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Plans to “draw down” CO2 from the atmosphere – known as carbon dioxide removal (CDR) – “fall short” of the quantities needed to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, new research warns.

Keeping global temperatures below the limit set in the 2015 Paris Agreement requires rapid cuts in greenhouse emissions.

However, scenarios consistent with the Paris limit also assume heavy reliance on CDR, particularly in the second half of the 21st century.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, quantifies the “CDR gap” – the difference between the amount of CDR included in national climate plans and what would be needed to limit warming to 1.5C.

CDR currently removes about 3bn tonnes of CO2 from the air every year, of which almost 100% comes from land-based methods, such as afforestation and reforestation, the study says.

The authors estimate that if countries implement their national targets, CDR will increase by up to 1.9bn tonnes of CO2 per year by 2050.

However, assessing a range of scenarios for limiting warming to 1.5C, the authors find a “CDR gap” in 2050 of 0.4bn-5.5bn tonnes of CDR per year.

One scientist, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that framing the lack of additional plans for CDR as a “gap” is an “interesting idea”. However, he says it may not reflect a “definitive need for action” because the future role of CDR is debated.

Some scientists argue that reliance on CDR should be avoided, because land-based CDR can cause significant ecological and societal risks. Others worry that the promise of being able to use CDR in the future might dilute incentives to cut fossil-fuel use today.

The lead author of the study tells Carbon Brief that he recognises these concerns and made an effort to discuss them in the paper.

However, he says that calculating the CDR gap is important for assessing nations’ progress – and will provide a way of knowing whether countries are under- or over-committing to CDR in the future.

CO2 removal

CO2 removal (CDR) refers to methods that draw down CO2 from the air and store it indefinitely on land, in the ocean, in geological formations or in products. 

The study authors note that the term CDR “includes human enhancement of natural removal processes, but excludes natural uptake not caused directly by human activities”. The latter includes the huge amounts of CO2 absorbed by the land and oceans each year.

The paper groups CDR into two categories:

  • Conventional CDR on land: This includes afforestation, in which trees are planted when previously there were none, and reforestation, which means restoring areas where the trees have been cut down or degraded.
  • Novel CDR: This includes all CDR methods that are not based on forestry and land-use change, such as biochar, direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).

Using data collected over 2011-20, the authors estimate that total human emissions of all greenhouse gases have reached 60bn tonnes per year. Of this, CDR efforts currently remove around 3bn every year, they find. The study calculates global emissions in CO2 equivalent (CO2e).

Glossary
CO2 equivalent: Greenhouse gases can be expressed in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2e. For a given amount, different greenhouse gases trap different amounts of heat in the atmosphere, a quantity known as… Read More

The plot below shows current global greenhouse gas emissions and removals. The bar on the left shows emissions of CO2 (blue) and non-CO2 (pink) gases, as well as land emissions (brown). CO2 removal is shown in yellow.

The bars on the right show that 99.9% of CDR comes from conventional CDR on land (dark yellow), while “novel” CDR (light yellow) has a negligible contribution.

Global total greenhouse gas emissions and removals
Present-day annual CO2 emissions (blue), non-CO2 emissions (pink), land emissions (brown), land-based CDR (dark yellow) and novel CDR (light yellow). Source: Lamb et al (2024).

In 2015, countries agreed under the Paris Agreement to keep warming “well below 2C” above pre-industrial temperatures, with an aspiration of limiting warming to 1.5C.

Rapid cuts in emissions are crucial to meet this goal. To make progress, countries are required to submit – and regularly update – their plans for reducing emissions. There is currently a sizeable “emissions gap” between the cuts included in these national proposals and those needed to limit warming to 1.5C.

In many future scenarios that meet the Paris limit, CDR features heavily. For example, in scenarios where global temperatures initially “overshoot” 1.5C, before falling below the limit by 2100, large-scale CDR would be used to remove carbon from the atmosphere and allow global temperatures to decline.

