Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organisation founded in 1971 in Vancouver, Canada. Its aim is to protect and defend the environment by intervening in different places on the planet where nature is under attack and the environment is endangered. It undertakes campaigns to stop climate change, protect biodiversity, promote healthy eating, reject the use of genetically modified foods, reduce pollution, prevent the disappearance of animal species and plant havens, end the use of nuclear energy and weapons, and protect forests and natural landscapes, especially in the Arctic.
It has offices in more than forty-four countries around the world, more than three million members and a famous ship, the Rainbow Warrior. It would take pages and pages to list its immense task, but we can highlight the fact that it focuses on the most serious threats to the future of the planet, such as nuclear energy, toxic chemicals, deforestation, climate change, and the thawing of the Arctic ice. Its actions include those against the multinational oil company, Esso, owner of the Exxon Valdez, which sunk off the coast of Alaska, the struggle against whale hunting, the catastrophe of the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, opposition to atomic tests and the constant struggle for peace. Human lives have been risked (and lost) in this struggle to defend the environment.
LiverdPress Award 2017
Greenpeace received the 2017 LiverdPress Award for its immense, independent, courageous, dangerous and hugely valuable work in defence of the environment, for its struggle against climate change and for the preservation of species, for its denunciation of threats to the planet and its efforts to achieve a more rational, healthy and liveable world for all humanity and the animal and plant species we live with, and for the defence of our way of life, our natural quality of life and our future in the face of the political and economic interests of the powerful. It is probably one of the most essential and necessary organisations for humanity, without which we would be in a critical situation. Thank you so much.