Areas of Australia have burnt during the recent bushfire season that used to be too wet to burn. In this first episode of The Frontline, a new series that shows how everyday Australians are already experiencing the climate crisis, we go inside the new fire zone
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Giant dams enclosing North Sea could protect millions from rising waters
Dams between Scotland, Norway, France and England ‘a possible solution’ to problem
A Dutch government scientist has proposed building two mammoth dams to completely enclose the North Sea and protect an estimated 25 million Europeans from the consequences of rising sea levels as a result of global heating.
Sjoerd Groeskamp, an oceanographer at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, said a 475km dam between north Scotland and west Norway and another 160km one between west France and south-west England was “a possible solution”.
Continue reading...When Lambs Become Lions review – on the trail of Kenya’s elephant killers
This coolly even-handed documentary dips into the lives of an ivory poacher and a stressed-out wildlife ranger trying to obstruct the illegal trade
Jon Kasbe’s documentary When Lambs Become Lions has been much praised on the festival circuit, and it is cleverly and effectively made, seeking to grip you the way a thriller would. Yet I’m not sure that I was completely on board with this film, which appears to have smoothly carpentered its narrative in the edit. Is it almost too good to be true?
The film gives us a coolly even-handed study of some ivory hunters in Kenya – and also the rangers, the hunters of the hunters, who have to roam through the landscape, in their camouflage gear and assault rifles, on the lookout for those who are illegally killing elephants for their tusks.
Continue reading...A humanitarian crisis looms in Africa unless we act fast to stop the desert locust
The destructive migratory pest threatens catastrophe as it swarms through countries already plagued by food insecurity
A colleague at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tells a terrifying story about the desert locust.
In 2005 she visited farmers in Niger as they prepared to harvest their crops. Just hours later, a swarm of locusts swept through the area and destroyed everything. One month later, truckloads of families were forced to leave their homes because they had nothing to eat.
Continue reading...Counting the cost of Australia’s summer of dread
Australia’s catastrophic bushfire season has taken 33 lives, destroyed thousands of homes, shrouded cities in smoke and devastated the country’s unique wildlife. Guardian Australia surveys the damage
Continue reading...Alarm over collapse of chinstrap penguin numbers
Global heating suspected to be behind sharp decline in populations across Antarctic islands
Colonies of chinstrap penguins have fallen by more than half across islands in Antarctica, prompting scientific concern that “something is broken” in the world’s wildest ecosystem.
After more than a month counting chicks in the South Shetland Islands, researchers suspect global heating is behind the sharp fall in numbers of the distinctive birds, which get their name from a black line that runs below the beak from cheek to cheek.
Continue reading...I have witnessed the horrors of climate change in the Pacific. Australia, it is time for action | Jacynta Fuamatu
Pacific Islanders have been experiencing climate-induced disasters for years, now they have reached Australia
Living in Australia as a Pacific Islander means every weekend there’s a social gathering to attend, whether it’s a birthday, wedding, fundraiser for someone’s medical treatment or a traditional rite of passage.
More recently, however, the community get-togethers to mobilise our people have been to push for stronger climate action and have a more sombre undertone.
Continue reading...Fires and floods: maps of Europe predict scale of climate catastrophe
Without urgent action, rising sea levels by end of century could leave cities under water
A series of detailed maps have laid bare the scale of possible forest fires, floods, droughts and deluges that Europe could face by the end of the century without urgent action to adapt to and confront global heating.
An average one-metre rise in sea levels by the end of the century – without any flood prevention action – would mean 90% of the surface of Hull would be under water, according to the European Environment Agency.
Continue reading...Storm Ciara hammers UK with hurricane-force winds and floods
Northern English towns inundated again as transport systems struggle to cope
Hurricane-force winds and flooding have caused severe disruption across much of Britain, including damage to hundreds of properties and the cancellation of trains, flights and ferries.
Storm Ciara brought heavy rain and winds of more than 90mph, knocking out power to homes in some areas. The upheaval is likely to last into the start of the working week and there is more bad weather to come.
Continue reading...Activists try to occupy British Museum in protest against BP ties
Environmental group puts pressure on museum to end its partnership with oil company
Dozens of activists have coated themselves in plaster and are trying to occupy the British Museum overnight in a bid to pressure the institution to cut ties with oil corporation BP.
About 60 protesters were taking part in the defiant act of impromptu sculpture making as the museum in London attempted to close its doors at 5pm on Saturday.
Continue reading...Fear in Mexico as twin deaths expose threat to monarch butterflies and their defenders
The deaths of two butterfly conservationists have drawn focus to a troubling tangle of disputes, resentments and violence
The annual migration of monarch butterflies from the US and Canada is one of the most resplendent sights in the natural world – a rippling orange-and-black wave containing millions of butterflies fluttering instinctively southward to escape the winter cold.
The spectacle when they reach their destination in central Mexico is perhaps even more astonishing. Patches of alpine forest turn from green to orange as the monarchs roost in the fir trees, the sheer weight of butterflies causing branches to sag to the point of snapping. Tens of thousands of the insects bounce haphazardly overhead, searching replenishment from nearby plants.