In its most recent assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) modelled 541 pathways that hold warming to 1.5C or 2C. All of these pathways involve CDR implementation between 2020 and 2100, ranging from a total of 450bn to 1.1tn tonnes of CO2, in addition to deep emissions cuts.

However, there are currently no rules requiring governments to clearly report their CDR plans.

To assess the amount of CDR proposed by governments, the authors therefore had to analyse a range of documents submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), such as countries’ nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and their long-term low-emissions development strategies.

The authors find that if countries implement their national targets, CDR could expand by 1.5-1.9bn tonnes of CO2 per year, compared to levels in 2020. The paper notes that many countries plan to expand land-based removals, but none has yet committed to “substantively scaling” novel CDR methods.

Warming threshold

To assess how much CDR is needed to meet the long-term goal of the Paris Agreement, the authors use Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs). These models look at the energy technologies, energy use choices, land-use changes and societal trends that cause, or prevent, greenhouse gas emissions.

The authors select a range of IAM scenarios from the latest IPCC scenario database for its sixth assessment report (AR6). Scenarios that limit warming to 2C require emissions to fall by 46-75% between 2020 and 2050, but CDR becomes the “main mitigation strategy” in the second half of the century, the study says.

The authors add that in these scenarios, conventional CDR on land “starts from a high baseline, but quickly reaches saturation by the mid-century due to land area constraints for afforestation/restoration”. Meanwhile, novel CDR scales up throughout the 21st century and accounts for more than half of cumulative emissions by the year 2100.

To assess the pathways in more detail, the authors select three scenarios that limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels

In the “demand reduction” scenario, humanity focuses on efficiency and sufficiency measures. This scenario requires an increase in land-based CDR, but no increase in “novel” CDR methods.

The “renewables” scenario sees a supply-side transformation towards renewable energy. This scenario mainly requires land-based CDR, but also includes a small contribution from novel methods.

The “carbon removal” scenario involves a rapid near-term reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but fossil fuels are never entirely phased out, leading to higher “residual emissions” at net-zero CO2. Near-equal levels of land-based and novel CDR are needed by 2050, meaning that novel CDR needs to scale up more than a thousand times from its current capacity.

The plot below shows annual CDR under these three scenarios. The blue line indicates current CDR and each yellow line shows a different scenario. A lower (more negative) number means more CDR.

The extent of future carbon dioxide removal depends on the scenario by which climate goals are met
CDR under three future pathways, which limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures. The blue line indicates current CDR and each yellow line shows a different scenario. A lower (more negative) number means more CDR. Source: Lamb et al (2024).

The study shows that current government plans – which would result in an extra 1.5-1.9bn tonnes of CDR per year by 2050 – are not ambitious enough to comply with any of the three 1.5C scenarios.

The table below shows the changes in different types of CDR required under the different scenarios by 2050, compared to 2020 levels. The column on the right shows the “CDR gap” between current plans and each scenario in 2050.

Scenario Total additional CDR (bn tonnes CO2/year) Additional land-based CDR (bn tonnes CO2/year) Additional novel CDR (bn tonnes CO2/year) CDR gap (bn tonnes CO2/year)
Demand reduction 2.3 2.3 0 0.4
Renewables 5.1 4.1 0.91 3.2
Carbon removal 7.4 4.0 3.5 5.5

The analysis shows that countries “lack progress in this domain of mitigation”, the study says. However, the size of the shortfall depends heavily on the scenario.

Under the demand reduction scenario, the CDR gap in 2050 is only 0.4bn tonnes of CDR per year, but this grows more than tenfold to 5.5bn tonnes of CDR per year under the carbon removal scenario.

Mind the gap

The prospect of relying on large-scale CDR to meet global climate goals is one that prompts concern in many experts. 

One fear is that the promise of being able to use CDR in the future might dilute incentives to cut fossil fuel use today, a phenomenon known as “mitigation deterrence”.

