Three wins for the climate

by Ben Ayliffe
Good news comes in threes, they say. Unless, of course, you happen to be Equinor, OMV or Teck Resources – three fossil fuel companies who’ve all recently had very bad days at the office.
Why is this good news? Because what’s bad for an oil company tends to be good for the climate and for people around the world.
1. OMV fails to find oil in New Zealand
Last week, news broke that Austrian energy company OMV’s latest offshore well in New Zealand had come up dry
, a massive – and welcome – blow for the very future of the oil industry there. Back in 2018, New Zealand took the radical – or sensible – step of banning all new offshore oil exploration permits. At the time this didn’t stop OMV from pressing ahead with its plan to explore for new oil in licence blocks it already owned in the stormy seas of the Great South Basin, and further north off the country’s west coast. After Shell, Equinor and Chevron all abandoned their drilling permits, OMV is the last major oil company left and it was betting on a major find .

Activists hold placards outside Austrian Oil company OMV’s office in Wellington. © Greenpeace / Marty Melville

Not one to take OMV’s threat lying down, Greenpeace and our friends and allies in the climate movement mobilised for action, as iwi, hapū, local councils, and hundreds of thousands of people stood to oppose deep sea oil drilling. Indeed, OMV got some pretty strong messages
from people determined to stop them – from climbers scaling skyscrapers to a museum of oil history and from dockside antics to protests back home . After all the protests, this one dry well has put a wrecking ball through OMV’s hopes of drilling for more oil we can’t afford to burn.
2. Canadian fossil fuel firm Teck backs off
On Monday, Teck Resources
, a Canadian energy and mining firm, withdrew its application to build what could have been the largest-ever  tar sands mine. Scrapping the mine, which would have produced 260,000 barrels of dirty tar sands oil every day, is a major win for the climate and for Indigenous communities whose cultural, hunting and other rights would have been threatened by the mine’s environmental impact. The win comes as a result of a  campaign led by Indigenous Land Defenders.

An oil sands surface mine, near Fort McMurray, Alberta © Ian Willms / Greenpeace

The ill-fated  mine never made any economic or climate sense. As the company itself admitted
, “global capital markets are changing rapidly and investors and customers are increasingly looking for jurisdictions to have a framework in place that reconciles resource development and climate change, in order to produce the cleanest possible products.”
3. The Great Australian Bight sees the back of Norwegian drillers Equinor   
Norwegian oil giant Equinor has pulled the plug
on its plans to drill for oil in the fragile Great Australian Bight, saying it was “no longer commercially competitive.” The Bight is a marine treasure trove, home to more unique marine life than the Great Barrier Reef and one of the most important whale sanctuaries on Earth that would all have been threatened by plans to drill nearly 2 billion barrels of oil from these waters. Chevron and BP both walked away from the Bight and after years of relentless campaigning by coastal communities, Indigenous traditional owners, NGOs, surfers, the seafood industry, tourism operators and other local businesses, Equinor have gone too – keeping the equivalent of over 800,000,000 tonnes of carbon locked up for good.

Drone footage of Bunda Cliffs in the Great Australian Bight. The Bight is a pristine stretch of ocean off the southern coastal fringe of Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria. It is a globally significant whale nursery, home to one of only two southern right whale calving grounds in the world, and a feeding area for blue whales, humpback whales, orcas and sea lions. It is also one of Australia’s most important fisheries. In fact, 85% of marine life in the Great Australian Bight is found nowhere else on earth. © Greenpeace / Jaimen Hudson

And whether it be with the Rainbow Warrior, working alongside aerial videographers and scientists, taking our message to the belly of the beast, exposing

industry secrets or meeting investors, Greenpeace activists around the world did their bit too. Because oil and whales – and sharks, seals and the global climate, for that matter – really don’t mix.
So besides the obvious, what links these three oil industry sob stories?
Firstly, there’s people power: incredible stories of people and communities determined to take on and hold to account some of the biggest and most influential companies in the world. We’re in the middle of a climate emergency and with our very future at stake, people will take action when governments and businesses refuse to.

