A tanker leaking tonnes of oil off the coast of the Indian Ocean island is breaking up, threatening ecological disaster
Continue reading...Category Archives: Environment
Mauritius calls for urgent help to prevent oil spill disaster
Stranded oil tanker is breaking up, threatening even greater ecological devastation
People living in Mauritius have described the devastation caused by an oil spill from a stranded tanker and called for urgent international help to stop the ecological and economic damage overwhelming the island nation.
More than 1,000 tonnes of fuel has already seeped from the bulk carrier MV Wakashio into the sea off south-east Mauritius, polluting the coral reefs, white-sand beaches and pristine lagoons that attract tourists from around the world.
Continue reading...‘The Amazon is the vagina of the world’: why women are key to saving Brazil’s forests
Indigenous leader Célia Xakriabá and Vagina Monologues author V discuss Brazil’s biodiversity crisis and why this is the century of the indigenous woman
Célia Xakriabá is the voice of a new generation of female indigenous leaders who are leading the fight against the destruction of Brazil’s forests both in the Amazon and the lesser known Cerrado, a savannah that covers a fifth of the country. V, formerly Eve Ensler, is the award-winning author of the Vagina Monologues, an activist and founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against all women and girls and the Earth. The two recently held a conversation in which V asked Xakriabá about what is happening to Brazil’s biodiversity and indigenous peoples, and why women are the key to change.
V: Many people, especially in the west, don’t really understand what’s happening to the Cerrado in Brazil. Can you tell us what’s happening to the forests?
C: It’s very tough at this moment. Every minute one person dies of Covid-19, but also every minute one tree is cut. And whenever a tree is cut, a part of us is cut, a part of us also dies, because the territory dies and with no territory there is no air, no good air for everyone in the world. People can’t breathe. So all this Covid contamination, it gets to the territory through the miners, the gold miners, the loggers and the rangers. And now that we are getting to August, we get even more worried about the fires, all the fires that burned the Amazon last year. It’s going to come back.
A New Normal: travel and the environment after Covid-19 – video
In this week's episode of A New Normal, Iman Amrani asks viewers what their thoughts are around travel and the environment post-Covid. With international travel increasingly more difficult to do during a pandemic, and persisting questions around the impact is has on the environment, she goes to speak to people who are taking a summer break closer to home
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Is this the end for ‘king coal’ in Britain?
As the black stuff burnt in the UK plummets to a level not seen since the early steam age, we trace its long, deep history and the problems left in its wake
Britain achieved an unlikely status as a power provider last year. Its annual consumption of coal plunged to the lowest level in 250 years. According to figures released last week, a mere 8 million tonnes were incinerated in UK factories and power plants. That is roughly the same amount that was burned nationally in 1769, when James Watt was patenting his modified steam engine.
That invention helped to spark the Industrial Revolution and triggered a massive rise in annual coal use in Britain, which soared to well over 200 million tonnes by the mid-20th century. Now levels have plummeted back to their original pre-revolution state. King coal – once the undisputed ruler of British industry – has finally been dethroned.
Continue reading...India plans to fell ancient forest to create 40 new coalfields
Narendra Modi’s dream of a ‘self-reliant India’ comes at a terrible price for its indigenous population
Over the past decade, Umeshwar Singh Amra has witnessed his homeland descend into a battleground. The war being waged in Hasdeo Arand, a rich and biodiverse Indian forest, has pitted indigenous people, ancient trees, elephants and sloths against the might of bulldozers, trucks and hydraulic jacks, fighting with a single purpose: the extraction of coal.
Yet under a new “self-reliant India” plan by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, to boost the economy post-Covid-19 and reduce costly imports, 40 new coalfields in some of India’s most ecologically sensitive forests are to be opened up for commercial mining.
Continue reading...Thousands of baby turtles released into sea off Bali
The Olive Ridley turtles are part of conservationists’ attempts to boost the population and promote environmental protection
More than 10,000 baby turtles were released into the sea off the Indonesian island of Bali, as part of conservationists’ attempts to boost the population of a vulnerable species and promote environmental protection.
