• Doctors Without Borders – Stop the genocide. Let Gaza live

The Global Sumud Flotilla details how its supporters can play a crucial role by: 

• Organising actions and demonstrations 
• Amplifying verified mission updates 
• Pressuring governments to uphold international law 
• Supporting Palestinian-led relief and reconstruction efforts.

With mass displacement, shattered infrastructure and urgent humanitarian needs still defining daily life in Gaza, every bit of solidarity makes a difference.

Fair winds and following seas to all sailing for peace and justice.

Pujarini Sen is project lead for the Greenpeace Arctic Sunrise ship joining the Global Sumud Flotilla

Two decades ago, I spent my nights working the overnight shift on the support line of the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre/Multi-cultural Women Against Rape. For hours, I’d hold space for survivors of complex harm; violence they’d endured as children, teens and adults. Back then, our work was grounded in a core understanding that gender-based and sexual violence is rarely about “gratification” or even sex. It is about the assertion of power; about entitlement, greed and a demand to take what one wants without consequence. 

The first few months of 2026 has made that truth inescapable again. The release of the Epstein-related disclosures has been devastating. Girls were simply the currency, the ones hurt most and spoken of the least. Their trauma is treated as public property. What should be a call for justice has become another landscape to mine for scandal. 

For most of my career, I worked in or adjacent to the gender-based violence (GBV) movement. Last year, I made a major career shift into environmental justice. The connection between my past and present work feels undeniable. When we speak of the earth, we instinctively gender it as “she” — a mother, a body, a giver of life. I can’t help but wonder whether that very feminisation makes it easier for people to justify the idea that she is ours for the taking.

The culture of extraction normalises taking, using and discarding, whether the target is a person or a place. Not only does this mirror the political structures that sustain settler colonialism in places like Canada and Palestine, but it also drives the resource-driven reach of United States imperial power. It is all part of the same system of domination that we see in gender-based violence: the belief that some lives, some lands and some ecosystems exist to be extracted from without accountability.

Right now is a critical moment to challenge this culture. On the environmental front, we can join campaigns to stop deep-sea mining, center Indigenous voices, pressure governments and corporations to halt extractive projects, and support grassroots conservation and access initiatives; but on a deeper level, we can start drawing clearer connections between violence in all its forms. We can stop privileging domination over care, extraction over reciprocity and exploitation over respect. We can rethink power itself, confront greed, and dismantle the entitlement that makes exploitation seem natural. We can and we must, imagine a global order and daily practice grounded in care for all life. We don’t need to wait to practice this in our daily choices and we don’t need to wait to demand better. We can start today.

Sheila Sampath is a Head of Nature and Biodiversity at Greenpeace Canada.

Water is a fundamental human right, but the industry claiming to “feed the world” is quietly poisoning what we drink.

From rural Aotearoa (New Zealand) to Denmark, an invisible health crisis flows through our taps: nitrate contamination. For decades, industrial meat and dairy, Big Ag, has treated our rivers and groundwater as a free sewer for its waste. Now scientists are sounding the alarm, with major studies showing the link between industrial runoff and chronic illness. Yet, while the evidence is mounting, our laws remain stuck in the past. 

How Big Ag turns our groundwater toxic

Nitrates in drinking water primarily come from the massive overuse of synthetic nitrogen fertilisers and the staggering volume of urine and manure from industrialised livestock production.

The industry routinely applies far more nitrogen to fields than grass or crops can actually absorb. This excess doesn’t just disappear. It leaches deep into the earth and into our water. 

Agribusiness lobbyists want us to believe they can go on polluting and hope that technology will be able to clean up their mess. But science tells us something else: filtering these toxins is a false, expensive solution. The root cause of this crisis is the sheer, unsustainable volume of animals on the land.

For over 60 years, the global guideline for nitrates in drinking water has been 50 milligrams per litre (mg/L) of nitrate (NO₃), a standard set in the 1950s. But scientists are today warning that this limit is hopelessly out of date. 