A drilling rig commissioned by oil giant OMV arrives in New Zealand to drill 12 exploratory drilling wells off the coast of Taranaki. © Greenpeace / Geoff Reid

Then there is the bigger picture. These are all signs that the industry is tipping into a spiral of decline. No longer confidently striding out into new risky, remote and fragile waters, the big oil players are entering a new chapter. We can tell they are spooked not least because across the sector the PR greenwashing has gone into overdrive. They are talking themselves up but totally failing to put their money where their mouth is. Companies like these caused the climate crisis but are showing no real signs of transitioning fast enough.Trek, Equinor and OMV’s bad news are signals that change is coming whether they like it or not – there will be no place for oil and gas companies in the future if we want to avoid climate chaos.
They know it. And we know it.

Steven Donziger: The man who stood up to an oil giant, and paid the price

by Rex Weyler
In the fall of 2016, I travelled to Ecuador’s Amazon Basin, where I met Indigenous communities and Campesino farmers whose land had been polluted by toxic oil waste. They had won a landmark court judgement against the Chevron Corporation, but the company refused to pay. I visited the one, tiny clinic serving thousands of cancer patients, and also met the victims’ American lawyer, who has spent the last 27 years defending their rights.

^{Steven Donziger, lawyer for the Ecuador plaintiffs for 25 years, at an oil site in Ecuador’s Amazon}

You’ve probably never heard of Steven Donziger, but I believe history will place Donziger – a man vilified by his corporate opponents – alongside Gandhi, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, Vandana Shiva, and other leaders of human rights and environmental resistance to corporate malfeasance and arrogance.
At the time of writing, Donziger has been trapped in home detention for six months. He has still not actually been convicted of any crime. By all accounts, he appears to be a political prisoner of a private corporation bolstered by a cooperative federal judge.
We live in an era of vast ecological decline and social disparity. Toxins poison all life on Earth, about half of Earth’s Pleistocene forests
are gone, and thousands of species go extinct every year. Meanwhile, according to the UN , over nine million people starve to death annually, with over 800 million people suffering from chronic malnourishment. In December, an eye-witness to violence against Indigenous people in Brazil concluded, “There is no environmental justice without social justice.” 
The link between ecological protection and human rights is evident in Ecuador’s Amazon basin, where massive oil pollution has destroyed forests and farms and left some of the world’s poorest people with birth defects and a cancer epidemic. In 1993, Ecuador’s Frente de Defensa de la Amazonía
(FDA), representing 30,000 victims of Chevron’s toxic oil waste, asked Donziger to help them win compensation for what is likely the largest oil-related human disaster in history.
Eight years ago, Donziger and the FDA legal team won the largest court judgement in history for human rights and environmental violations, a $9.5 billion verdict against the Chevron Corporation. Following this verdict, Chevron sold their assets in Ecuador, fled the country, threatened the plaintiffs with a “lifetime of litigation” if they attempted to collect, and – according to internal Chevron memos
– launched a retaliatory campaign to “demonize” Donziger.  From Chevron’s subsequent actions, it appears that they also intended to impoverish him so that he could no longer work to collect the judgement in other jurisdictions. 

The public defender

 ^{Steven Donziger with his clients in Ecuador.}

After graduating from Harvard Law in 1991, Donziger became a Public Defender, representing young people in Washington DC. In Iraq, during the first Gulf War, Donziger helped document civilian casualties and co-authored a report adopted by the United Nations. Since 1993, the Ecuador pollution case has consumed his legal career.
The ecological and human rights tragedy began in 1964, when Texaco (now Chevron), discovered oil in Ecuador. The oil company ignored routine waste regulations, dumping some 16 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into rivers and pits, polluting groundwater and farm land. According to Amazon Watch
, Chevron flouted environmental regulations to save an estimated $3 on every barrel of oil produced, earning an extra $5 billion over 20 years. 
In 1993, in a New York federal court, Donziger and the legal team filed a class-action lawsuit against the company. In 2000, Chevron bought Texaco, insisted that the case be moved to Ecuador, and filed 14 affidavits swearing to honour Ecuador’s judicial system as competent and suitable to adjudge the case.
At the trial in Ecuador, 54 judicial site inspections confirmed that Chevron caused oil contamination in violation of legal standards. The reports showed that the average Chevron waste pit in Ecuador contained 200 times the contamination allowed by US and world standards.
Some 900 illegal waste pits leached into the water table, local drinking water became noxious, and citizens became ill. The contamination contained illegal levels of barium, cadmium, copper, mercury, lead, and other metals that can damage the immune and reproductive systems and cause cancer. Children were born with birth defects.

