Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Greenpeace states its goal is to "ensure the ability of the Earth to nurture life in all its diversity" and focuses its campaigning on world wide issues such as global warming, deforestation, overfishing, commercial whaling and anti-nuclear issues. Greenpeace uses direct action, lobbying and research to achieve its goals. The global organization does not accept funding from governments, corporations or political parties, relying on more than 2.8 million individual supporters and foundation grants. Greenpeace is a founding member of the INGO Accountability Charter; an international non-governmental organization that intends to foster accountability and transparency of non-governmental organizations.

Greenpeace evolved from the peace movement and anti-nuclear protests in Vancouver, British Columbia, in the early 1970s. On September 15, 1971, the newly founded Don't Make a Wave Committee sent a chartered ship, Phyllis Cormack, renamed Greenpeace for the protest, from Vancouver to oppose United States testing of nuclear devices in Amchitka, Alaska. The Don't Make a Wave Committee subsequently adopted the name Greenpeace.

Kumi Naidoo (born 1965) is a South African human rights activist and the International Executive Director of international environmentalist group, Greenpeace. He is the first African to head the organisation.

After battling apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s through the Helping Hands Youth Organisation, Naidoo led global campaigns to end poverty and protect human rights. He has served as the secretary-general of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty.

Recently, he has led the Global Campaign for Climate Action (Tcktcktck.org), which brings together environmental, aid, religious and human rights groups, labor unions, scientists and others and has organized mass demonstrations around climate negotiations.^{[citation needed]}

Naidoo has one 17-year old daughter; Naomi Naidoo.

In June 2011, Kumi Naidoo spent four days in a Greenlandic prison after scaling an oil platform owned by Cairn Energy, as part of Greenpeace's "Go Beyond Oil" campaign. He was deported to Denmark where he spent a short time in Danish custody before being released in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Rex Weyler (born September 10, 1947) is an American / Canadian author, journalist and ecologist. He has worked as a writer, editor, and publisher at newspapers and magazines, and occasionally as a commentator on Canadian television. In the 1970s, Weyler served as a director of the original Greenpeace Foundation, and as campaign photographer and publisher of the Greenpeace Chronicles. He was a cofounder of Greenpeace International in 1979.

Weyler is the author of books on native rights (Blood of the Land), Greenpeace history (Greenpeace: The Inside Story) and religious commentary (The Jesus Sayings: A Quest for His Authentic Message). In the 1990s, he coauthored a U.S. patent for music tuning software and co-founded Justonic Tuning Inc. with his partner Bill Gannon, to develop and market the product. He works as a freelance journalist, appearing in print, broadcast, and on the Internet.

Weyler was born in Denver, Colorado, September 10, 1947, to Jack Richardson Weyler, a petroleum geologist, and Joanne (Goodwin) Weyler, both from Santa Barbara, California.