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Greenpeace
is an independent campaigning organisation that uses non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental problems and to force solutions which are essential to a green and peaceful future.
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oceans
Overfishing is the biggest single threat to marine biodiversity. Most of the world's major fisheries are being over-exploited - or even depleted altogether - as industrial-scale fishing fleets vacuum the oceans in the rush to fish into cash. Greenpeace campaigns vigorously for conservation measures to protect fish stocks - and the livelihoods of the fishing communities who depend upon them.
Greenpeace also works to maintain the moratorium on large-scale commercial whaling which was imposed by the International Whaling Commission in 1986. But Norway and Japan are both aggressively pushing to have this ban overturned - and may yet succeed.
Highlights
November 2000: As a direct result of Greenpeace's Atlantic Ocean expedition, the countries of the EU plus China, Japan, the US and 24 other nations ban the import of illegally caught Atlantic tuna.
December 2000: Ecuador bans the purchase and destruction of mangrove forest for aquaculture.
2001: Spain passes law that could revoke the licenses of Spanish nationals working as masters on foreign vessels found guilty of illegal fishing. Most fishing boats arrested for fishing illegally in the Southern Ocean in recent years have involved Spanish nationals.
Challenges for the future
Greenpeace will continue to work towards ending the illegal and unregulated pirate fishing that is decimating fish stocks worldwide.
We wish to build on the two existing whale sanctuaries and make a safe haven for the entire southern hemisphere where 80% of the world's whale populations live.
Greenpeace will work to halt the spread of intensive shrimp farming which is destroying local ecosystems such as mangroves in Latin America. Over the past 30 years, about half of Ecuador's mangrove forests (150,000 hectares) have been lost to the shrimp industry.
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