Veronica Gauman and her mother Carmen, one family of thousands, who became casualties of the birth defects epidemic following oil contamination. © Amazon Watch.

In 2011, after eight years of trial and deliberations, hampered by Chevron’s delaying tactics, Donziger and his team won the court case in Ecuador. Two appeals courts and the nation’s Supreme Court, the Court of Cessation, confirmed the decision. A total of 17 appellate judges ruled unanimously that Chevron was responsible for the contamination and owed Donziger’s clients $9.5 billion. Donziger expected his clients to receive medical attention and land reparations.
However, Chevron defied the Ecuadorian courts, where they insisted the trial be held. They refused to pay the debt, began defaming Ecuadors’ courts, and initiated a retaliatory attack on the victims and on Mr. Donziger.

“Demonize Donziger“

To attack Donziger, Chevron hired private detectives to shadow him, his family, and supporters. They hired one of the world’s most notorious law firms, the avowed “corporate rescue” specialists Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher. The High Court of England censured
Gibson Dunn for fabricating evidence in a previous case. Judges in California, Montana, and New York have censured Gibson Dunn for witness tampering, obstruction, intimidation, and “legal thuggery.” In Ecuador, Gibson Dunn lawyers even threatened judges with jail if they ruled against Chevron.
To “demonize” Donziger, the Gibson Dunn lawyers filed a civil RICO racketeering case against him and two Ecuadorian plaintiffs, Secoya Indigenous leader Javier Piaguaje and farmer Hugo Camacho. Judge Lewis Kaplan – widely viewed as being friendly to large corporations – agreed to hear the unusual case, which would become one of the most notorious intimidation lawsuits (SLAPP suits) of all time. Prominent trial lawyer John Keker, who had represented Donziger, called the Kaplan trial a “Dickensian farce” driven by Kaplan’s “implacable hostility” toward Donziger.
Kaplan had spent 24 years at the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, known for helping large banks such as Citigroup escape fraud charges
. In a tax shelter fraud case against the giant corporate accounting firm KPMG, Kaplan threw out cases against 13 indicted executives, even though the company had admitted criminal wrongdoing and paid $456 million in penalties.
In the attack on Donziger, Kaplan authorized Gibson Dunn to subpoena and depose dozens of people who had helped fund the case, harassing innocent citizens as if contributing to pay court expenses was illegal. When Kaplan waived normal media confidentiality, demanding that filmmaker Joseph Berlinger turn over outtakes from his 2009 documentary, Crude: The Real Price of Oil
, a media coalition — including The New York Times, NBC, and HBO — filed a First Amendment objection with the court.
Kaplan, and Chevron’s Gibson Dunn lawyer, Randy Mastro, repeatedly insulted the courts in Ecuador. Mastro called the Ecuador courts “a sham.” Kaplan claimed the Ecuador trial “was not a bona fide litigation,” and he insulted the 30,000 class-action victims, calling them “so-called plaintiffs.”
By imposing an impossible deadline, Kaplan invoked a technicality to claim that Donziger had “waived” all attorney-client privilege, and insisted he turn over 17 years worth of confidential communications with his clients. Defense attorneys called this “the most sweeping forced production of privileged documents in history.” The corporate-friendly judge barred the defense from even mentioning “pollution in Ecuador,” which, he said, was “not relevant.”

