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This article provides information about the Green Peace Movement and It’s Major Achievements !
The priority issue for green peace is climatic changes. They believe the disruption in the ecosystem will likely harm everything from Minke Whales to coral reefs to polar bears. The world forest cover will deplete, and hundreds of thousands of species will become extinct due to drastic weather change.
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Climate change will also bring devastation to people and communities, especially some of the worlds poorest. They do this by sensitising the people about the need to maintain climatic stability and influencing the policy decisions of national governments that may leave an impact on the climate. Some of the green peace actions against some national initiatives which otherwise could have caused adverse environmental changes.
Some of the main avenues of action of green peace movements are in the areas of climate change are saving sea and sea wealth, protection of ancient forests, protesting against genetic engineering, elimination of toxic chemicals, ending nuclear tests, encouraging sustainable trade, and abolishing nuclear weapon. Green peace activists are very prompt in protesting the energy and power plants that may cause environmental deterioration and climatic changes.
They claim burning of coal is one of the main causes for global warming. And this is precisely what many of the giant power plants around the globe do. They accuse that international lending agencies such as Asian Development Bank, World Bank, Japanese International Bank for International Cooperation, Export Agencies etc. all of whose proclaimed agenda is development of underdeveloped, in fact are depriving the people of the both developing and developed nations a healthy living-environment by way of financing huge power projects that cause adverse environmental impact.
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According to Green Peace movement out of the ADB’s entire Energy Portfolio Financing from 1966-2004, only 1.82% went towards funding renewable energy and energy efficiency. The overwhelming majority of financing has been geared towards fossil fuel power projects such as the Masinloc coal plant in the Philippines and Southeast Asia’s largest coal plant in Mae Moh, Thailand and currently funds are being earmarked for newer plants like Map Ta Phut in Thailand. Since Mae Moh began operations in 1955, 30000 people have been displaced, almost 200 killed and thousands suffer from respiratory problems caused by inhalation and exposure to sulphur dioxide from the mine and the power station.
Clean alternatives to fossil fuel power in Asia are widely available. In the Philippines enough wind power potential exists to produce 7 times over the country’s current energy demand. In the Chinese province of Guangdong there exists sufficient wind power potential to meet the equivalent of the current energy supply in Hong Kong. International financing institutions like the ADB, along with the WB, need to stop fuelling the problem of climate change and start financing cleaner, safer solutions. Greenpeace calls on them to commit to a 20% renewable energy target for power project lending annually.
They need to come clean on dirty energy. Green peace activists demonstrate peaceful protest against these projects. They protested the expansion of the Masinloc coal power plant in Manila. Greenpeace activists were at the plant to draw attention to Australian and Japanese backing of the expansion of climate changing coal dependency in Asia. Australia and Japan are underwriting climate change at a time when the Philippines and Asia are facing the likelihood of devastating social and economic instability from climate change precisely when the country and the rest of Asia are least able to deal with its impacts.
Another instance is that of a case in Brazil. The devastating drought currently affecting the Amazon rainforest is part of a vicious cycle created by the combined effects of global warming and deforestation and could cause the collapse of the rainforest, according to scientists. Brazil is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate changes in the world because of its invaluable biodiversity. Seventeen per cent of the Amazon has been completely wiped out over the past 30 years, according to Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and even more has been damaged by destructive and illegal logging and other human activities. Life on Earth depends on ancient forests for its survival.
They are the richest most diverse habitats, and help stabilise climate and regulate the weather. Amazonian deforestation and fires account for more than 75% of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions and place it amongst the top four contributors to global climate change. Greenpeace called on governments to take urgent action to stop deforestation and commit to the massive carbon dioxide reductions needed to protect the Earth’s biodiversity and millions of people who are at risk from the impacts of climate change and ancient forest destruction.
In China the severity of climate change is already bringing two of the world’s mightiest rivers at the brink of collapse. Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences say that environmental damage linked to climate change is pushing the Yellow River source into an ecological breakdown, threatening the lifeblood of 120 million people who rely on it for domestic as well as agricultural and industrial uses.
In the Amazon River region, one of the worst droughts ever recorded is damaging the world’s largest rainforest, with wildfires breaking out, fresh drinking water becoming scarce and polluted and the death of millions of fish as the streams dry up.