The Amazon arrives in Paris, Deep Sea Mining goes to The Hague, and speed limits come to Germany. Here are some of our favourite images from Greenpeace work around the world this week.

The Netherlands – More than 230,000 people have signed a petition calling for a halt to deep-sea mining before it even begins. Greenpeace Netherlands presented the petition to the House of Representatives Committee for Climate and Green Growth in The Hague during the week of World Oceans Day. Greenpeace is calling on The Netherlands to advocate for a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining in international waters. This means that deep-sea mining companies would not be allowed to begin operations as long as the consequences remain insufficiently understood.

France – Indigenous leaders from the Brazilian and Guyanese Amazon are in Paris for the ‘True Cost of Gold’ advocacy tour, bringing Indigenous leaders from the Brazilian Amazon to France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. The tour follows the release of Greenpeace Brazil’s investigation “Gold Laundering in the Amazon: Anatomy of a Fraud” and aims to raise awareness about the impacts of illegal gold mining on Indigenous territories, forests and rivers, while calling for stronger traceability and accountability across global gold supply chains.
The delegation includes Alessandra Korap Munduruku, Juma Xipaia (pictured), Megaron Txucarramãe, Beptuk Metuktire and Tapinkili Anaïman.

Switzerland – Greenpeace activists project two images onto the façade of the Swiss Federal Palace. The first is reminiscent of the famous painting “The Scream” by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch and is designed to resemble the symbol for radioactivity. The activists aim to draw attention to the fact that a return to nuclear energy poses a threat to Switzerland.

Germany – Greenpeace Germany activists protest with speed limit signs with along the Autobahn at the border entry to Germany. Environmental activists are calling for a general speed limit on the autobahn to limit fuel consumption in response to the climate crisis.

Spain – To mark World Environment Day, on 5 June, Greenpeace Spain activists unfurled a giant cartoon in Barcelona’s Park Güell. In this image, a climber holds a sign reading ‘happy world environment day’.

Indonesia – The Greenpeace-initiated ‘Festival Laut’ (Ocean Festival) 2026 brought together thousands of people at Taman Inspirasi Muntig Siokan, Bali, to spotlight the crises facing Indonesia’s oceans, from the exploitation of fishers and plastic pollution to the impact of the climate crisis on coastal communities.

Mexico – In a historic initiative, more than 100 civil society organizations and networks from Mexico and the United States joined forces to call on President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo to address the serious social and environmental issues affecting the country.
Two days before the 2026 World Cup opening ceremony, Greenpeace Mexico activists unfurled a massive 21-meter-long banner 60 meters high on the Estela de Luz. The groups denounced that issues of migration, disappearances, violence, dispossession, forced displacement, and environmental justice have been ignored, and that the commercial interests of the USMCA (United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement) take precedence over the people. The message sent to the Mexican government regarding these issues was clear: “The world is watching.”

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 story was originally posted by Greenpeace MENA for World Environment Day.

I write this as a Lebanese woman who has spent years working with communities across the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA), where an environmental crisis is never only environmental. In a region already burdened by economic collapse, conflict, and instability, climate change is not simply another challenge waiting its turn. It is the multiplier of every problem we already have. 

That is why the climate conversation in MENA does not always sound like the one held in global summits. It is not only about temperature curves, emissions targets, or distant deadlines. It manifests in four very human questions, asked across the region:

How do we afford food?
How do we secure water?
How do we keep the lights on?
How do we protect our children from extreme heat?

These are not separate from climate change. These are climate questions. And they are questions of dignity, justice, and survival.

How climate change impacts food security and water scarcity in MENA

Take food. Our region depends heavily on imports to secure its food needs. This means that droughts, failed harvests, disrupted trade routes, and rising energy costs can quickly become more expensive meals and harder choices for families. What begins as a climate or economic shock elsewhere can arrive very quickly at our kitchen tables.

Water tells an even clearer story. The Middle East and North Africa is already the most water-scarce region in the world, and climate change is making this reality harsher for communities, farmers, and ecosystems. But our story is not only one of scarcity. It is also one of resilience. For generations, people across our region learned how to live with limited water, protect resources, and use every drop wisely.