^{Oil polluting Ecuador’s rivers. © Amazon Watch}

On the eve of the RICO trial, Chevron dropped its financial damages claim, allowing Kaplan to dismiss the jury of impartial fact-finders, so he could decide the outcome himself. “Chevron,” said Donziger, “apparently panicked at the notion of trying to sell its fraud claims to anyone other than Kaplan.” Kaplan allowed anonymous witnesses from Chevron, which defense attorneys said violated “basic legal principles” and would “be right at home in the Spanish Inquisition.”
Finally, Kaplan accepted Chevron’s star witness, Alberto Guerra, a disgraced former Ecuadorian judge, who had been removed from the bench for accepting bribes, and who received some $2 million in cash and benefits from Chevron, in violation of legal and ethical principles. In exchange, Guerra claimed that Donziger had approved a “bribe” to an Ecuadorian judge and had written the final court ruling for the judge, which he allegedly gave to him on a computer drive. No corroborating evidence was ever offered. Guerra later admitted lying
to Chevron about these facts to extract a bigger reward for his testimony, and a forensic investigation of the Ecuadorian judge’s computer proved that he had lied. By all appearances, the entire story had been fabricated to frame Donziger.
Nevertheless, without a jury, Judge Kaplan accepted Guerra’s contrived evidence and “convicted” Donziger of fraud. Finally, Kaplan ordered Donziger to turn over his computer and cellphone for review by Chevron. Since this order violated basic attorney-client confidentiality, Donziger rightfully refused to obey Kaplan’s bizarre order until the court of appeals could decide the issue.
Outraged, Kaplan charged Donziger with criminal contempt. However, the order and the contempt charge were so outrageous that the New York prosecutor’s office refused to take the case. Kaplan defied the state legal authorities and appointed a private lawyer to act as prosecutor, who in turn ordered that Donziger be placed under “pre-trial home detention.”
Which is where he has been for the last six months, far longer than the longest sentence ever imposed on a lawyer charged with contempt. His lawyer believes he is the only person in the United States in pre-trial detention on a misdemeanor charge.

The great injustice 

“Mr. Donziger came to our aid at a time when our communities had been poisoned, and we were up against one of the largest corporations in the world,” said Luis Yanza, cofounder and president of the FDA
. “Thanks to Mr. Donziger’s generous work, three layers of Ecuador courts found Chevron guilty of deliberately dumping billions of gallons of toxic oil waste into the Amazon rainforest. Chevron has refused to pay the court-ordered compensation, and has instead set out to, in their own words, “demonize Mr. Donziger.”
Donziger’s lawyer, Andrew Frisch, has stated that “Chevron’s case … rested on the paid testimony of a witness who was paid over $1 million. He admitted to changing his story multiple times to sweeten his deal with Chevron.” Frisch stated that Judge Kaplan’s rulings, “have been contradicted in whole or in part by seventeen appellate judges in Ecuador and ten in Canada, including in unanimous decisions of the highest courts in both countries.
“Mr. Donziger is a person of integrity,” attorney Deepak Gupta testified at Mr. Donziger’s New York bar hearing. “Mr. Donziger is indisputably an advocate dedicated to helping Indigenous Peoples and local communities of the Amazon play equally on the same fields of civil litigation … dominated by the Chevrons of the world. I have never seen a judge whose disdain for one side of the case was this palpable. A great injustice was being done.”

^{The author (left) with lawyer, Aaron Marr Page, at a Chevron waste pit in Ecuador}

“I did not set out to be an environmental lawyer,” says Donziger. “I simply agreed to seek a remedy for 30,000 victims for the destruction of their lands and water; to seek care for the health impacts including birth defects, leukemia, and other cancers; and to help them restore their Amazon ecosystem and basic dignity. I expected Chevron to fight back, and they had the opportunity to do so during the eight year trial in Ecuador. I did not, however, expect the lengths they would go to to attack me personally, attack my family, attack their victims, and defy a legal judgement that they pay for their crimes, as proven in a court of law.”
Those affected by Chevron’s pollution are modest, honourable, self-reliant people. They had no money to hire lawyers. Donziger solved that problem by getting donors and investors to buy small portions of the judgment to pay case expenses. He recruited leading litigators in Ecuador, the United States, and Canada. “This is the first time that Indigenous Peoples and impoverished farmers had access to this level of capital and legal talent, which is why Chevron is so terrified of the model,” said Donziger. “Chevron not only wants to win the case, they want to kill the very idea of the case.”
“This case is not just about the fate of Mr. Donziger,” says Simon Taylor, director of Global Witness in London. “A lasting injustice to him would chill the important work of other environmental and corporate accountability advocates engaged in similar legal battles against powerful corporations. This is of particular concern, given our work on the escalating threats and escalating killings and judicial harassment of environmental defenders.”
Because of the Kaplan decision, and lobbying by Kaplan and Gibson-Dunn lawyers, the bar grievance committee in New York suspended Mr. Donziger’s law license without a hearing. However, bar referee and former federal prosecutor John Horan called for a hearing and recommended the return of Mr. Donziger’s law license. “The extent of his pursuit by Chevron is so extravagant, and at this point so unnecessary and punitive,” Horan wrote. “My recommendation is that his interim suspension should be ended, and that he should be allowed to resume the practice of law.” Donziger responded that, “Any neutral judicial officer who looks objectively at the record almost always finds against Chevron and Kaplan,” said Donziger. “The tide is turning and the hard evidence about the extreme injustice in Kaplan’s court will be exposed.”