Dr William Lamb – a researcher at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change and lead author on the study – tells Carbon Brief that the paper acknowledges this concern and tries to be clear that CDR is not a replacement for mitigation. 

Prof Steve Pye is a professor at University College London’s Energy Institute, who was not involved in the study. He says that framing the lack of CDR as a “gap” is an “interesting idea”, but does not necessarily reflect a “definitive need for action” in the same way as the emissions gap:

“The implications of the CDR gap are much more open to debate as CDR is a category of mitigation action, with the size of the gap either a cause for alarm or not depending on one’s view of what role that option will or should play.”

He adds that the analysis could even be “interpreted as positive”, because it shows that countries are not being distracted by novel CDR.

Alexandra Deprez – a research fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations, who is not involved in the study – tells Carbon Brief that the new study does not do enough to consider the “sustainability limits” of CDR.

She recently co-wrote a Carbon Brief guest post explaining these limits, which said:

“The large-scale deployment of land-based CDR could come with major challenges. These include significant ecological and societal risks – particularly to biodiversity loss, food security, freshwater use and human rights, among others – which have not been comprehensively assessed.”

Deprez and Lamb have “opposite starting points” in their work on CDR and therefore arrive at different conclusions, she explains.

Lamb starts by asking “how much CDR is needed” and concludes that it needs to be scaled up, she says. Meanwhile, she tells Carbon Brief that her own work starts by asking “how much CDR can be sustainably deployed” and finds that “‘Paris compatible’ scenarios overstep high CDR sustainability risk”.

Lamb says the authors were “very careful” in selecting the three focus scenarios for the study. He adds:

“We have a kind of selection criteria that includes thinking about the sustainability constraints, whether they’re using too much biomass, whether they’re scaling up novel methods too quickly. And so we’re quite conservative about the specific scenarios we choose.”

Meanwhile Prof Joeri Roglej – director of research at the Grantham Institute – tells Carbon Brief that the study “puts pathways that aim to keep warming as close to 1.5C as possible in the same basket as pathways that keep it below 2C only, therewith suggesting a lower overall ambition than the Paris Agreement”.

He adds:

“The study doesn’t distinguish scenarios with CDR levels that risk undermining sustainability. These presentation choices therefore perpetuate some of the reasons why CDR research is often criticised, including that CDR scholarship often turns a blind eye to the sustainability risks of large-scale CDR deployment.”

Pye adds a note of caution about using IAMs, saying they have “relied heavily on CDR to meet high ambition targets” without accounting for the “political reality” faced by many governments.

CDR reporting

According to the study, only about 40 countries, including the EU, have outlined scenarios in their long-term strategies that depict quantifiable levels of CDR by 2050.

For the other countries – which account for 62% of current conventional CDR on land – the authors assume that overall CDR levels will remain constant.

Lamb tells Carbon Brief that this is a “big assumption”. He notes that while CDR globally has been “quite stable over the past 20 years”, there is a lot of variation between countries. For example, he says that China has been “rapidly increasing” its CDR through large afforestation projects, while many countries in Europe have seen a decrease due to problems in their forestry sector.

The study also assumes that countries without quantifiable scenarios do not currently plan to implement novel CDR methods. “This includes China, Norway and Saudi Arabia, which are all developing technology roadmaps towards novel CDR and could contribute to closing the gap,” the paper says.

Dr Ajay Gambhir is a visiting senior research fellow at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, and was not involved in the study. He tells Carbon Brief that many land-based carbon sinks, such as forests, have the potential to transition to sources of carbon over the coming years.

He adds:

“The authors are mindful of potential reversibility of forest carbon, but this highlights the risks that we are even further from our CDR, and emissions reduction, needs than might be indicated in this analysis.”

The lack of clear data shows that “we need more clarity” in CDR reporting, Lamb tells Carbon Brief. He argues that increasing transparency would “allow more critical reflection actually on carbon dioxide removal plans and whether they’re ambitious enough – or even too ambitious at the expense of emissions reductions”.

