Category Archives: Environment

Naomi Seibt: ‘anti-Greta’ activist called white nationalist an inspiration

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German teenager spoke at an event at US rightwing conference CPAC

A young campaigner who has been hailed by climate sceptics as the right’s answer to Greta Thunberg has previously described a white nationalist who appeared to promote “white genocide” theories as one of her “inspirations”.

Naomi Seibt, a 19-year-old from Münster, Germany, who styles herself as a “climate realist”, has also had to deny she made remarks that could be seen as antisemitic following an attack on a synagogue last year.

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Zimbabwe’s president appeals for help to end country’s ‘financial isolation’

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Emmerson Mnangagwa makes passionate plea for support as he targets upper middle-income status by 2030

The president of Zimbabwe has appealed for help in pulling his debt-ridden country out of “financial isolation”.

Emmerson Mnangagwa made his passionate call for international funding after he failed to secure new loans from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, African Development Bank and the Paris Club due to outstanding foreign debts of $8bn (£6.2bn).

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Anger as F1 teams get go-ahead to drive on Dutch nature reserve

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Teams allowed to take beach route to get to Netherlands’ first F1 grand prix in 35 years

The return of Formula One to the Netherlands after 35 years has become mired in controversy after two racing teams got the green light to drive across a beach nature reserve to ensure their staff avoid traffic on the way to the circuit.

The teams of Red Bull Racing and AlphaTauri will be allowed to drive from their hotels along two miles of beach within the Noordvoort reserve, a popular resting spot for seals and breeding birds located between the Zandvoort racetrack and the North Sea.

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UK weather: Storm Jorge expected to bring more UK floods

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South-west and north-west of England, Wales and Northern Ireland are likely to be worst hit

Heavy downpours are expected to cause more flooding to homes and businesses over the weekend, as the latest storm to hit the UK takes hold.

Yellow weather warnings are in place for Storm Jorge on Friday, with the south-west and north-west of England, Wales and Northern Ireland expected to experience the worst of the deluge.

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Amazon people turn to water tanks after environmental disaster

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Scheme provides clean water and helps foster trust between indigenous groups

Romelia Mendúa was handing out plantain drinks served in aluminium bowls. Guests were seated in a hammock and on the bare wooden floor. Beyond the window was the lush vegetation of Ecuador’s north-eastern Amazon.

Chocula, as the drink is called, is made by mashing plantains into water, and is a common refreshment in the Amazon. But the water in Mendúa’s chocula was no ordinary water. It came through a tap in her kitchen connected to two tanks outside collecting and filtering rainfall.

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Prosecutors seize Italian Scala dei Turchi over conservation concerns

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Coastline that has been up for Unesco listing has been in poor condition for years

Italian prosecutors have seized control of the famous Scala dei Turchi limestone coastline, one of the Mediterranean’s main tourist attractions, citing poor handling of the cliff’s preservation.

For years, the site of the Scala dei Turchi – meaning Turkish steps or stairs of the Turks – a candidate for Unesco heritage, has been in a state of degradation. It is subject to constant erosion and theft by visitors who detach pieces of marl, the white sedimentary rock that gives the steps their distinctive appearance.

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World may miss carbon targets unless big firms improve – Mark Carney

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Bank of England governor warns City about need for businesses to fully disclose climate impact

Businesses must improve how they disclose their impact on the environment or risk failing to meet climate targets, the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, warned the City on Thursday.

Without disclosure rules that allow investors to compare how businesses are meeting the climate challenge, the world risks missing targets to be carbon neutral by 2050, Carney said.

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Tears at bedtime: are children’s books on environment causing climate anxiety?

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Greta Thunberg-effect behind sales boom in books on everything from plastic waste to endangered wildlife

I’m reading one of a small forest’s-worth of beautiful new picture books about the environment with my eight-year-old twins. The Sea, by Miranda Krestovnikoff and Jill Calder, takes us into mangrove swamps and kelp forests and coral reefs. We learn about goblin sharks and vampire squids and a poisonous creature called a nudibranch. Then we reach the final chapter on ocean plastics. When we learn that by 2050 there could be more plastic in the ocean than fish, Esme bursts into inconsolable tears.