In spite of getting his law license back, Steven Donziger remains in home detention, wearing an ankle bracelet. It now appears that the only fraud in this case is that committed by Chevron’s retaliatory attack against Mr. Donziger and his clients, and by Chevron’s paid witnesses, who gave fabricated evidence. His work for the Indigenous and farmer communities of Ecuador’s Amazon is work for all of us. His compassion and perseverance provide an enduring model of citizen commitment to ecology, justice, and common decency.

---

Sources and Links: 
Declining species: (1) Biomass Study, Bar-on, Phillips, Milo: Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences, May 21, 2018; Article #17-11842; PNAS
; and (2) The Extinction Crisis,” Center for Biological Diversity .
Global hunger: (1) “Global hunger continues to rise,” UN, World Health Organization
; and (2) “Global Hunger Facts,” Mercy Corps .
Impacts of Chevron oil pollution in Ecuador: (1) Indigenous communities affected: ChevronToxico
; (2) health impacts on Indigenous groups: independent health studies  cited by the court. (3) Summary of evidence against Chevron found by Ecuador’s courts: evidence ; (4) Environmental Impacts of Chevron in Ecuador: ; (5) Video, Chevron in Ecuador: video on the case . (6) A Rainforest Chernobyl: ChevronToxico ;
Ecuador Supreme Court unanimous judgement
vs. Chevron.
Frente de Defensa de la Amazonía (“Amazon Defense Coalition”), representing the 30,000 victims of Chevron’s oil pollution. FDA
.
Gibson-Dunn law firm censures: (1) “Chevron Law Firm Gibson Dunn Blasted by High Court of England For Falsifying Evidence: Chevron Pit
, March 25, 2015.” (2) Gibson Dunn firm frequently criticized and sanctioned  by courts for crossing the ethical line. (3) Montana Supreme Court $9.9 million fine against Gibson-Dunn: Montana Supreme Court document, 05-378, 2007, MT 62. (4) “Gibson Dunn’s Ecuador narrative crumbling; the firm’s unethical tactics”:  The Chevron Pit .
Chevron’s Gibson Dunn lawyers threatened Ecuador’s judges with jail
.
“Amnesty International Demands Criminal Investigation of Chevron Over Witness Bribery and Fraud in Ecuador Pollution Litigation;” referral of Chevron and Gibson Dunn lawyers to US Department of Justice by Amnesty International et al., allegations that Chevron and U.S. Judge Kaplan used false testimony to attack the Ecuador judgment and human rights defender Donziger; makechevroncleanup.com
, July 2019.
“Chevron’s Threat to Open Society,” a 2014 letter
signed by over 40 US environmental and civil rights organizations  (including Greenpeace, Amazon Watch, Rainforest Action Network, Sierra Club, and Friends of the Earth) stating that Chevron’s tactics “targeted nonprofit environmental and Indigenous rights groups … designed to cripple their effectiveness and chill their speech.”
Shareholders rebuke Chevron, June 2017, Amazon Defense Coalition
  
