Category Archives: Environment

How do you deal with 9m tonnes of suffocating seaweed?

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Across the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, scientists are developing alternative sustainable solutions to the golden tide of Sargassum

The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, first detected by Nasa observation satellites in 2011 and now known to be the world’s largest bloom of seaweed, stretches for 5,500 miles (8,850km) from the Gulf of Mexico to the western coast of Africa.

Millions of tonnes of floating Sargassum seaweed in coastal waters smother fragile seagrass habitats, suffocate coral reefs and harm fisheries. And once washed ashore on Mexican and Caribbean beaches, this foul-smelling, rotting seaweed goes on to devastate the tourist industry, prevent turtles from nesting and damage coastal ecosystems, while releasing hydrogen sulphide and other toxic gases as it decomposes.

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Scat feels better: digestive health of Japan deer improves as tourist snacks dwindle

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Absence of tourists during coronavirus pandemic has led Nara’s revered deer back to traditional diets and better health

While the absence of tourists during the coronavirus pandemic may have deprived Nara’s famous deer of their favourite snack, it has worked wonders for their digestive health.

Before the outbreak, millions of tourists descended on the western Japanese city – once the country’s capital – to view its shrines and temples, and feed the estimated 1,300 free-roaming deer in the its main park

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Cooking up a solution to Uganda’s deforestation crisis with mud stoves

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Badru Kyewalyanga’s home-produced cooking devices use less wood and mean villagers are breathing cleaner air

People are “constantly cutting down trees”, says Badru Kyewalyanga, as he squelches his bare feet into a thick paste of mud in Mukono, central Uganda. “But they have nowhere else to get firewood. The deforestation rate here is very high.”

With only 10% of Uganda’s rural population connected to the electrical grid, there is little option but to burn wood, leading to one of the worst deforestation rates in the world. Every year, 2.6% of the country’s forests are cut down for fuel, agriculture, and to make way for population growth. If things stay as they are, Uganda will lose all its forest cover in less than 25 years, the country’s National Environment Management Authority says.

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US to join summit on global green recovery from Covid-19 crisis

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Exclusive: IEA chief warns rebound in emissions would be missed economic opportunity

The US is to join with other major powers including China, India and the EU in formulating plans for a global green recovery from the coronavirus crisis, in the only major international summit on the climate emergency this year.

The idea of a green recovery to prevent a dangerous rebound in greenhouse gas emissions to above pre-Covid-19 levels has been gathering steam, but few governments have yet committed to plans.

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Russian mining giant admits pumping wastewater into Arctic tundra

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Norilsk Nickel suspends workers at metals plant who dumped the water in ‘flagrant violation of operating rules’

A Russian mining giant said on Sunday it had suspended workers at a metals plant who were responsible for pumping wastewater into nearby Arctic tundra.

Independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta published videos from the scene showing large metal pipes carrying wastewater from the reservoir and dumping foaming liquid among nearby trees.

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Chesapeake Energy, fracking pioneer, files for bankruptcy owing $9bn

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The Oklahoma City-based company helped turn the US into a global energy powerhouse but ran up huge debts in the process

Chesapeake Energy, the shale gas drilling pioneer that helped to turn the United States into a global energy powerhouse, has filed for bankruptcy protection.

The Oklahoma City-based company said on Sunday that it had been forced to enter chapter 11 protection because its debts of $9bn were unmanageable.

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German far right infiltrates green groups with call to protect the land

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Extremists exploit rural nostalgia and farmers’ anger at globalisation to smuggle in ideology

The poster advertising the evening of debate and organic canapés in Halle’s university district looked familiar to environmentally conscious Germans: a rugged pair of hands, cupping fertile brown soil, underneath the slogan “Farms instead of agricultural factories”, written in a font mimicking that of a popular biodynamic food brand.

The only hint the event wasn’t organised by sandal-wearing good-lifers but a local group of far-right nationalists was in the subtitle: “Let’s chase the globalists off our acres!”

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France’s oldest nuclear reactor to finally shut down

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Environmentalists have welcomed news that the 43-year-old Fessenheim reactor will close, nine years after it was first planned

France’s oldest nuclear power plant will shut down on Tuesday after four decades in operation, to the delight of environmental activists who have long warned of contamination risks, but stoking worry for the local economy.

The Fessenheim plant, opened in 1977 and already three years over its projected 40-year life span, became a target for anti-nuclear campaigners after the catastrophic meltdown at Fukushima in Japan in 2011.

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‘Either we change or we die’: the radical farming project in the Amazon

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A growing movement for sustainable agriculture in Brazil has taken on new urgency with the coronavirus pandemic

The cumaru trees could have been planted elsewhere in this Amazon reserve, where they had better chances of flourishing. Instead, they were planted in harsh, sandy soil in the dry savannah that breaks up the forest. Jack beans, guandu peas and other crops were planted in straw around them with cut savannah grass, for moisture and compost. “We call it the cradle,” says agronomist Alailson Rêgo. “It protects them.”

The hope is that if these Amazon-native trees – whose seeds can be used in cosmetics – thrive on this sandy soil and a nearby patch of deforested, burned land, they can regenerate abandoned pasture elsewhere. In the Amazon, more land is cleared for cattle than anything else. It’s easier enough to clear – chop down a few trees, light a few fires. But restoring the forest? Bringing back the life and the greenness? That is far, far harder.

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‘It is such a fleeting thing’: Hobart residents flock to witness the Disappearing Tarn

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The azure pool only appears after heavy rains, but cold, wet weather hasn’t deterred locals from taking a dip

On kunanyi/Mount Wellington, 200mm of rainfall has transformed a rocky patch of forest into a striking pool. It’s freezing cold, but the water is clear and blue.

