Also by sarah

Cattle ranching in the Amazon is the single biggest cause of rainforest destruction.

Back at the end of last year, while politicians were talking about the importance of forests in the run up to the Copenhagen Climate Conference, we were busy taking on the single biggest cause of rainforest destruction worldwide – the expansion of the Brazilian cattle industry.

It seemed like it was going to be a pretty tough nut to crack, so we dug in our heels and prepared for a long fight to get lasting change at the heart of the Amazon rainforest.

But sometimes events surprise you. Completely unexpectedly, within months of the campaign starting, and following thousands of Greenpeace supporters taking action, the issue was making serious progress.

Sarah is in Kinshasa, visiting our Congo office on their first anniversary.

I write from our office in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In some ways it's very like any other Greenpeace office. There are pictures of the Rainbow Warrior on the wall, people on phones rush from room to room, journalists and cameramen walk in and out. There's a shout and we all crowd round the TV to watch one of our colleagues, Rene Ngongo, who won the alternative livelihood award a few weeks ago for his work in the DRC, giving an interview.

In the week since the launch of our ‘Slaughtering the Amazon' report the response has been almost overwhelming. In fact, it's difficult to write this, because even as I'm typing it more emails are coming in from our offices across the world, telling us about breaking developments.

Entries at the Milan Sushi Awards earlier in the year (image by Thomas Lu, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0)

Working at Greenpeace often means that I find myself in some unusual places - inside a nuclear power station, atop an aeroplane or in a palm oil factory. But I certainly never expected to find myself at an international sushi awards ceremony.