Cargill, which had pledged to clean up its supply chain, sells feed for many of the billion chickens killed annually in UK
A major supplier of animal feed is still buying soya and corn from a farm linked to deforestation in the Amazon, despite having pledged to clean up its global supply chains.
Cargill, a giant agricultural multinational that sells feed to British chicken farms, buys crops from a farm growing soybeans on deforested land in the Brazilian Amazon.
Continue reading...Care International report highlights ‘deep injustice’ neglected by world’s media, as extreme weather along with Covid wipes out decades of progress
From Afghanistan to Ethiopia, about 235 million people worldwide needed assistance in 2021. But while some crises received global attention, others are lesser known.
Humanitarian organisation Care International has published its annual report of the 10 countries that had the least attention in online articles in five languages around the world in 2021, despite each having at least 1 million people affected by conflict or climate disasters.
Continue reading...International Energy Agency says pollution from power generation will worsen until alternatives are found
The global surge in demand for energy could spark another three years of market volatility and record power plant pollution unless countries make major changes to how they generate electricity, the world’s energy watchdog has warned.
The International Energy Agency recorded the steepest ever increase in electricity demand last year, which triggered blackouts in major economies and led to historic energy price highs and record emissions.
Continue reading...Friends and colleagues pay tribute after the recent deaths of these groundbreaking naturalists, who shifted our understanding of the world and our future
Over Christmas and the new year, three of the world’s leading naturalists died. Thomas Lovejoy, a conservation biologist credited with popularising the term “biodiversity” and a passionate defender of the Amazon, died on 25 December. A day later, Edward O Wilson, known to many as the “modern-day Darwin”, died in Burlington, Massachusetts. On 2 January, Richard Leakey, a world-renowned Kenyan conservationist who helped establish Africa as the birthplace of humankind, died at his home in Nairobi.
From presidents to undergraduate students, thousands have paid tribute to the three men, whose achievements range from developing theories on forest and island ecosystems to reforming the Kenyan civil service and devising proposals to protect half the planet for nature. Alongside grand accomplishments, which were sometimes controversial, their passing has been a chance to reflect on the small and the mundane: fleeting interactions that inspired careers, kind words that propelled research projects, and generosity of spirit that has helped amplify the voices of those that practise and produce science.
Continue reading...Activists mourn deaths in Amazon state of Pará as bodies of José Gomes, Márcia Nunes Lisboa and their daughter found by son
Police in the Brazilian Amazon state of Pará are investigating the killing of three members of the same family who were shot dead at the riverside home where they bred turtles.
The deaths happened on the island of Cachoeira da Mucura, on the banks of the Xingu River, in São Félix do Xingu and regional media named the victims as José Gomes, his wife Márcia Nunes Lisboa and her teenage daughter, Joane Nunes Lisboa.
Continue reading...It wouldn’t be Guardian Australia ‘best of’ series without a bird episode! The regent honeyeater is an endangered native Australian songbird, with only a few hundred left in the wild. A few years ago scientists noticed something odd – they were mimicking other birds, and unable to sing their own song. Environment reporter Graham Readfearn and Dr Joy Tripovich explain how this species lost its song, and whether teaching it how to sing again could help save it from extinction
You can also read:
Continue reading...The government has been criticised for apparent inaction as evidence mounts that mercury contamination is causing illness in fishing communities
Outside a small brick house shared by four families, Daniela Prada, who is heavily pregnant, gathers guava leaves to make a tea for her two-year-old son.
“My baby gets sick a lot,” she says, boiling a pot of water in her outdoor kitchen. “He always has diarrhoea and last night he had a fever. Most of the time I give him natural medicine.”
In an identical house nearby, town leader Oscar Lurici says fevers are a part of life in Eyiyo Quibo village on the Beni River in northern Bolivia. People of all ages suffer from debilitating head and body aches, bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea, memory loss and tiredness. Some children show signs of cognitive development delays.