How the US courts got it wrong: rebuttal, Chevron RICO case. Steven Donziger

Deepak Gupta brief appealing the Kaplan RICO judgment, with an excellent fact section that covers the case history: Gupta Wessler, pdf
, July 2014.
Chevron’s bribery and fabrication
of evidence in U.S. courts to evade Ecuador judgment
Alberto Guerra’s false testimony: (1) Chevron falsification of Guerra’s testimony: background
and legal motion ; (2) Chevron’s Star Witness Admits to Lying in the Amazon Pollution Case,” Eva Hershaw, Vice News , Oct 26 2015. (3) Forensic results on Ecuador judge’s computer: “Expert rebuttal Report of Christopher Racich, Issuu Documents , December, 16, 2013. (4) Adam Klasfeld, “Ecuadorean Judge Backflips on Explosive Testimony for Chevron,” Courthouse News Service , 2015. (5) Guerra admitted lying to Chevron about alleged bribes: US/Ecuador arbitration transcripts , pages: 630-31, and 744
Judge Lewis Kaplan bias and legal errors: (1) Mandamus Petition to recuse Judge Kaplan, Patton
; (2) Mandamus Petition to recuse Kaplan, 2013: ChevroninEcuador.org .
“Collateral Estoppel,” by Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson, The Harvard Law Record
, December 6, 2019: How the New York courts and bar have attempted to silence Steven Donziger and hide the facts of Chevron’s Ecuador pollution.
Letters from lawyers Andrew J. Frisch, Rita M. Glavin, Brian P. Maloney, and Sareen K. Armani, in support of Steven Donziger, to Judge Preska (appointed by Kaplan) in criminal contempt case seeking relief from Donziger home detention, Andrew J. Frisch PLLC
.
“Roger Waters Tells Chevron’s New CEO to Finally Clean up Ecuador,” video, Amazon Watch
.
“Chevron’s SLAPP suit against Ecuadorians: corporate intimidation,” Rex Weyler, Greenpeace, 11 May 2018. The civil RICO case, rulings of Judge Kaplan, and tactics of Chevron, Randy Mastro, and the Gibson-Dunn law firm.
Violence against environmental and human rights activists, Brazilian Cerrado region of industrial soya farms, Greenpeace Report, December 13, 2019. 
“Chevron’s Corrupt Legal Practices Called Out by Leading Human Rights and Environmental NGOs,” Paul Paz y Mino, Amazon Watch

, June 25, 2019

about the author

Rex Weyler

Rex Weyler was a director of the original Greenpeace Foundation, the editor of the organisation's first newsletter, and a co-founder of Greenpeace International in 1979.
Rex's column reflects on the roots of activism, environmentalism, and Greenpeace's past, present, and future. The opinions here ...  Read More

Latest Articles

Our global movement against air pollution

by Kate Ford

Everyday, the air that most of us breathe is increasing our risk of strokes, heart disease, lung cancer, asthma, and so much more. This is because of air pollution that comes largely from burning fossil fuels, which also drives the climate emergency.
Alongside the release of a new study
which highlighted the global cost of air pollution from burning fossil fuels and an estimated 4.5 million deaths each year worldwide due to the same fossil fuels, people have been taking to the streets across the world to demand #CleanAirNow. Together, we are powerful.
See for yourself! Below are some images from the incredible #CleanAirNow moments that have taken place so far in 2020.
Thailand: 23 January & 28 January

Activists hold placards sending message to Thai government to tackle air pollution problem. Greenpeace Thailand together with EnLaw, EARTH, BioThai, Foundation for Consumers, Friend Zone, Mayday, Climate Strike Thailand and civil society today call on Thai government to take urgent steps to combat the PM2.5 levels in Thailand’s air. © Wason Wanichakorn / Greenpeace

Activists hold placards sending message to Thai government to tackle air pollution problem. Greenpeace Thailand together with EnLaw, EARTH, BioThai, Foundation for Consumers, Friend Zone, Mayday, Climate Strike Thailand and civil society today call on Thai government to take urgent steps to combat the PM2.5 levels in Thailand’s air. © Wason Wanichakorn / Greenpeace

Thailand Solar Fund project – which Greenpeace Thailand is a part of – aims to install solar panels on hospital rooftops, support renewable energy in the country, reduce carbon emission and phase away from fossil fuel. © Roengchai Kongmuang / Greenpeace

Romania: 31 January

Greenpeace Romania activists protest against air pollution in Bucharest in 4 critical places in the city that register some of the highest pollution rates: the energy sector, the construction sector, the waste sector (waste deposits) and traffic. © Catalin Georgescu / Greenpeace

Greenpeace Romania activists protest against air pollution in Bucharest in 4 critical places in the city that register some of the highest pollution rates: the energy sector, the construction sector, the waste sector (waste deposits) and traffic. © Catalin Georgescu / Greenpeace

Bulgaria: 7 February

Activists demand clean air, coal phase-out by 2030 and expose waste burning in coal power plants as a false alternative in front of the Bulgarian Parliament. © Ivan Donchev / Greenpeace

Activists demand clean air, coal phase-out by 2030 and expose waste burning in coal power plants as a false alternative in front of the Bulgarian Parliament. © Ivan Donchev / Greenpeace

Senegal : 11 February

Greenpeace Volunteers from Dakar (Senegal) asking for clean air now! Air pollution from fossil fuels causes around 4.5 million deaths each year. So while we pay the price of air pollution with our health, fossil fuel companies are profiting. © Greenpeace

Greenpeace Volunteers from Dakar (Senegal) asking for clean air now! Air pollution from fossil fuels causes around 4.5 million deaths each year. So while we pay the price of air pollution with our health, fossil fuel companies are profiting. © Greenpeace

Russia: 12-16 February

20 activists in Moscow planned a grand five-day action protesting to raise awareness for the need for clean air.