As we look ahead, resilience will not come only from new technology. It will also come from valuing the knowledge, practices, and respect for nature that helped our communities survive for centuries.

Energy insecurity and the need for a just transition

Then comes the question: How do we keep the lights on? 

The Middle East and North Africa region is home to immense energy resources. Yet for millions of people, reliable and affordable electricity is still not guaranteed. From households relying on generators to families struggling with rising bills, energy insecurity remains a daily reality.

Energy security is not measured only by how much energy we produce. It is measured by whether people can power their homes, run their businesses, keep food fresh, study after sunset, and live with dignity.

This is why a just transition matters. Not only because it reduces emissions, but because it can deliver cleaner, more affordable, and more reliable energy, while creating jobs and strengthening communities.

Extreme heat in MENA

And then there is heat. The MENA region is warming at nearly twice the global average, with temperatures surpassing 50°C in some areas. But heat is not just a number on a thermometer. It is the construction worker spending long hours outdoors in dangerous conditions. It is an elderly person struggling through another night without cooling. It is a child trying to learn in a classroom that has become too hot to concentrate.

When we talk about climate action, this is what we are really talking about: protecting people, their health, their livelihoods, and their ability to build a future where they live.

This is also where climate justice becomes real. The people asking how to afford food, secure water, keep the lights on, and protect their children from extreme heat are often the people with the fewest resources to cope. They are carrying the heaviest impacts, while having the least influence over the decisions that shape their future.

Climate justice means recognising and addressing this imbalance. It means ensuring that communities are not left to face the crisis alone. It means giving people a meaningful voice in shaping the policies, investments, and solutions that will define the future of our region.

Renewable energy and a just transition

A just transition cannot be designed for people. It must be built with them.

For MENA, this means asking harder questions about what kind of transition we are building. Renewable energy is essential, but it must serve people first. Solar and wind should not become another model where resources are extracted, benefits are concentrated elsewhere, and communities continue to bear the costs and remain vulnerable.

A real just transition must answer people’s daily needs. It means expanding decentralised renewable energy, and community solutions that keep the lights on where people live. It means investing in water resilience, protecting ecosystems, and supporting farmers to grow food in ways adapted to a hotter and drier future. It means cooling our cities through trees, shaded streets, better planning, and buildings designed for people, not only for consumption.

Solutions are here. Time for action.

The MENA region is too often described only as vulnerable. The challenges are real, but that story is incomplete. Across our region, communities are already building answers. Young people are demanding accountability. Farmers are reviving resilient practices. Civil society is organising around justice and hope. Cities and communities are showing that another future is possible.

The question is not whether solutions exist. The question is whether decision makers have the political leadership and courage to scale them with the urgency this moment demands.

The planet has been sending  clear warning signals for years. In MENA, these are already emergency sirens.

The response we send back must be equally clear: climate action must protect people’s dignity, strengthen resilience, and deliver justice in daily life. It must help families afford food, secure water, access clean and reliable energy, and protect their children from a hotter future.

We do not have to imagine that future from far away. We have to choose it, build it, and make sure it serves the people who have the most to lose and the most to teach.

That is the response worth sending back.

Have you experienced the impacts of climate change? Share Your Story with Greenpeace MENA

This story is also available at Greenpeace Spain, in Spanish.

Every year, specifically in June, Pride Month fills social media, streets and institutional spaces with flags, messages, speeches and celebrations. Important dates are commemorated, celebrating advances in LGBTQ+ rights and making visible identities that have long been denied.

But this global image doesn’t always feel universal. From the Global South – especially from African and diasporic contexts – many of us experience this month with a complex mix of emotions: recognition, yes, but also distance, tension, and questions that don’t always find a place or space in dominant narratives.

What does the acronym LGBTQ+ stand for, and why is it not neutral?