The analysis from this paper will be included in the next State of CDR report, which will be released this summer.

The post CO2 removal ‘gap’ shows countries ‘lack progress’ for 1.5C warming limit appeared first on Carbon Brief.

CO2 removal ‘gap’ shows countries ‘lack progress’ for 1.5C warming limit

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Marine Parks Explained

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Australia’s network of marine parks is the largest in the world, covering more than half (52%) of Australia’s Commonwealth waters. You could be forgiven for assuming that a marine park is much like a national park on land: a highly protected place where people can enjoy nature while conservation efforts help habitats recover and wildlife thrive. You wouldn’t expect someone to bulldoze a national park, so why should they be allowed to bottom trawl in a marine park?

The reality is that not all marine parks are equally protected. Australia’s Marine Parks Network is divided into different zoning categories, with each zone determining which activities are permitted and the level of protection provided.

More than half of the Commonwealth Marine Parks Network allows industrial activities like oil and gas mining, and industrial fishing.

Our survival, and the survival of our planet, depends on the ocean. The ocean produces more oxygen than all of our forests combined, sustains communities and regulates the earth’s temperature. It’s home to wondrous wildlife and important ecosystems like coral reefs and kelp forests.

We love our big blue backyard

Australia’s ocean is teeming with life that is found nowhere else on earth. Schools of colourful fish, vibrant coral reefs, endemic shark nurseries, pods of dolphins, families of whales, playful seal pups and threatened Jurassic-era turtles call Australian waters home.

Since time began, from the turquoise waves to the deep blue, the ocean has connected our shorelines and communities, fed us, guided us and grounded us. We are intrinsically connected to our big blue backyard – more than 85% of us live within 50km of the shoreline. For tens of thousands of years, people have lived in harmony with the ocean and the wildlife within it, caring for and being sustained by its rich waters. Australia’s waters are some of the most unique and abundant places on Earth but our Marine Parks Network is falling short to properly protect them. 

Australia’s marine parks aren’t living up to their name

© Greenpeace / Harriet Spark

The Australian Commonwealth Marine Parks Network covers commonwealth waters 5.5km from the coast. The network is divided into 7 regional management areas, overall the network contains 60 marine parks. Zoning types determine what activities are allowed in each area. Over half of the network allows industrial activities, risking our most precious and threatened ocean wildlife.

Within many of our marine parks, destructive industries are allowed to fish, trawl, dig and mine using barbaric and cruel methods. Here are some of the zones explained:

  • Bottom Trawling: Special Purpose (trawl) zones allow bottom trawling. This covers 10 marine parks totalling almost 13 million hectares. Bottom trawlers bulldoze the seafloor with weighted nets, deforesting our underwater forests; a cruel, indiscriminate and inefficient way to fish.
  • Other Industrial Fishing: Includes “Habitat Protection Zones, ““Multi Use Zones” and “Special Purpose Zones.” Fishing methods vary from park to park but many marine parks in these zones allow industrial fishing like longlining. Longlining involves setting lines that can be 100km long, bristling with deadly hooks designed to catch a specific fish species. But longlining is not a selective method of fishing – significant numbers of sharks, rays, turtles, dolphins and seabirds can be harmed or killed as bycatch in the process.
  • Oil and Gas Mining: Many “Special Purpose” and “Multi Use” zones allow seismic blasting and oil and gas mining. 30 marine parks or 65 million hectares of Australia’s highest conservation value areas for ocean wildlife are open for mining and exploration of oil and gas.
  • Ocean Sanctuaries: National Park and Sanctuary zones are fully and highly protected marine parks designed to conserve wildlife and their habitat, where fishing, mining, and other industrial activities are not allowed.

Industrial fishing is one of the biggest threats to the ocean

Marine parks on the east coast that allow bottom trawling. 10 marine parks across the whole network allow bottom trawling totalling almost 13 million hectares of ocean habitat for precious wildlife.