20 activists in Moscow have been protesting for five days demanding clean air. Now aircrafts landing and taking off 3rd runway of Sheremetyevo airport are flying above their roofs. People are suffering from noise and kerosine smell.

20 activists in Moscow have been protesting for five days demanding clean air. Now aircrafts landing and taking off 3rd runway of Sheremetyevo airport are flying above their roofs. People are suffering from noise and kerosine smell.

South Africa: 16 February & 22 February

Six Greenpeace Africa activists wearing superhero costumes leapt onto the SuperSport Park cricket field during the international T20 match between England and South Africa to hand the Proteas captain his team air pollution masks. Another team of activists dropped a banner from a floodlight in the stadium: “Toxic air is not just a game #BowlOutAirPollution”. © Shayne Robinson / Greenpeace

Durban Volunteers, creative use eco-friendly go carts at the Durban Promenade to raise awareness and the demand for Clean Air. 7 Volunteers attended and they took an opportunity to interact with community members. © Seyuran Pillay

In Johannesburg, 8 Volunteers attended a yoga session and a walk at Zoo Lake South Africa to highlight and Demand Clean.

India: 12 January & 16 February

People supporting Greenpeace India’s campaign, Clean Air Nation, which promotes clean air and a healthy future for all, gather at Chennai’s Marina beach. © Greenpeace

Greenpeace India conducted the flash mob in New Delhi at Dilli Haat on 16th Feb to create public awareness on Air pollution, its sources, health impacts and solutions.

Greenpeace India conducted the flash mob in New Delhi at Dilli Haat on 16th Feb to create public awareness on Air pollution, its sources, health impacts and solutions.

Turkey: 16 February & 23 February

Air pollution leads to 8 million early deaths every year in the world. On 16 February, activists held a bicycle action to spread their demand: “We want fresh air”.

Air pollution leads to 8 million early deaths every year in the world. On 16 February, activists held a bicycle action to spread their demand: “We want fresh air”.

Activist holds a Clean Air Now placard in the street of Istanbul, Turkey. © Greenpeace

Cameroon: 24 February

Activities were held in front of a multi-purpose stadium in Yaoundé, Cameroon and a landmark in Douala, Cameroon to amplify the message that air pollution is a public health crisis and demand the authorities to act on this crisis with urgency.

Activities were held in front of a multi-purpose stadium in Yaoundé, Cameroon and a landmark in Douala, Cameroon to amplify the message that air pollution is a public health crisis and demand the authorities to act on this crisis with urgency. 

Indonesia: 23 February

Some Greenpeace volunteer holds sign at the Suralaya coal power plant in Cilegon city, Banten Province, Indonesia. © Rendra Hernawan / Greenpeace

A Greenpeace volunteer holds an art picture showing a man wearing a gas mask at Pasupati bridge during an air pollution campaign, in Bandung. © Djuli Pamungkas / Greenpeace

Greenpeace volunteers hold an art picture shows the Welcome statues hold message “Clean Air Please” during an air pollution campaign in Jakarta. © Jurnasyanto Sukarno / Greenpeace

Kenya: 24-25 February

17 volunteers took to the streets in Kenya to demand their basic right to breathe clean air. 

17 volunteers took to the streets in Kenya to demand their basic right to breathe clean air. © John Kamao

17 volunteers took to the streets in Kenya to demand their basic right to breathe clean air. 

We’re calling on those responsible for the air pollution crisis to act. To stop the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and to phase out coal power stations.
Together, we’re going to end the air pollution crisis once and for all.
Sign the petition

– Air pollution is a public health emergency with too many of us breathing toxic air. We can fix this by coming together, demanding action and holding polluters accountable.
Kate Ford is a part of Communications at Greenpeace International.