Continue reading...Armed ecoguards funded by WWF ‘beat up Congo tribespeople’
Exclusive: Inquiry into $21.4m conservation project reports ‘credible’ evidence of abuse
Armed ecoguards partly funded by the conservation group WWF to protect wildlife in the Republic of the Congo beat up and intimidated hundreds of Baka pygmies living deep in the rainforests, an investigation into a landmark global conservation project has heard.
A team of investigators sent to northern Congo by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to assess allegations of human rights abuses gathered “credible” evidence from different sources that hunter-gatherer Baka tribespeople living close to a proposed national park had been subjected to violence and physical abuse from the guards over years, according to a leaked draft of the report.
Continue reading...UK unprepared for COP 26 conference, warn climate leaders
Former UN climate envoy joins list of experts frustrated at Britain’s lack of leadership
The UK is showing a “lack of coherence” in its leadership of vital UN climate crisis talks this year and giving the damaging impression that the talks are not a high priority, one of the world’s leading voices on the climate crisis has said.
Mary Robinson, a former UN climate envoy and Ireland’s first female president, also said the perception that major British politicians, including the ex-prime minister David Cameron and former foreign secretary William Hague, were unwilling to take on the role of leading the COP 26 summit was damaging.
Continue reading...EU states clash over use of toxic mercury in light bulbs
Lighting industry’s exemption from 2011 ban may jeopardise climate goals, says Sweden
A row over lamps is emerging as a first major test of the EU’s commitment to its much-vaunted European Green Deal and the bloc’s target of carbon neutrality by the middle of the century.
A debate over the continued use of mercury in fluorescent lighting has split the 27 member states with Germany’s industrial interests being pitted against the environmental concerns of Sweden, according to leaked correspondence.
Continue reading...Antarctica logs hottest temperature on record with a reading of 18.3C
A new record set so soon after the previous record of 17.5C in March 2015 is a sign warming in Antarctica is happening much faster than global average
Antarctica has logged its hottest temperature on record, with an Argentinian research station thermometer reading 18.3C, beating the previous record by 0.8C.
The reading, taken at Esperanza on the northern tip of the continent’s peninsula, beats Antarctica’s previous record of 17.5C, set in March 2015.
Continue reading...Tunisia to ban plastic bags in supermarkets and chemists
Gradual phaseout will begin in March as part of government plan to outlaw all single-use bags by 2021
Tunisia has announced plans to stop its supermarkets and pharmacies from using single-use plastic bags from next month before phasing them out completely in 2021.
Plastic pollution has been a growing problem in the north African country in recent years, along with the challenges presented by its ancient industrial plants and barely managed household waste.
Continue reading...Bumblebees’ decline points to mass extinction – study
Populations disappearing in areas where temperatures are getting hotter, scientists say
Bumblebees are in drastic decline across Europe and North America owing to hotter and more frequent extremes in temperatures, scientists say.
A study suggests the likelihood of a bumblebee population surviving in any given place has declined by 30% in the course of a single human generation. The researchers say the rates of decline appear to be “consistent with a mass extinction”.
Continue reading...‘No tigers here’: why Goa is in denial about its big cat population
Officials claim there are no tigers in Goa. But the poisoning of a mother and three cubs has forced the issue into the open
As a child living in the Vagheri hills at the foot of the Western Ghats, Rajendra Kerkar would often hear the majestic roar of tigers echo across the mountains. It was never greeted with fear by the villagers in this remote corner of northern Goa; the name Vagheri translates as “home of the tigers” and coexistence with India’s national animal was part of their way of life.
Yet according to state authorities, these tigers do not exist; or if they do, they are just passing through. Unlike other states in India, where the presence of tigers has been celebrated, embraced and in many cases exploited for tourism, Goa’s tigers have instead been subjected to a strange charade, whereby their existence has repeatedly been denied or covered up by those in government.
Continue reading...UK taxpayers funding African fossil fuel projects worth $750m
Watchdog reveals huge sum ploughed into ‘world’s dirtiest fossil fuels’ despite climate vow
UK taxpayer funds totalling $750m (£577m) have been invested in new fossil fuel projects in developing African countries despite the government’s public commitment to tackling the climate crisis, according to an international watchdog.
Global Witness found that a London-based investment group raised $1bn from the UK government over 16 years and spent three-quarters of this supporting oil and gas projects in some of Africa’s poorest countries.
Continue reading...Canadian court upholds Trans Mountain pipeline expansion approval
Federal court of appeals in a 3-0 decision rejected four challenges from First Nations to government’s approval of the project
Canada’s federal court of appeal has dismissed legal objections to the contentious Trans Mountain pipeline expansion that would nearly triple the flow of oil from the Alberta oil sands to the Pacific coast.
In a 3-0 decision, the court rejected four challenges from First Nations in British Columbia to the federal government’s approval of the project.
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