In May, Greenpeace Australia Pacific sailed our campaigning vessel Oceania through some of Australia’s most beautiful and threatened marine parks. Our crew visited Jervis and Hunter marine parks to document their beauty, showcase what’s at risk and aim to expose the industrial fishing activities in these protected waters. Both of these marine parks allow bottom trawling and longlining methods of industrial fishing.

Industrial fishing is ripping the ocean apart across the planet. Longlining, also known as longline fishing, is an industrial fishing method that involves the use of a fishing line with thousands of baited hooks. These fishing lines can stretch over 100 kilometers in length and are set to capture a fish species, often tuna or billfish species. But it is not a selective method of fishing  and often results in significant bycatch. This includes a range of non-target species like sharks, rays, sea turtles, marine mammals, and seabirds which are often injured or killed as bycatch.

Bottom trawling involves dragging heavy weighted nets along the ocean floor. This fishing method is popular with commercial fishing companies, because it makes it easy to catch large quantities of fish in one go. But it also damages the seafloor, releasing carbon and can kill or injure non-target ocean life like coral, fur seals, dolphins and seabirds. You may have watched the reality of bottom trawling (and the benefits of ocean sanctuaries) in Ocean with David Attenborough, if not, add it to your watch list!  

Fully protected ocean sanctuaries that ban industrial fishing and mining can protect ocean wildlife and underwater wonderlands for generations to come. Vast, robust sanctuaries create blue havens where ocean wildlife are safe from nets and hooks, and can truly rest, recover, thrive and replenish out into the surrounding waters. Ocean sanctuaries ensure a healthy ocean full of life.

A once-in-a-decade chance to fix what’s falling short

We have a unique opportunity to turn the tide.

The Australian Government is asking for your feedback on how our Commonwealth Marine Parks Network is managed. This is our once-in-a-decade chance to protect ocean wildlife, ban industrial fishing and create more ocean sanctuaries.

As part of the review the Government is asking for submissions from the public to hear from you on what improvements are needed to better protect our vast network of marine parks. Writing a submission is a powerful way to influence government decisions and create real change.

This is the moment to ban industrial activities like bottom trawling and oil and gas mining. But only if they hear from YOU. Add your name!

Greenpeace is calling on the Australian government to:

1. Ban industrial activities from Australia’s Marine Parks Network: Ban industrial activities, such as industrial fishing, seismic blasting and oil and gas mining, from Australia’s marine parks.

2. Create more ocean sanctuaries: Increase fully protected sanctuaries in Australia’s marine parks based on science principles.

3. Connect Australia’s Marine Parks Network to the High Seas: mCreate seascape connectivity by linking Australian marine parks to new high seas ocean sanctuaries.

References

Substantiation that more than half of the Marine Parks Network permits industrial activity comes from a peer-reviewed systematic literature review (Phillips et al. 2025, PLOS One, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307324). The study found that within the Commonwealth Marine Parks Network specifically, “all zones are considered partially protected areas, meaning areas where extractive activities are permitted, except ‘Pink zones’ (Preservation Zones; IUCN Ia) and ‘Green Zones’ (IUCN II).” In other words, every Commonwealth marine park zone type other than the network’s strict no-take sanctuary and national park zones (IUCN Ia and II) permits some form of extractive industrial activity. Since no-take zones are the minority zone type across the network by area, this supports the conclusion that the majority of the network’s area is zoned to permit industrial activity.

DCCEEW Australian Marine Parks spatial dataset (https://fed.dcceew.gov.au/datasets/erin::australian-marine-parks/explore), filtered by zone type. This confirms that 38.43% of the network’s area is zoned as Sanctuary or National Park zones (IUCN Ia and II). These are the no-take categories excluded from the peer-reviewed study’s definition of partially protected/industrial-permitting zones. The remaining 61.57% of the network falls within the zone categories the study classifies as permitting industrial activity (per The MPA Guide definition of “industrial” applied in Phillips et al. 2025), directly corroborating the peer-reviewed finding with current Commonwealth-specific spatial data.