Conservation groups carried crates each full of dozens of tiny turtles to the island’s Gianyar beach on Friday and encouraged local people and volunteers to line up on the sand and release the hatchlings together.
Continue reading...Mauritius facing environmental crisis as shipwreck leaks oil
MV Wakashio breaking up after running aground at Pointe d’Esny near marine park
The Indian Ocean island of Mauritius is facing an environmental crisis after oil began leaking from a bulk carrier that ran aground in March and started to break up in rough seas.
“We are in an environmental crisis situation,” said the environment minister, Kavy Ramano, while the fishing minister, Sudheer Maudhoo, said: “This is the first time that we are faced with a catastrophe of this kind and we are insufficiently equipped to handle this problem.”
Continue reading...Extreme droughts in central Europe likely to increase sevenfold
Researchers say moderate reductions in CO2 emissions could halve their likelihood
Extreme droughts are likely to become much more frequent across central Europe, and if global greenhouse gas emissions rise strongly they could happen seven times more often, new research has shown.
The area of crops likely to be affected by drought is also set to increase, and under sharply rising CO2 levels would nearly double in central Europe in the second half of this century, to more than 40m hectares (154,440 sq miles) of farmland.
Continue reading...Monsoon rains driven by high winds bring flooding misery to Mumbai
India’s commercial capital grinds to a halt after heaviest August rainfall in 47 years causes widespread flooding
The heaviest monsoon downpour in nearly 50 years has brought Mumbai to a standstill, with stranded passengers at railway stations having to be rescued by dinghies from waist-high water.
People who live in areas normally unaffected by the annual monsoon flooding looked out from their high-rise flats at new swirling rivers outside caused by the heaviest single day’s rain recorded in August in 47 years.
Continue reading...Italian homes evacuated over risk of Mont Blanc glacier collapse
Roads near Courmayeur closed to tourists because of threat from falling Planpincieux ice
Homes have been evacuated in Courmayeur in Italy’s Aosta valley, after a renewed warning that a huge portion of a Mont Blanc glacier is at risk of collapse.
The measures were introduced on Wednesday morning after experts from the Fondazione Montagne Sicura (Safe Mountains Foundation) said 500,000 cubic metres of ice was in danger of sliding off the Planpincieux glacier on the Grandes Jorasses park.
Continue reading...‘They just pull up everything!’ Chinese fleet raises fears for Galápagos sea life
A vast fishing armada off Ecuador’s biodiverse Pacific islands has stirred alarm over ‘indiscriminate’ fishing practices
Jonathan Green had been tracking a whale shark named Hope across the eastern Pacific for 280 days when the satellite transmissions from a GPS tag on her dorsal fin abruptly stopped.
It was not unusual for the GPS signal to go silent, even for weeks at a time, said Green, a scientist who has been studying the world’s largest fish for three decades in the unique marine ecosystem around the Galápagos Islands.
Continue reading...New Guinea has greatest plant diversity of any island in the world, study reveals
The tropical island edges out Madagascar as botanists estimate that 4,000 new species could be discovered in the next 50 years
New Guinea is home to more than 13,500 species of plant, two-thirds of which are endemic, according to a new study that suggests it has the greatest plant diversity of any island in the world – 19% more than Madagascar, which previously held the record.
Ninety-nine botanists from 56 institutions in 19 countries trawled through samples, the earliest of which were collected by European travellers in the 1700s. Large swathes of the island remain unexplored and some historical collections have yet to be looked at. Researchers estimate that 4,000 more plant species could be found in the next 50 years, with discoveries showing “no sign of levelling off”, according to the paper published in Nature.
Continue reading...Deadly diseases from wildlife thrive when nature is destroyed, study finds
Rats and bats that host pandemic pathogens like Covid-19 increase in damaged ecosystems, analysis shows
The human destruction of natural ecosystems increases the numbers of rats, bats and other animals that harbour diseases that can lead to pandemics such as Covid-19, a comprehensive analysis has found.
