How Greenpeace changed the world

In 1971, a small group of activists set sail to Amchitka island off Alaska in an old fishing boat called The Greenpeace. Their mission: to stop a US nuclear weapons test. Although the voyage was racked with personal conflict, and failed to stop the test itself, it sparked a storm of publicity that ultimately turned the tide. Five months after the group’s mission, the US stopped the entire Amchitka nuclear test programme. The island was later declared a bird sanctuary.

Through the 1960s and 1970s, the government permitted mass killing of seals around the Orkneys and Western Isles because they 'interfered' with commercial fishing. But in 1978, Greenpeace intervened. The Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior trailed the seal hunters' vessel for two weeks, preventing the start of the cull and sparking a public outcry against the killing. Eventually, the planned cull was massively reduced, and in 2020, shooting seals was completely banned in Scotland.

Greenpeace campaigned for 15 years against destructive fishing practices like bottom trawls and driftnets. Activists campaigned at sea, and produced a documentary exposing the reckless destruction they caused. This led to widespread public outrage, and even saw Japanese ships being denied entry into US waters of the Bering Sea in 1984. The UN eventually agreed a moratorium on using large driftnets in the high seas, followed by a worldwide ban in 1992.

After decades of campaigning by Greenpeace and other groups, a global nuclear weapons testing ban was finally passed in 1996. From 1994–96, the world's nations came together to negotiate the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits all nuclear test explosions.

The Deni are an Indigenous group living in a very remote part of the Brazilian Amazon, whose land was illegally sold to a logging company without their knowledge. After waiting for more than 10 years for the government to recognise their traditional territory, the Deni asked Greenpeace to help. We sent a team to live with the Deni and train them to use GPS and other instruments to formally record the boundaries of their lands. This spurred the government into action, and soon afterwards, Brazil's president officially recognised the Deni as owners and stewards of over 1.6 million hectares of Amazon forest.

Greenpeace activists Emily, Huw, Kevin, Tim, Will and Ben climbed the 200m chimney at Kingsnorth coal-fired power plant, forcing it to go offline. At the time, the UK was planning a new generation of coal power stations. But this action – and the groundbreaking court case that followed – helped to transform the debate. The UK has now closed most of its remaining coal power stations, and renewable energy makes up a large and growing share of the electricity mix.

After two years of campaigning from Greenpeace and many others, the UK government banned plastic microbeads in January 2018. Products like toothpastes, shower gels and facial scrubs with plastic microbeads can no longer be sold in the UK. This was an important first step to protect ocean life, and to stop plastic getting into the food chain.