For further information on activities permitted within the Marine Parks Network Zoning, you can refer to the Management Plans zoning and rules for each Marine Parks Network area, for example: Temperate East, Coral Sea, North.

Marine Parks Explained

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Report: Trawling the Bottom Line

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A new report from Greenpeace Australia Pacific advocates for the closure of bottom trawling in Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Parks Network. Bottom trawling continues to be a pervasive threat to ocean life in Australia, with 10 marine parks totalling almost 13 million hectares, allowing bottom trawling.

Australia’s network of marine parks, which is the biggest in the world, covers more than half (52%) of Australia’s Commonwealth domestic waters, but not all parks are created equal. Australia’s Marine Parks Network is divided into different zoning categories, with each zone determining which activities are permitted and the level of protection provided. More than half of the Marine Parks Network allow industrial activities like industrial fishing and oil and gas mining. This includes zoning types that allow destructive fishing by longliners and bottom trawlers, who pillage underwater wonderlands, rip up coral and indiscriminately and violently catch any animal in their path, including turtles, seals and dolphins, all within areas labelled a marine park.

The Federal government has commenced a review into the majority of Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Parks Network management plans. This presents an opportunity to ban industrial activities from our marine parks and create more ocean sanctuaries.

Australia’s waters are some of the most unique and abundant places on earth, and are a global hotspot of biodiversity. Vibrant coral reefs and wondrous wildlife like endangered turtles, dolphins, and whales, some found nowhere else on earth, call Australia’s waters home. 

Australia’s network of marine parks is the biggest in the world. It covers 52 per cent of Australia’s domestic waters, but more than half of the network allows destructive, extractive industries like seismic blasting, industrial fishing and oil and gas mining. Longliners and bottom trawlers frequent these marine parks, looking for fish but catching everything in their path. 

In May 2026, Greenpeace Australia Pacific’s campaigning vessel Oceania traveled to Jervis Bay Marine Park and Hunter Marine Park to document their beauty, the wildlife under threat and aim to expose the industrial fishing activities in these so called protected waters.

Greenpeace is calling on the federal government to ban industrial activities from the marine parks network, create more fully protected ocean sanctuaries and connect the network to new high seas ocean sanctuaries.

Report: Trawling the Bottom Line

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Sewing and Painting the Future

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The iconic Greenpeace ship hosts community and family activities over the weekend from 27-30 April, including banner-making workshops and tours of the ship, culminating in a community paddle out for the climate and ocean at South Beach.
© Harriet Spark / Grumpy Turtle Film / Greenpeace

The banner drop is a distinctive part of the Greenpeace repertoire.

The moment of the unfolding is intrinsically dramatic. It is the reveal; when the moral and scientific truth of a situation is unveiled to the world. The wrong is being labelled—not through a written submission, or a social media post, or a statement in a meeting—but in words emblazoned in real physical space, chosen and occupied with precision, for all to see. There is jeopardy and transgression. And there are consequences—for the activists and for Greenpeace, as well as for the target of the communication. One of the reasons the banner remains such an effective tool in our toolbox is because of its undeniable clarity in cutting through, driving change and accountability in a way that few other tactics can. It is naming the wrong: in giant, clear letters.

We’ve hung these massive messages at environmental crime scenes, corporate headquarters, and iconic landmarks; on government buildings, ships and planes—in locations all around the world, for years.

My own memories unfurl even as I write this, but because the campaign to stop Woodside at Scott Reef is so pressing, what immediately springs to mind are two of our banners in that campaign: one on a crane outside their Perth HQ, and another on some of their corroding industrial junk at sea. What about you? Is there a particular banner that you picture when you think of Greenpeace?

