Authored by Richard Brooks, Greenpeace Canada.

White Mountains in Quebec.

Leaning back in the evening breeze, listening to the waves churning, I almost feel like I’m lying on the beach at home instead of hanging from an anchor chain near the 10 meter water mark of a cargo ship near Sao Louis in Brazil. But here I am. The Clipper Hope was due to arrive in the port days ago to pick up a load of pig iron, but for 3 days so far we’ve been preventing the ship from heaving up anchor by hanging on their chain.

Along with some other people, the captain of the ship didn’t understand at first why we were protesting at his vessel. What’s wrong with pig iron? It’s used to make steel. The answer is it is a cheap and highly destructive way to make steel, and there are better ways to do it. Pig iron is made with charcoal, which is made with huge quantities of wood, and the cheapest way to get this wood is to secretly and illegally log massive areas of remote Amazonian forest and even sometimes use slave labour to burn it up.

There is more life, and more different types of life, in this forest than anywhere else, and seeing it transformed into wasteland is one of the saddest images of what is happening to our planet. The rate of deforestation of the Amazon is once again increasing because of recent government decisions.

So I hope the captain and friendly crew of the Clipper Hope will google Greenpeace and pig iron to find our new report, and learn about the consequences of the manufacture of their cargo. I hope U.S. car manufacturers like Ford and GM will learn about where their steel comes from. I hope we can all learn about the real costs of maintaining our cheap, convenient lifestyles and choose a better way. We don’t have to destroy the Amazon, and we don’t have to destroy our future.

Emma Briggs is a climber and the Bosun onboard the Rainbow Warrior, she is from Byron Bay, Australia.

Visit our Amazon homepage to join her.

Freshly baked by our chef, Walter, and put into waterproof tins ready for loading into speedboats. Speedmuffins. Pronto pastries. Two young Brazilians – Leonor and Elissama – are waiting across the water having been up most of the night and little things like this make all the difference. Fruit is great, but nothing beats that fresh-from-the-oven comfort of spongey goodness.

Occupying an anchor chain for over a day is a pretty challenging operation. Just getting off the Rainbow Warrior onto the inflatables is difficult, as the waves make stepping off the ship onto the moving boat like playing Super Mario Brothers for real. Then it’s a ten minute boat ride across the water with salty spray drenching everything in sight – camera gear, sunglasses and baked goods.

Once Leonor arrives on scene she receives the signal from the boat driver and gets onto a tiny stepladder (Supermario again) before scrambling up towards the platform. Well, I say platform – it’s more of a small plank with Greenpeace written underneath it. It’s all done safely and carefully, but that doesn’t stop the heart racing when you see how high up she is.

And then… well, not much really. Hours of sitting there, making sure she is safe, and waiting. No crowds of supporters cheering her on, just a safety boat with a driver giving her the thumbs up once in a while. It’s a bit like David Blane without the ego. When I was out there with I tried to give her my best winning smile and to think positive thoughts, but I’m not sure that was helping very much.

What really keep these girls going are the messages of support we’re receiving not just here in Brazil but around the world. This isn’t a ‘grey area’ environmental protest, where there are two valid points of view – we’re exposing things like slave labor and the illegal destruction of forest that is home to uncontacted tribes like the Awa. These are things that Brazilians – as well as people all over the world – have decided are unacceptable in our society.

It’s pretty hard to explain the link with ships like this one in words, but I’ll try. If Elissama and Leonor hadn’t stopped it, the Clipper Hope would be loading pig iron and taking that to the USA. Pig iron is used to make steel for cars, but here in Brazil it is leading to huge deforestation and is sometimes produced using slave labor. The Brazilian President and companies like Ford, GM and BMW – have a big role to play in stopping this from happening, but at the moment they’re turning a blind eye to the problem.

See? Much easier to close your eyes, think of the young Brazilians and imagine the smell of freshly baked muffins.

Pig Iron Vessel Anchor Occupation, Brazil. © Greenpeace

Right now a 20 year old Brazilian named Elissama de Oliveira Menezes is attached to the anchor chain of a massive cargo ship here in Sao Luis, at the mouth of the Amazon. She’s a small girl anyway, but next to the 175 meter ‘Clipper Hope’ she looks absolutely tiny.

As long as Elissama stays on the anchor it’s impossible for the ship to dock and load its cargo of pig iron which is destined for the USA. Pig iron is used in the production of steel and is exported from Brazil ready for processing.

She’s there because she wants to end a cycle of destruction which starts in the Amazon rainforest and ends in car showrooms all over the world. She’s also sending a message to Brazil’s President Dilma, who is preparing to host the world’s elite in Rio in a few weeks time. Dilma is currently considering whether to veto changes to the ‘forest code’ a key law which has protected the Amazon for decades. It’s vital that she shows leadership to regain control and protect the Amazon.