The evidence is being noticed. Building on a massive cohort study of 2.7 million people that first identified increased bowel cancer risks at just 3.87 mg/L NO₃, the Danish authorities have been forced to act. Following a 2024 study that attributed roughly 127 annual bowel cancer cases in Denmark directly to nitrate pollution, the momentum for reform became unstoppable. By 2025, an international expert group commissioned by the Ministry of Environment officially recommended a new, health-based standard of 6 mg/L. This official recognition marks the end of the era of denial. Science is no longer just ‘on the horizon’, it is now the roadmap for protecting public health.

The true cost of agricultural pollution

Corporate meat and dairy industries generate record profits by pushing ecosystems to the brink, but they don’t pay for the mess they leave behind. We pay with our health, our children’s safety, and our taxes.

The direct and indirect health costs linked to colorectal cancer and drinking water nitrate in Denmark are estimated at over US $317 million annually. Filtering these toxins is a technical and financial nightmare.

In Denmark, the city of Aalborg is a warning to the world as the local utility is now suing the state for 1.1 billion DKK (US $160 million) to build the filtration plants they say are required to fix Big Ag’s mess. The city argues it shouldn’t be the responsibility of everyday taxpayers to foot this massive bill. Far from cleaning up their act, the industry is doubling down. While communities struggle to pay for clean water, Big Ag ‘bosses’ are plotting a global surge.

In Nigeria, the world’s largest meatpacker, JBS, has signed a US $2.5 billion deal to build six massive factory farm complexes. They are exporting a failed, toxic model to new frontiers, ensuring that a new generation of families will be stuck paying the price for corporate profit.

This is the classic Big Ag playbook: Keep the profits, leave the costs to everyday families.

Together for science: The path to safe water

We need a transformation of our food system, and we are finally seeing cracks in Big Ag’s armour. But this change is being driven by communities rising up to protect their homes, it’s not just being handed to us by courts or politicians. 

And it isn’t just happening in Denmark. We are seeing a global wave of resistance against Big Ag’s toxic legacy. 

In Spain, a landmark 2026 Supreme Court ruling recently confirmed that authorities violated the fundamental human rights of citizens by failing to control industrial livestock pollution in the Galicia region. This follows successful local moratoriums in regions like Castilla-La Mancha, where communities have fought to halt the march of ‘macro-farms’ that threaten their wells and their futures. 

In a historic first for New Zealand, the regional council for Canterbury (ECan) officially declared a ‘Nitrate Emergency’ in September 2025, acknowledging that current land use has pushed drinking water to a breaking point. 

From the Mediterranean to the South Pacific, the conversation is shifting from ‘how much can we pollute?’ to ‘how do we restore our right to clean water?’ The Danish discussion about converting high-risk agricultural land back into nature is just the next logical step in this global movement to prioritise public health over corporate expansion.

Stop Big Meat and Dairy

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

Sign now!

We cannot wait for the agribusiness lobby to prioritise our health over their profits – they never will. We need our political representatives to move beyond the failed standards of the past and adopt a precautionary approach to safeguarding our water. Join us in calling for:

• Independent Health Assessments: A comprehensive review of our national nitrate limits, using the 6 mg/L health-based benchmark as the new gold standard for community safety.
  
• Vulnerability Mapping: Immediate protection for communities in high-intensity livestock areas, ensuring that ‘Hotspot’ aquifers are managed with the highest level of caution.
  
• A Transition Fund: Support for farmers to phase out synthetic nitrogen fertilisers and shift toward a food system that restores our land instead of draining its future.

Science isn’t just something done in a lab; it is a tool for community resistance, and together, we can close the gap between the law and the science. It’s time to choose people’s health over corporate profits.

Amanda Larsson is the Food and Agriculture Global Campaign Lead at Greenpeace Aotearoa.