The acronym LGBTQ+ (a condensed version of LGBTQIA2S+) is an umbrella term used to describe a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. It stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer with the + representing other diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. This acronym has been fundamental in building political visibility and articulating common struggles. However, it is also necessary to recognise that it is a historical construct situated in specific Western contexts, shaped by languages, categories, and ways of understanding gender and sexuality that are not universal.

When these categories are presented as the only possible framework for naming diversity, they risk rendering invisible other forms of existence, identities that do not fit within them, and our relationships and connections. Because naming is not just describing: it is also ordering the world.

How colonial language, legal, religious and administrative systems erase collective memory

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Prior to European colonisation, across the African continent, there were multiple ways of understanding gender, the body, and sexuality that did not conform to a rigid binary model. These understandings were not homogeneous or identical, but they did share something important: they were deeply connected to spirituality.

For example, we could talk about Logun Ede, a minor orisha of the Yoruba pantheon, known as the crown prince, son of Oshun and Oshosi. He represents duality, beauty, youth, and transformation, living six months in the river (feminine characteristics) and six months in the forest (masculine characteristics).

In the community context, we could talk about “Female Husbands”: Historically, some Nigerian women assumed the role of husbands (an economic and social perspective) to marry other women, thus perpetuating lineages. With the process of colonisation, a legal, religious, and administrative system was imposed that reorganised all these realities according to a binary and punitive logic. Anything that did not fit into this order was often reinterpreted as sin, deviation, or crime. 

Anything that did not fit into this order was often reinterpreted as sin, deviation, or crime.

– Rusly Cachina

For example, there is the story of Francisco Manicongo, a person forcibly transported from the Kingdom of Kongo – today part of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola – to Brazil during the 16th century, in the context of the transatlantic slave trade. The reason for his persecution was not only his status as a slave, but also his gender identity and expression, since he dressed and acted according to Congolese traditions associated with the Imbandas, which the colonial authorities interpreted as “sin” (sodomy). His case illustrates how colonial violence not only exploited people but also persecuted and punished sexual and gender dissidence. In this process, not only were bodies criminalised, but memory was also rewritten.

What I am writing goes beyond seeking “proof”, beyond trying to find an African queer history. What emerges is something more complex: the evidence that multiple ways of life exist, which were systematically filtered, erased by colonial logic, or reinterpreted.

Africa is not a territory without queer history

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Stating this does not mean idealising the past or denying internal conflicts or tensions. It implies recognising that diversity is not a recent import.

The problem lies not in a lack of history, but in who has the power to narrate it.

– Rusly Cachina

In various African contexts, there have been non-normative gender roles, diverse relational practices, and historical figures whose existence challenged modern categories. Many of these memories unfortunately survive only in oral narratives, cultural practices, or local languages; others have simply been fragmented by centuries of colonisation and continue to be so due to neocolonialism, radicalisation, religious extremism and the statisation of law.

The problem lies not in a lack of history, but in who has the power to narrate it.

The queer present: violence, war and inequality

Discussing decolonisation cannot be relegated to the past. The here-and-now, the present, armed conflicts, political instability, and resource exploitation continue to shape the lives of billions of people in various territories of the Global South.

In regions like the Democratic Republic of Congo, armed conflicts – including the presence of groups like the M23 – cannot be understood without the broader context of extractive economies, decades of structural violence, and geopolitical interests. In these contexts, violence is embodied. It is not abstract.

These people – whom Western categories reduce to the acronym LGBTQ+, but who in their territories are known as Woubi, Mashoga, or Shoga, among many others – face social stigmatisation, a lack of institutional protection, and, in many cases, direct violence in contexts where state collapse and militarisation exacerbate all forms of abuse.

War is not only territorial. It is also bodily.

What has climate change and global inequality got to do with Pride?

Climate crises add multiple layers of complexity. They don’t affect everyone equally. In the Global South, their effects translate into displacement, food insecurity, loss of livelihoods, and forced migration. Within this scenario, people in our community face specific vulnerabilities: unequal access to shelter, dehumanisation in humanitarian contexts, and exclusion from protection networks.

The climate emergency is not just environmental: it is profoundly political and social.