The research assessed nearly 7,000 animal communities on six continents and found that the conversion of wild places into farmland or settlements often wipes out larger species. It found that the damage benefits smaller, more adaptable creatures that also carry the most pathogens that can pass to humans.
Continue reading...Tesco urged to ditch meat company over alleged links to Amazon deforestation
Responding to Greenpeace campaign to cut links to Brazilian meat giant JBS, supermarket calls on government to ensure all UK food is deforestation-free
Tesco has called on the UK government to order food companies to ensure all food sold in the UK is deforestation-free. The move comes in response to a new Greenpeace campaign calling on the supermarket to cut links to JBS, the world’s biggest meat company, over its alleged links to farms involved in Amazon deforestation.
The supermarket says the UK should introduce due diligence across supply chains to monitor for deforestation. Germany is also weighing up a due diligence law on supply chains, reportedly supported by Angela Merkel. And more than half of Britons would consider rejecting meat products linked to deforestation, a YouGov poll for Greenpeace has found.
Continue reading...Throng of new penguin colonies in Antarctica spotted from space
Satellite images reveal guano patches, boosting known emperor penguin colonies by 20%
Satellite images have revealed 11 previously unknown emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica, boosting the number of known colonies of the imperilled birds by 20%.
The discoveries were made by spotting the distinctive red-brown guano patches the birds leave on the ice. The finds were made possible by higher-resolution images from a new satellite, as previous scans were unable to pick up smaller colonies.
Continue reading...The Guardian view on wildlife in lockdown: feeling the pressure | Editorial
If countries that use tourism to fund conservation are not supported, species and habitats will disappear
At London zoo, the giraffes, which are easily visible from the street, had regular visitors even during lockdown, and an illuminated NHS sign on their famous building. Like most other attractions that rely on tourists for income, zoos forced to shut owing to the coronavirus face a financially fraught future. But the risks to captive animals and their keepers are nothing to those faced by wild creatures and the people who guard them. Already under huge pressure from multiple sources, international conservation efforts have been thrown into fresh chaos.
The picture that is emerging of the global impact of Covid-19 on wildlife is complicated. Fishing hours were found by researchers to have fallen by 10% in March and April, for example, while South Africa reported a 53% drop in the number of rhinos killed by poachers, compared with the first six months of last year (from 316 in 2019, to 166). The sudden dramatic fall in air pollution and traffic (road, sea and air) brought rapid if short-lived benefits for many of the planet’s non-human inhabitants. In the UK, as in other countries, people who could afford to took the opportunity of the lockdown to spend more time in the countryside or their gardens. So far, it is a bumper year for British butterflies.
Continue reading...‘Guajirío culture is dying’: Mexican dam poised to displace living and flood ancestors’ graves
Experts say indigenous group has been pressured and cheated into surrendering its land
High in the Sierra de Alamos of Mexico’s northern Sonora state, towering pillars of rock loom above thermal springs where for thousands of years, the indigenous Guarijío people would gather to commune with their ancestors.
Now the springs – and the land around them – have been submerged beneath rising waters trapped behind an enormous dam across the Mayo River. The 25-storey Bicentenario-Los Pilares barrier threatens to displace the living, and leave the graves of their forefathers deep under water.
Continue reading...Chirp to arms: musicians record album to help conserve endangered birds
Ten-track record samples recordings of endangered, vulnerable or near threatened birds by artists from same country
The song of the black catbird – with its flute-like chirps and screeching single-note squalls – was once heard across Guatemala, Belize and southern Mexico until large-scale farms began to destroy its habitat.
Now, thanks to a collective of musicians, producers and DJs, the tiny bird’s song – and that of nine other endangered species from the region – could be heard on dancefloors around the world, with proceeds going to conserving the endangered birds.
Continue reading...Rising temperatures will cause more deaths than all infectious diseases – study
Poorer, hotter parts of the world will struggle to adapt to unbearable conditions, research finds
The growing but largely unrecognized death toll from rising global temperatures will come close to eclipsing the current number of deaths from all the infectious diseases combined if planet-heating emissions aren’t constrained, a major new study has found.
Related: Killer heat: US racial injustices will worsen as climate crisis escalates
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