With the climate crisis becoming ever more urgent, a growing number of young, childless men are taking the drastic decision of being sterilised for environmental reasons
When Lloyd Williamson lay on his back in a GP’s clinic late last November, it was for the surgical culmination of years of soul searching. Williamson, who is 30 and from Essex, remembers wanting a family as a child, but something changed in his early 20s. “I thought: you know what? I don’t want to bring a life into this world, because it’s pretty shitty as it is and it’s only going to get worse,” he says, two weeks after his vasectomy.
Williamson was largely motivated to sterilise himself by the climate crisis. Given the link between fossil-fuelled economic growth and population growth, he believes that having fewer children is one thing individuals can do to help. “We can’t offset our carbon problem on to the next generation, because it’s not fair on them,” he says.
Continue reading...Experts say we can expect more of the same, with 2021 beating all records since 1909
Last year was New Zealand’s hottest year on record, according to the country’s National Institute of Water and Aeronautic Research (NIWA), and seven of the past nine years are among New Zealand’s warmest ever. The country’s steadily rising temperature brings increased risk of major floods, bushfires and storms.
According to NIWA, New Zealand’s average temperature in 2021 was 13.56 degrees Celsius. It’s the highest average NIWA has recorded since it began its seven-station annual temperature series in 1909, and breaks the previous record set in 2016 by 0.11 degrees.
Continue reading...From ‘bubble barriers’ to floating drones, a host of new projects aim to stop plastic pollution before it ever reaches the ocean
The Great Bubble Barrier is just that – a wall of bubbles. It gurgles across the water in a diagonal screen, pushing plastic to one side while allowing fish and other wildlife to pass unharmed.
The technology, created by a Dutch firm and already being used in Amsterdam, is being trialled in the Douro River in Porto, Portugal, as part of the EU-supported Maelstrom (marine litter sustainable removal and management) project.
Continue reading...Photojournalist Giuia Besana visits the world’s northernmost priest who runs the Svalbard Church in Longyearbyen, in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. Pastor Siv Limstrand is the community’s guiding figure as it looks to an uncertain future in the face of economic shifts and the effects of climate change
Located in the Svalbard archipelago in Norway, Longyearbyen is the world’s northernmost settlement. Here, winter temperatures range from -13 to -20C and inhabitants are prepared for two and half months of complete darkness in winter, the constant danger of polar bears, and avalanches.
The road to the cabin of Siv Limstrand, in Adventdalen Valley, an 18-mile-long valley east of Longyearbyen, during a brief moment of daylight
Continue reading...People between Cape Tribulation and Coen, including Cooktown, have been told to prepare to shelter in a safe place
People in far north Queensland have been urged to hunker down after Tropical Cyclone Tiffany made landfall on Monday afternoon.
The Bureau of Meteorology warned people in the area to prepare to shelter as the storm passes across the state.
Continue reading...Critics haven’t been kind to Adam McKay’s eco-satire, but many climate experts are lauding it. Here four give their views
Rarely has a film been as divisive as Adam McKay’s climate satire Don’t Look Up. Although it has been watched by millions, and is already Netflix’s third most watched film ever, the response from critics was largely negative. Many found its story of scientists who discover an asteroid heading for Earth a clumsy allegory for the climate crisis, while others just found it boring. But many in the climate movement have praised the film, and audience reviews have been generally positive.
We asked four climate experts to give their views on the film. Warning: spoilers ahead.
Continue reading...As companies extract wealth, villagers say they see little benefit and are instead exploited in quarries, live in homes damaged by blasts and are unable to farm polluted land
A convoy of trucks laden with huge black granite rocks trundles along the dusty pathway as a group of villagers look on grimly.
Every day more than 60 trucks take granite for export along this rugged road through Nyamakope village in the district of Mutoko, 90 miles east of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.
Continue reading...Hundreds of new species include pink voodoo lily and an ylang-ylang tree named after Leonardo DiCaprio
A ghost orchid that grows in complete darkness, an insect-trapping tobacco plant and an “exploding firework” flower are among the new species named by scientists in the last year. The species range from a voodoo lily from Cameroon to a rare tooth fungus unearthed near London, UK.
A new tree from the ylang-ylang family is the first to be named in 2022 and is being named after the actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio. He campaigned to revoke a logging concession which threatened the African tree, which features glossy yellow flowers on its trunk.