Pride as a contested space

Pride, as it is celebrated today in many parts of the world, can be both a space for celebration and a space for exclusion. 

For many bodies from the Global South – migrants, racialised, black, or trans, as is my direct case – recognition is often partial: we are made visible at specific moments, or to put it bluntly, we are “exposed” or “displayed”, but we are forgotten within everyday structures.

We are invited to be part of it, but under conditions of legibility: fitting into pre-defined categories, translating into languages that do not always belong to us, molding ourselves to frameworks that do not always fully include us.

How can we decolonise Pride?

Decolonising pride doesn’t mean rejecting global struggles. Decolonising also means recognising that there isn’t just one way to experience diversity. It means accepting that acronyms, while necessary, aren’t enough. And above all, it means opening spaces for other memories, other languages, and other ways of naming who we are.

The history of diversity doesn’t begin in a single place or at a single moment. And because justice, to be real, must also be able to understand what has been silenced.

So what now?

If pride wants to be more than a celebration, then it should also be a practice of responsibility. For those who live in the so-called “global minority”, that means going beyond symbolic support or visibility during a specific month. It means facing the contradictions head-on.

It is inconsistent to celebrate progress while participating in systems that perpetuate violence in other territories.

– Rusly Cachina

It’s not enough for states to guarantee rights within their borders if, at the same time, they finance, negotiate, or maintain economic and political relationships with governments that persecute our community. It is inconsistent to celebrate progress while participating (directly or indirectly) in systems that perpetuate violence in other territories.

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Responsibility is also political. How can you embrace diversity in Pride and beyond?

It translates into demanding consistency from governments themselves: in their trade agreements, in their role in armed conflicts, in their foreign policies, and in their relationship with extractive industries that sustain economies of violence. It means getting informed, questioning, and not settling for a comfortable narrative where rights forget about the wars outside their own borders.

But it also means something closer: listening without imposing, leaving room for other ways of naming, not translating all realities into one’s own categories, and living diversity. It is not about “giving a voice”, but about stopping occupying all the space. Because decolonising and de-Westernising Pride is not an abstract idea. It is a daily practice.

And it begins by accepting that the struggle for diversity cannot be separated from the global structures that continue to produce violence, inequality and silencing.

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Rusly Cachina is a Member of Migrantia, Equality Technician, Head of Afro-Queer Migrations, Coordinator of Voz Migrantia Lavapiés, Coordinator of AMIGRAS, Activist, and Trans Expert Peer.

Guest authors work with Greenpeace to share their personal experiences and perspectives and are responsible for their own content.

How the war on Iran fuels an energy shock and cost of living crisis

It has been 100 days since the US and Israel launched their attacks on Iran on 28 February 2026, throwing the region into deeper violence and pushing up fuel, food and transport costs around the world. This war is a human tragedy that is deepening a global cost of living crisis in a world still dangerously dependent on oil and gas.

This blog sets out six concrete policy ideas governments can implement now to protect people from the Iran energy shock and accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels.

History shows that moments like this can also unlock transformative decisions. After the Second World War, governments created social safety nets and public health systems; the 1970s oil shocks led to fuel efficiency standards, strategic reserves and, in some countries, the birth of modern environmental policy. Today’s overlapping crises – war, an unprecedented energy shock, a cost of living crunch and a worsening climate emergency – do not just echo past shocks, they expose a fossil fuel system that can no longer sustain the society built on it.

1. Ground private jets and mega‑yachts before grounding ordinary people

If governments are genuinely worried about fuel shortages and high prices, they should start with the most pointless and polluting uses of oil. Private jets and superyachts are the purest form of luxury emissions: they burn staggering amounts of fuel per person and are used by a tiny elite, while everyone else is told to “tighten their belts”.

Jet fuel markets are already strained, and shipping routes have been upended by the war on Iran, driving up marine fuel costs. Restricting or temporarily banning private jets and megayachts, would relieve pressure on fuel markets at the margins, but more importantly it would send a clear signal about fairness: in an emergency, the first flights grounded should be private, not the holiday or family trips of ordinary people. Combined with investments in affordable public transport, rail, and night trains, this is a simple way to show that governments are serious about putting people before luxury emissions.

