As world leaders line up in Copenhagen to agree a new climate treaty, we've also been working hard to secure a result that will have a positive impact on the global climate - by protecting Indonesia's forests.

Today we're publicly releasing new evidence that Sinar Mas, Indonesia’s biggest palm oil producer, has been persistently engaging in widespread illegal deforestation and peatland clearance. We presented presented the evidence in this dossier to one of their biggest customers, the giant Unilever corporation. Now Unilever has decided to stop buying palm oil from Sinar Mas.

As if Carving up the Congo wasn't enough, logging companies are also evading paying taxes and cheating the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) out of millions of euros in revenue. A new report we have released today called Conning the Congo shows how the logging company Danzer has avoided paying approximately €8 million in tax from its logging operations in the DRC and the Republic of Congo. Just to put €8m in context in this part of the world, that is more than fifty times the DRC Ministry of Environment's annual operating budget.

The Congo rainforests of Central Africa form the second largest rainforest block on Earth after Amazon. They are of great importance for the global climate, the planet's biodiversity and the forest-dwelling communities who depend on them for resources and livelihoods.

Full story on Greenpeace International website

Art is a great way of campaigning and that's exactly what our EU unit did at the European Commission's headquarters in Brussels today. A 12 metre illegally logged Amazon tree trunk was unveiled, studded with nine video monitors by celebrated Brazilian artist Siron Franco. The monitors drew attention to the trade in illegal timber from the Amazon by displaying images of the rainforest's destruction and also its beauty.

Just one of the many actions we've taken to expose the government's shoddy approach to illegal timber

Over the past few years, we've done plenty of work to highlight the problem of illegally logged timber being imported and sold in the UK - remember the government's repeated foul-ups in this area? It's insane, but we still don't have any laws preventing illegal timber from places like the Amazon and south-east Asia reaching our shores, nor does any other country in Europe.

The undercover experts down the road at the Environmental Investigation Agency have released this short video exposing the trade in illegal timber from the forests of Laos. Shady deals and corruption allow large amounts of dodgy lumber to be processed in Vietnam and Thailand, where it's made into products like garden furniture for export to (among other places) the UK. Yet another reason why we need laws in Europe to ban the import of illegal timber.

An illegal logging camp in the Amazon © Greenpeace/Daniel Beltra

Stung by the recent rise in deforestation rates in the Amazon, the Brazilian government is cracking down on the illegal loggers who are ripping up the rainforest; their year-long initiative - known as Operation Fire Belt - is targeting areas where deforestation has been most acute.

Lately, I've been working a lot on our palm oil campaign, so my spider senses are highly atuned to anything coming out of Sumatra and Indonesia in general. But two stories I found this morning, both on New Scientist, really underlined what's going on west of Java.

The first article features some astonishing images from the Zoological Society of London, caught by a motion-sensitive camera left in the middle of the forest. The impressive snaps include a herd of elephants and a golden cat, but the stand-out picture is of an inquisitive and rare Sumatran tiger, it's eyes glowing in the camera's flash. Take a look at the slideshow - they're incredble.

It was almost too good to be true. When the Brazilian government announced last week that deforestation rates in the Amazon had dropped for the third year running, it was certainly a cause for celebration. But it now transpires that one of the government's own agencies is colluding with logging companies so they can gain access to areas of high-value timber that would otherwise be off limits.