Over the past two years Greenpeace has collected evidence about a new rainforest scandal involving the production of pig iron. Our research shows how rainforest trees are being chopped down to make wood charcoal, which is then burnt in furnaces to make pig iron.

This is driving the destruction of the rainforest, but it’s not just the trees that are suffering. The wood is often taken from protected land which is the home of indigenous people like the Awa tribe who have relied on the forest for centuries.

And at the charcoal camps themselves people work under terrible conditions to feed the ovens with fresh wood. This is modern day slavery, where people are lured from their homes with the promise of money but landed with huge debts for accommodation and food which they cannot pay off. Often these people sleep with nothing more than a plastic sheet as shelter, breathing in charcoal particles and other pollutants as the shovel wood in and charcoal out.

Greenpeace activists, along with Elissama, are taking action today to bring this Amazon crime to an international audience. Some of the world’s biggest car makers including Ford, GM, BMW and Mercedes are caught up in this scandal, but right now they’re on cruise control with the radio turned up. She’s there because she wants to end a cycle of destruction which starts in the Amazon rainforest and ends in car showrooms all over the world.

As I look out of the window of the campaign office here on the Rainbow Warrior I can just make out Elissama against the vast bulk of the cargo ship she is blocking. One committed Brazilian can stop a ship of many thousand tonnes – but she can’t do it alone. She needs your help.

Visit our Amazon homepage to join her.

Within the past few weeks, rainforest destruction has begun once again in one of Africa’s most important biodiversity hotspots: the coastal rainforest of Cameroon, at the fringe of the Congo Basin region. Herakles Farms, the American company behind the operation, is now pressing ahead with the establishment of a palm oil plantation in this precious area despite major social, environmental and legal concerns.

A Buma tree (Cieba pentandra), standing in the middle of one of Herakles’ nurseries. These trees are considered to be sacred, and are a symbol of power in many African regions. The bulldozer that tried to fell it crumpled under the impact. Despite having fixed the bulldozer, the company decided to leave the tree so that it now stands alone in the middle of a devastated landscape. © Jan-Joseph Stok / Greenpeace

Despite the rapidly growing controversy around its plantation project, Herakles Farms has stated that it wants to become a model for sustainable palm oil development in Africa. On the contrary, this specific project exemplifies the possible detrimental impact of large-scale palm oil plantations on people’s rights and livelihoods, biodiversity and the global climate. Herakles Farms’ plans have already been strongly contested by local communities, Cameroonian NGOs and international conservation organizations, as well as by leading scientists.

Herakles Farms is headed up by an American businessman, Bruce Wrobel, who is the CEO of several companies with connections to The Blackstone Group, the New York private equity giant. An injunction case brought against Herakles’ local subsidiary, SG Sustainable Oils Cameroon Ltd., by Struggle to Economize Future Environment (SEFE), cited the possibility of irreparable damage or injury to local communities if the plantation were to go ahead.

Given the terms of a 99-year agreement under which Herakles Farms is allowed to establish a plantation of about 70,000 hectares, it’s not difficult to see why Cameroonian NGOs fear the worst for local people. The agreement does not clarify to what extent – if at all – Cameroonian labour laws will apply, it exempts Herakles Farms from paying any taxes for the first 10 years, and it enables Herakles to rent the land from as little as US $0.5 per hectare, increasing by 2 % per year, contributing almost nothing to the state budget. The legality of the agreement itself has been contested by one of Africa’s leading civil society organizations, the Center for Environment and Development (CED). The agreement was signed by the Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, contrary to Cameroonian law which requires the President’s approval for land allocations over 50 hectares. Under the agreement, Herakles is even given the right to organize its own protection of the zone using a private police force with the power to “search, apprehend, detain, exclude and evict unauthorized persons”.

Herakles’ presence in Africa’s rainforests does not solely threaten the rights and livelihoods of local people, who depend on the forest as a source of food and building materials. The proposed plantation is located between four protected areas of huge ecological importance: the Korup National Park, Bakossi National Park, Rumpi Hills Forest Reserve and the Banyang Mbo Wildlife Sanctuary. Destroying tens of thousands of hectares of forests that serve as a crucial corridor between these reserves would put the endangered species that live in these forests, including forest elephants, chimpanzees and the highly threatened Drill under further pressure.  Leading conservation scientists have warned the company that the proposed plantation will “cut the heart out” of this vital rainforest region.

Herakles claims that it will not clear primary forests or forests of high conservation value, but it remains very vague on what this means. They suggest that the forest they want to destroy is highly degraded with only a small part of it of high conservation value. However, recent satellite images reveal that 71% of the area has 70% forest cover, which is a similar proportion to the neighbouring Korup National Park. Tellingly, the original Environmental and Social Impact Assessment of the area was never officially published.

Greenpeace believes the Herakles palm oil plantation project must be stopped now, before it is too late, and sent this letter to the company on May 10, 2012.