2. Make public transport free using war‑profit taxes

The transport sector is responsible for around 60% of total oil demand globally. If one conflict can send fuel and ticket prices soaring, the least governments can do is make it easier and cheaper for people to move without being held hostage by oil. A bold way to do that is time‑bound free or ultra‑cheap public transport, funded by taxes on fossil fuel war profits.

This is not a fantasy. Spain’s free commuter rail, Germany’s 9‑euro ticket and Luxembourg’s nationwide free transit all showed that cheap or free public transport boosts ridership, cuts car use and lowers emissions, while saving households money. In Brazil, more than 100 municipalities have rolled out Tarifa Zero schemes offering fare‑free buses, and in India Delhi’s “pink tickets” policy has made buses free for women, improving safety and access to jobs and education.

A permanent surtax on the profits of fossil fuel companies – whose profits have again jumped on the back of the Iran war – applied at global level to the biggest oil and gas corporations could raise tens of billions, enough to pay for several years of free buses, trams and trains. That would give people immediate cost‑of‑living relief, provide funds for public transport electrification at scale, and help new habits stick long after the crisis ends.

3. Ban fossil fuel and meat advertising

Every time there is a war or energy shock, fossil fuel companies run the same PR play. First they warn of an “unprecedented crisis”, then they present themselves as the only grown‑ups in the room, and finally they spend millions on ads about “reliable energy” while lobbying quietly for more drilling, more subsidies and more delays to climate action. 

Big meat and dairy corporations use a similar playbook: marketing meat‑heavy diets as “normal” or even “healthy” while relying on highly polluting, methane‑intensive factory farming and deforestation that turbocharge the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. It is time to treat fossil fuel and industrial meat advertising the way the world treated tobacco ads and start phasing it out.

A comprehensive ban on fossil fuel and industrial meat advertising and sponsorship, including oil and gas logos on sports events like the upcoming FIFA World Cup 2026 in the US, Canada and Mexico, cultural institutions, “greenwashing” billboards and social media campaigns, as well as glossy ads that hide how meat giants are linked to forest destruction, land grabs and animal cruelty, would not cut emissions overnight. But it would strip the agribusiness and fossil fuel industries of one of their most powerful tools for buying social licence and political influence. Cities like Amsterdam, which has already moved to ban public adverts for meat and fossil fuels, show that this kind of rule is both possible and popular.

Several cities and regions have already moved to ban or restrict fossil ads. The war on Iran should be the moment to scale that up to national and international level and expand it to cover the most polluting forms of meat and dairy advertising too.

4. Cut plastic, cut oil: shift subsidies to reuse and refill systems

99% of plastic is made from oil and gas, which means the war on Iran energy shock is also a plastic price shock. As fuel and gas prices spike, the cost of everyday goods that are made of plastic or wrapped in it rises too, from food packaging to household products. In Europe, the price of PET plastic used in soda bottles and other food packaging jumped by around 15% in a single year, while polyethylene prices in North America climbed by nearly 30%, piling extra pressure on families who are already struggling with higher bills.

Governments can use this moment to stop pouring public money into petrochemicals and plastic, and instead back reuse and refill systems that cut fossil fuel demand at the source. Redirecting petrochemical and plastic subsidies into community‑centred reuse and refill infrastructure would support plastic‑free, standardised packaging across consumer goods sectors, with local, accessible reverse‑logistics that slash waste, resource use and emissions. Done right, this shift would also create sustainable jobs and reduce people’s exposure to toxic chemicals and plastic pollution in their food, water and homes.

This is already starting to happen. In France, a new national, standardised reuse system backed by legislated reuse targets is rolling out reusable glass packaging for popular food and drink products across several regions. Ottawa in Canada is piloting a city‑wide, multi‑brand reuse project for personal and home‑care products, and in Jakarta the Kecipir app links people directly with farmers using zero‑waste packaging. With the right rules and funding, national governments can phase out petrochemical and plastic subsidies, set binding reuse and zero‑waste targets, and empower local authorities and producer‑responsibility schemes to design reuse‑first systems that shorten supply chains, improve access and deliver real benefits to communities.