Continue reading...The Oscar-winning director’s new documentary explores warmth, joy and anger through the eyes of a farmyard animal. She reveals what it taught her about life
Andrea Arnold’s films are known for their spare dialogue, and in her first documentary it is more pared-backed than ever: Cow consists of 94 minutes of moos, with the odd off-camera interjection from farmhands. It is hardly a thriller (though the ending is pure Tarantino). But it is one of the most beautifully crafted and tender portraits of a life you are likely to see.
Arnold, who started her professional life as a rollerskating TV presenter on the children’s Saturday show No 73, began thinking about documenting an animal’s life nine years ago. Eventually she settled on a cow. “I thought a cow would be interesting because they work so hard, getting pregnant and giving milk their entire lives. It’s a huge job they do.” She chose Luma because she was told she had a big personality and was feisty. Arnold and her team spent four years, on and off, filming her. Why did she make Cow? “I wanted to show a non-human consciousness. I was intrigued as to whether we would be able to see her consciousness if we followed her long enough.”
Continue reading...Forced from their homes by missionaries, the Ayoreo cling on in the Chaco. Now the Bioceanic Corridor cuts through the fastest-vanishing forest on Earth, refuge of some of the Americas’ last hunter-gatherers
In 1972, Catholic missionaries entered the Chaco forest of northern Paraguay and forced Oscar Pisoraja’s family, and their nomadic Ayoreo people, to leave with them. Many perished from thirst on the long march south. Settled near the village of Carmelo Peralta on the Paraguay River, dozens more died from illnesses. Still, the survivors kept up some traditions – hunting for armadillos; weaving satchels from the spiky caraguatá plant. “We felt part of this place,” says Pisoraja, now 51.
Today, his community – and other indigenous peoples across the Chaco, a tapestry of swamp, savanna and thorny forest across four countries that is South America’s largest ecosystem after the Amazon – are confronting a dramatic new change.
Mario Abdo Benítez, Paraguay’s president, and Reinaldo Azambuja Silva, governor of Mato Grosso do Sul state in Brazil, at the site of a new bridge across the Paraguay River, due to be completed in 2024
Continue reading...The Philippines adds little to global emissions but faces some of its worst effects in extreme weather. Climate justice is needed
A few days before Christmas, Super-typhoon Rai – known locally as Odette – ravaged the Philippines. The morning after the onslaught, on my way back to Iloilo City from San Jose, Antique, I could see the ocean still boiling; houses blown away and great trees knocked down, making roads impassable. The sights were terrifying.
Lost lives continue to climb two weeks on. Vast numbers of buildings were destroyed – from houses to schools; food crops lost to flooding. At first, I did not know what to feel – anger, helplessness? Later, I knew what I wanted: climate justice.
Continue reading...Brussels faces backlash and charges of greenwashing after publishing draft proposals on New Year’s Eve
The European Commission is facing a furious backlash over plans to allow gas and nuclear to be labelled as “green” investments, as Germany’s economy minister led the charge against “greenwashing”.
The EU executive was accused of trying to bury the proposals by releasing long-delayed technical rules on its green investment guidebook to diplomats on New Year’s Eve, hours before a deadline expired.
Continue reading...Brigitte Baptiste has a high profile as a transgender Colombian woman and an ecologist – in a country where both are targeted
When Brigitte Baptiste walks on to the 10th floor of Bogotá’s Ean University at 9.45am in a plunging dress, knee-high cheetah-print boots and a silvery wig, the office comes to life. She examines some flowers sent by the Colombian radio station Caracol to thank her for taking part in a forum, her co-worker compliments her on her lipstick, and she settles in for a day of back-to-back meetings, followed by a private virtual conversation with the UN secretary general, António Guterres. Later that evening, she flies to Cartagena for a conference on natural gas.
The 58-year-old ecologist is one of Colombia’s foremost environmental experts, and one of its most visible transgender people, challenging scientific and social conventions alike. An ecology professor at the Jesuit-run Javeriana University for 20 years, she has written 15 books, countless newspaper columns, and won international prizes for her work. Most recently, she was appointed chancellor of Ean University, a business school, as part of its push for greater sustainability.
Continue reading...