Double forests victory!

Posted by Richardg — 3 October 2014 at 4:07pm - Comments
double of image of women protesters in Mahan and mechanical forest destruction
All rights reserved. Credit: Greenpeace
Double forest celebration

In the fight for a greener and more peaceful planet, moments of overwhelming celebration are rare. This is one of them! (actually, two of them...)

India's Supreme Court just scrapped over 200 coal mining licences. This includes almost all licences issued in the past 17 years!

The court was horrified by the corruption it found. Mining companies and government officials were working together to make themselves rich at everyone's expense. And we all paid the price too: coal is the world's number one source of climate-wrecking CO2.

This is great news for the people of Mahan, fighting to save their forest from a giant coal mine. Essar, the mining company that wants to destroy the forest, will have to give up or apply for a new licence.

More than 90,000 of us signed the petition to save Mahan Forest.

This isn't just a body blow to the coal industry. It's an opportunity for India to choose renewables over coal, bringing clean power to the 300 million people still without electricity.

A couple of years ago, we got the biggest palm oil producer in Indonesia - Golden Agri Resources - to quit trashing forests.

Working together, we forced massive brands like Unilever, L'Oreal and Procter & Gamble to wean themselves off dirty palm oil produced at forests' expense. The companies that supply them with palm oil had no choice but to follow suit.

Now the rest of the industry is moving! This month, some of the biggest palm oil growers agreed to turn off the bulldozers and put forest destruction on hold.

The fight's not over. These companies could break their promise at any time. But if they keep their word, it shows that the palm oil industry is ready to operate without chopping down ancient trees and tiger habitat. That would be tremendous news.

We'll be in touch as each of these stories develops. In the meantime we want to say thanks -- thanks to all of you who work so hard for a better future.

Progress sometimes isn't as fast as we'd like. But every now and then we take a giant leap forward. This week is proof that when we come together, and stay together, we win.

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