5. Build a Strategic Battery Reserve

After the 1970s oil crisis, countries like the United States created Strategic Petroleum Reserves, and International Energy Agency (IEA) members agreed to hold at least 90 days of net oil imports in emergency stocks. Fifty years later, the war on Iran is screaming that one of the real security tools we now need is a strategic energy reserve built around renewables and storage, not more fossil fuels.

A Strategic Battery and Energy Storage Reserve would mean a strategic energy reserve connected to the grid, spread across regions, that can store surplus wind and solar power and step in when renewable supplies are disrupted, including large‑scale battery systems in combination with other forms of storage such as pumped hydro, compressed air, thermal storage and flywheels.

A binding requirement on governments to hold a minimum level of grid‑scale energy storage – for example, targets proportional to each country’s electricity demand or peak demand, with IEA member countries ramping up from today’s levels towards tens of gigawatt‑hours of storage capacity over the next decade – would help keep the lights on during crises, stabilise grids day‑to‑day and provide a guaranteed market that drives storage manufacturing and deployment. Batteries are expected to provide the majority of new storage capacity in clean energy transitions, but other storage options such as pumped hydro have clear cost advantages for longer‑duration storage, and can reduce pressure on energy transition minerals.

Ensuring the use of appropriate battery types can considerably reduce the amounts of key minerals needed, and combining batteries with other storage technologies can further cut material demand. Countries like Spain and Italy already have storage targets, and at recent COP29 UN climate talks a group of governments pledged to increase global storage capacity sixfold by 2030.

China’s current “solar surplus” crisis shows what happens when grids and storage fail to keep pace with record‑breaking renewable roll‑out: without enough storage, clean power is wasted instead of replacing fossil fuels. At the same time, Ukraine’s experience with decentralised renewable energy during war has demonstrated that distributed solar and storage are a global security imperative, not just a climate solution, and many governments are now looking to learn from and fund this model. This crisis is the perfect reason to go from pledges to concrete storage reserve obligations.

6. Fix food security by breaking fertiliser addiction

The Iran war has exposed another ugly truth: modern food systems are dangerously dependent on fossil fuels, especially gas‑based synthetic fertilisers. When fertiliser prices spike, farmers struggle to afford them  and harvests are threatened, while Big Ag companies report record profits. A real solution is to fast‑track ecologically sound and localised food systems based on food sovereignty and resilience, shifting to agroecology and fossil‑free farming capable of surviving external shocks, either climactic or geopolitical. Agribusiness lobbyists use “food security” rhetoric to demand deregulation and subsidies whenever prices rise, even as fertiliser giants pocket windfall gains from crises like this one.

Instead of bailing them out, governments should foster food sovereignty and support farmers to cut synthetic fertiliser use, expand crop rotations, cover crops and nitrogen‑fixing plants, cap factory farming and prioritise food over animal feed, while investing in local, ecological food systems.

Public food stockholding and smart supply‑management tools can be more immediate actions that can stabilise prices, while emergency support goes directly to low‑ and middle‑income families, not corporate balance sheets.

Why these ideas matter

On their own, none of these ideas will end the war on Iran or dismantle the fossil fuel system that made it so dangerous. Together, though, they point to a different kind of crisis response: one that protects people first, makes war profiteers pay, and treats renewables, public services and ecological farming as essential defenses, not optional extras.

The last 100 days have shown that making the world dependent on fossil fuels is a recipe for permanent instability and economic disruption. The next 100 days should be about doing something bolder than tinkering with tax rates and releasing a few more barrels of oil from emergency caverns.

The tools to build a fair, renewable‑powered, war‑resistant economy are already here. The question now is whether political leaders will finally use them.

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Tax fossil fuel profits to support communities hit by disasters and invest in energy independence.

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