The Disappearing Tarn appears only after a heavy downpour. It’s shrouded in a layer of mystery among visitors and scientists alike: geomorphologist Kevin Kiernan speculates its arresting blue colour may be a result of fine sediments in the water as it pools over depressions in the land. At the bottom of this basin, organic matter rots and occasionally releases bubbles.

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Scottish villagers plan to buy out landowners for eco moorland project

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Despite funding challenges, community aims to increase biodiversity at Langholm Moor making it resistant to climate change

A small community in the rolling uplands of southern Scotland hopes to create a major new nature reserve, straddling more than 10,000 acres of heather moorland home to hen harriers, black grouse and curlew.

The 2,300 villagers of Langholm, a small settlement a few miles north of the English border, hope to buy one of the UK’s most famous grouse moors, owned by one of the UK’s most powerful hereditary landowners, the Duke of Buccleuch.

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Britain beyond lockdown: can UK become cleaner?

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As Covid-19 accelerates the shift towards renewable energy, Jonathan Watts hears how this change risks causing intergenerational injustice in Aberdeen

Like many young people in Aberdeen, Mike Scotland dreamed of a well-paid job on a rig in the North Sea, in the oil and gas field that has made his home town a boom town for most of the past 40 years.

In February the 28-year-old landed the position he had wanted with Shell, and he was due to take a helicopter to the Shearwater platform in July once he had completed training.

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‘My land is now owned by lions’: Maasai farmers offer Kenya’s wildlife a lifeline

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Kenya has lost 70% of its wildlife in 30 years, but conservancy schemes could halt the decline – and benefit local communities

Parsaloi Kupai’s home, situated on the edge of Ol Kinyei conservancy near the Maasai Mara game reserve, is no different from any other Maasai homestead – oval-shaped huts with an almost flat roof and walls plastered with a mixture of water, mud and cow dung. At the centre of the homestead is a cattle boma, an enclosure where his livestock spends the night, safe from the many predators that roam the area.

Kupai, 47, and his two wives chose to live here after they surrendered 69 hectares (170 acres) of land to the 7,500-hectare conservancy. He is among 240 landowners who gave up their highly valued grazing land for the project.

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Fifteen people killed in Mexican village linked to windpower dispute

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Investigations under way into the reasons behind deaths of 13 men and two women

At least 15 people have been bludgeoned to death with stones and cement blocks, and some bodies partly burned, in an indigenous village in southern Mexico plagued by a dispute over windpower.

The municipal government of the Pacific coast community of San Mateo del Mar in Oaxaca state said 13 men and two women were killed at the weekend by what it described as a group of six people with the support of a local crime boss. Activists who successfully opposed windpower projects say the mayor’s followers ambushed them at a coronavirus checkpoint.

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Sydney’s water supply at risk because of department failure on conservation, audit finds

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NSW audit office blasts water conservation efforts and finds Sydney Water was two years too late in responding to recent drought

The New South Wales government has failed to investigate or implement water conservation measures for greater Sydney, leaving the city’s water supply vulnerable to the effects of population growth, drought and climate change, the state’s auditor has found.

The report by the NSW audit office also found Sydney Water was two years too late in increasing funding for water conservation in response to the recent drought.

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Now, more than ever, America must make water a human right | Bernie Sanders and Brenda Lawrence

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When it comes to water infrastructure, America’s challenges resemble those of a developing country. It’s time for that to change

How can it be that in the midst of a pandemic, children living in the richest country in world history are being poisoned by tap water? For decades, our government has put corporate profits ahead of guaranteeing its people the right to clean water. We have neglected the most basic public investments to keep Americans healthy and safe. Now, as America battles an unprecedented public health crisis, we can no longer continue along a course in which companies have been allowed to buy up, privatize, and profit off a basic human right. The solution is not more privatization – it is for Congress to end decades of neglect and immediately invest billions into our public water systems so that we can finally guarantee clean drinking water to everybody.

That’s why we joined with Representative Ro Khanna to introduce the Water Affordability, Transparency, Equity and Reliability (Water) Act. This comprehensive legislation would provide up to $35bn per year to overhaul our water infrastructure across the nation.

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Revealed: millions of Americans can’t afford water as bills rise 80% in a decade

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Exclusive: analysis of US cities shows emergency on affordability of running water amid Covid-19 pandemic

Millions of ordinary Americans are facing rising and unaffordable bills for running water, and risk being disconnected or losing their homes if they cannot pay, a landmark Guardian investigation has found.

Exclusive analysis of 12 US cities shows the combined price of water and sewage increased by an average of 80% between 2010 and 2018, with more than two-fifths of residents in some cities living in neighbourhoods with unaffordable bills.

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Is it too much to ask for Americans to have access to clean water in 2020?

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The Guardian – in partnership with Consumer Reports and others – is launching a one-year series of investigations highlighting the US water crisis

Almost exactly 10 years ago, on 28 July 2010, the United Nations declared water a human right under international law. And not just any water, but clean water – and sufficient water for “drinking, personal sanitation, washing of clothes, food preparation, personal and household hygiene”.

Imagine a country where, 10 years years on, over two million people are denied access to running water and basic indoor plumbing.

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Scrap Stonehenge road tunnel plans say archaeologists after neolithic discovery

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Exclusive: Discovery of prehistoric structure is another reason to give up ‘disastrous, white elephant’ scheme

Leading archaeologists say a £1.6bn scheme to build a road tunnel through the historic Stonehenge landscape should be scrapped altogether after the sensational nearby discovery of the largest prehistoric structure ever found in Britain.

Mike Parker Pearson, professor of British later prehistory at University College London, said: “This is just another reason to give up this disastrous, white elephant of a scheme.”

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