The banners can attract global attention, but they have quiet beginnings. Each one is made by hand, often by volunteers. It is the invisible labour behind each spectacular public moment. One of the key pieces of equipment in our workshop at Rainbow Warrior House is the sewing machine. Sometimes our workshop is full of people and noise; at others it is quiet, the only sound being the gentle, purposeful, whir and buzz of a banner being sewn. It is usually our warehouse manager, Kieran Holmes, on the tools, head over the machine, carefully pouring over the raw canvas or tarp as the banner takes shape. Kieran’s one of those people who seems to be able to turn his hand to almost anything, but you wouldn’t know it because he’s old-school modest. In addition to being incredibly skilled, Kieran’s an all-round beaut human to have in the heart of our headquarters; never too busy to take the time to show a newcomer, or curious visitor, around his domain. 

Once the banner is sewn up, the lettering needs to be outlined. This is done on a magnetic wall—a fit-for-purpose feature at Rainbow Warrior House, where the banner is held up with magnets, and the edges of the letters neatly traced from a projection.

Next comes the painting. It usually starts late in the afternoon, sometimes going into evenings and weekends, with volunteers, staff, mates crowded around, brushes in hand. It is a calming meditative feeling of shared purpose, giving each letter its visual heft, the colour building power and presence with each stroke.

Then you stand back, stretch, and look at the message, now ready.

S A V E S C O T T R E E F

Throughout history, every great push for social change has required some form of invisible labour; preparation in the form of quiet things seldom seen, but vital. It is the enabling work of love instantiated in action. And of course, so much of the time it has been women who have done this labour, so that the men could get the chance to make the speeches and stand on the podiums. The inaugural Greenpeace voyage to stop nuclear testing in 1971 had a male-only crew, but wouldn’t have happened without the ideas and work of women behind the scenes.

It is what we do together, after all, that changes the world. Sometimes that work happens on a stage, a ship on the wild seas, or up the side of a building. But mostly, it is the hidden diligence of those who care and contribute to all the enabling work that makes a change once thought impossible, inevitable. It is Kieran at his sewing machine. It was Dorothy Stowe doing the administrative work of the ‘Don’t Make A Wave Committee’ that became Greenpeace.

When we think of social change, it is the sturm and drang that we remember. The drop of the banner, the chant of the crowd, the raising of the new flag. But look behind the curtain, and there’ll be a crew of people who are taking responsibility for the administration, the sewing and the painting, making the food, checking the bus timetables, getting stuff done. And behind them are even more handsinvisibly donating time and trust; the financial, material and expert resources that make it all possible. There’s love, camaraderie and know-how at every stage.

We are social and cooperative creatures by nature. And we human beings have been stitching for millenia, sewing the possibilities of our common future. Political and corporate bullies and algorithmically manipulative platforms would have us forget this, and abandon who we are. But we should be in no doubt that the brighter prospects for ourselves and life on earth continue to be stitched and painted; collaboratively and with love, by the diligent hands of millions of people who care, each day, in every community and city across the world.

With Love,

David


Q & A

I always get great questions when interviewing prospective new team members. One that came up again recently was: “Is Greenpeace actually one organisation?”

Around the world, people know Greenpeace by our one global name, united by a shared mission: securing an Earth capable of nurturing life in all its magnificent diversity, with a particular focus on climate and biodiversity. Behind the scenes, though, we’re organised as a network of 25 legally autonomous national and regional offices, including Greenpeace Australia Pacific, working alongside Greenpeace International.

That structure gives us the best of both worlds: we work together leveraging the power of a global network on the issues that matter most, while each office remains legally independent and deeply connected to the communities, cultures and political realities where we’re embedded. Local knowledge informs global action, and global collaboration strengthens and supports local campaigns.

It’s a model that has enabled Greenpeace to take on some of the world’s biggest challenges for over five decades–while withstanding challenges and attacks from governments and corporations. Global enough to tackle global problems, local enough to understand our communities and the natural places we love.

If you’re curious to learn more, you can read about the Greenpeace Global Network structure here.

Sewing and Painting the Future

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