Category Archives: Environment

‘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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Britain still failing on climate crisis, warn advisers

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Committee urges that companies must meet green standards to qualify for Covid-19 corporate bailouts

Ministers are bracing themselves for a powerful new rebuke from the government’s own advisers over the nation’s inadequate response to the climate crisis. In its annual progress report, to be published on Thursday, the Committee on Climate Change will lambast continuing failures by the government to tackle the issues of overheating homes, flash floods, loss of biodiversity and the other threats posed as our planet continues to overheat dangerously.

Last year, the committee complained that no areas of the UK’s response to the climate crisis were being tackled properly. “The whole thing is run by the government like a Dad’s Army,” said the committee’s chairman, Lord Deben.

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Italian team covers glacier with giant white sheets to slow melting

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Every summer, the Presena glacier in northern Italy is protected from the sun with huge reflective tarps

A vast tarpaulin unravels, gathering speed as it bounces down the glacier over glinting snow. Summer is here and the alpine ice is being protected from global warming.

In northern Italy, the Presena glacier has lost more than one third of its volume since 1993.

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Anti-HS2 protesters begin 125-mile walk along proposed route

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Protest walk organised by Extinction Rebellion began in Birmingham and will stop off at protest sites on way to London

Eighty anti-HS2 protesters have started a 125-mile “Rebel Trail” along the route of the controversial HS2 high-speed rail link to highlight the damage they say it will do to wildlife and woodland.

The aim of the protest walk, organised by Extinction Rebellion, is to try to persuade the government to halt the high-speed link. The walkers will travel through countryside, villages and local communities along phase one of the HS2 route to show solidarity with those opposed to the rail link and say the peaceful demonstration will raise awareness about the environmental damage they say HS2 will cause.

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Texas’s cactus cops battle to save rare desert beauty from smuggling gangs

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Agents on US-Mexico border seize thousands of plants illegally pulled out of the ground by criminals

Special agents in America have busted a smuggling ring on the US-Mexico border, but their haul is not drugs or the immigrants that President Donald Trump rails against with his “big beautiful wall”.

These smugglers were trafficking something all together less high profile – so-called “living rock cactus” that grows uniquely on the arid plains of Big Bend national park in Texas.

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‘Tipping point’: Greta Thunberg hails Black Lives Matter protests

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People are realising ‘we cannot keep looking away from these things’, says climate activist

Greta Thunberg has said the Black Lives Matter protests show society has reached a tipping point where injustice can no longer be ignored, but that she believes a “green recovery plan” from the coronavirus pandemic will not be enough to solve the climate crisis.

Reflecting on the protests that have swept the globe in recent weeks, the Swedish climate activist told the BBC: “It feels like we have passed some kind of social tipping point where people are starting to realise that we cannot keep looking away from these things. We cannot keep sweeping these things under the carpet, these injustices.

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Climate crisis threatens future of global sport, says report

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Study says heatwaves, fires and floods, and rising sea levels pose major threat over coming years

The rapidly accelerating climate crisis threatens the future of major sports events around the world, according to a report that also says the global sporting industry is failing to tackle its own emissions.

The study found that in the coming years nearly all sports – from cricket to American football, tennis to athletics, surfing to golf – will face serious disruption from heatwaves, fires, floods and rising sea levels.

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As UK lockdowns ease, fears grow of return to pre-pandemic crime and pollution levels

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Carbon emissions, crime and air pollution all fell but are now starting to rebound

In a sudden realisation of what climate campaigners have been urging for years, flights were cancelled, vehicle use plummeted and the oil industry found itself in turmoil as lockdown restrictions took hold.

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‘A shame for the world’: Uganda’s fragile forest ecosystem destroyed for sugar

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Conservationists say clearance of Bugamo reserve for plantation is blow to biodiversity and country’s reputation on wildlife

Conservationists have branded a decision by the Ugandan high court to allow swathes of forest to be cleared for a sugarcane plantation “an unforgivable shame for all people”.

Work to clear 900 hectares (2,223 acres) of Bugoma Forest Reserve, in Hoima, began last month after the court ruled that the land, leased by Hoima Sugar Company Ltd, lay outside the protected area of the forest. The court ordered the National Forestry Authority (NFA), which manages it, to vacate the land and remove the military officers who had been guarding it. The NFA has appealed the decision.

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Papua New Guinea chiefs call for halt to plan for country’s largest ever mine

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Locals say the Sepik river region must be protected from ‘exploitation and destruction from outsiders’

Chiefs from 28 haus tambarans – “spirit houses” – representing 78,000 people along Papua New Guinea’s remote Sepik river have formally declared they want a proposal for the country’s largest ever mine halted.

PanAust, an Australian-registered miner ultimately owned by the Chinese state-owned Guangdong Rising Assets Management, has proposed building a gold, silver and copper mine on the Frieda river, a tributary to the Sepik.

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Climate crisis: alarm at record-breaking heatwave in Siberia

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Unusually high temperatures in region linked to wildfires, oil spill and moth swarms

A prolonged heatwave in Siberia is “undoubtedly alarming”, climate scientists have said. The freak temperatures have been linked to wildfires, a huge oil spill and a plague of tree-eating moths.

On a global scale, the Siberian heat is helping push the world towards its hottest year on record in 2020, despite a temporary dip in carbon emissions owing to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Pandemics result from destruction of nature, say UN and WHO

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Experts call for legislation and trade deals worldwide to encourage green recovery

Pandemics such as coronavirus are the result of humanity’s destruction of nature, according to leaders at the UN, WHO and WWF International, and the world has been ignoring this stark reality for decades.

The illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade as well as the devastation of forests and other wild places were still the driving forces behind the increasing number of diseases leaping from wildlife to humans, the leaders told the Guardian.

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Divers in Thailand attempt to free whale shark entangled in rope – video

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A group of divers in Thailand tried to save a whale shark whose tail was tied by rope. Video filmed on Saturday shows the whale shark swimming with a nylon rope tied around its tail. 

But the knife was too small and could not cut through the rope. Injured and with a rope still tied to its tail, the whale shark eventually swam away


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Plastic superhighway: the awful truth of our hidden ocean waste

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Solving the issue of waste in our seas turned out to be more complex than scrounging for bottles off the beach, Laura Trethewey found

We called the competition Who Found the Weirdest Thing? So far, the entries that day were a motorcycle helmet, a lithium battery covered with scary stickers asking that we return it to the military, and a toy dinosaur.

The dinosaur was warm from the sun and starting to degrade. The ocean had smoothed and worn down its edges. Rocks and sand had crosshatched its skin. It was missing a hind leg. On one side it was dark grey; the sun had bleached its opposite flank white.

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