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Palau’s marine sanctuary backfires, leading to increased consumption of reef fish

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Pacific nation’s protected zone has led to commercial tuna fishing vessels leaving the country

Palau’s much-touted marine sanctuary has backfired, with the fishing ban leading to an increased consumption of the reef fish in the western Pacific country – such as grouper, snapper and parrotfish – that the marine sanctuary promised to protect.

Palau introduced a new 500,000 sq km (193,000 sq mile) marine sanctuary on 1 January to much fanfare.

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Bob Brown Foundation activist ban on protesting in Tasmanian forest lifted by court

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WorkSafe Tasmania last week issued a ban on the protesters over ‘unsafe behaviours’ and threatened fines of up to $500,000

Activists from the Bob Brown Foundation have been given the legal all-clear to protest in Tasmanian forests after a ban issued by the state’s workplace safety regulator was lifted.

WorkSafe Tasmania last week issued a ban on the protesters over “unsafe behaviours” and threatened fines of up to $500,000 if they didn’t comply.

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Rio Tinto announces $1bn spend to reach net zero emissions by 2050

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World’s second biggest miner says it will reduce emissions by 15% by 2030, but ‘will not set targets for our customers’

Mining giant Rio Tinto says it wants its globe-spanning operations to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and will spend US$1bn over the next five years to reduce its carbon footprint.

The second biggest miner in the world has also committed to reducing its emissions by 15% by 2030.

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Uganda’s ‘locust commander’ leads the battle against a new enemy

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The army has been called in to eliminate the insects swarming across Africa, but their mission is dangerous and unending

  • Photographs by Edward Echwalu for the Guardian

Sitting at a plastic table in the garden of Timisha hotel in Soroti, eastern Uganda, Major General Samuel Kavuma takes a drag of his cigarette and looks down at his phone, which has barely stopped ringing for the past hour.

A military figure for nearly 40 years, Kavuma fought the Lord’s Resistance Army insurgent group. Now, he’s become the “locust commander”, the man leading the fight against the country’s worst locust outbreak in decades.

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Malcolm Turnbull warns of ‘catastrophic’ future without net zero emissions goal – politics live

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The former prime minister has stepped into the climate debate, with a stark warning to moderate Liberals to act. All the day’s events, live

Greg Hunt will be giving the next coronavirus update at 1.10pm

Meanwhile, the lights keep flickering in Parliament House, which can only mean that my moods have begun to physically manifest.

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UK must act to stamp out ‘curse’ of plastic sachets, say campaigners

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Calls for sachets to be included in UK and European legislation banning other single-use items

The government must act urgently to stamp out the “curse” of single-use plastic sachets, billions of which are helping to fuel the global plastics crisis, campaigners are warning.

A coalition of more than 50 business leaders, politicians and campaigners is demanding that the plastic sachets – used for everything from ketchup to shampoo – be included in European and UK legislation outlawing other “throwaway” items such as plastic straws and cotton buds.

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Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai meet at Oxford University

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Swedish climate activist visits Yousafzai’s college while in UK for Bristol youth protest

The teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has met Malala Yousafzai at the University of Oxford where the Nobel peace prize winner is a student.

Yousafzai, 22, posted a photo on Instagram of herself and Thunberg sitting on a bench with their arms around each other on Tuesday, with the caption: “Thank you, @gretathunberg” and a heart emoji.

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Barnier pours scorn on Johnson’s spokesman ahead of trade talks

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EU negotiator signals future relationship negotiations are on course for acrimonious start

Negotiations over Britain’s future relationship with the EU appear on course for an acrimonious start after Michel Barnier poured scorn on Boris Johnson’s spokesman and suggested the new Northern Ireland secretary did not understand the withdrawal agreement.

Barnier said he expected the talks, starting on Monday, to be “very difficult” but pronounced Brussels as “ready” following the official sign-off by EU ministers of their instructions for their chief negotiator.

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Against the grain: why millet is making a comeback in rural India

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Nagaland farmers are bringing back the ancient crop – said to have near-miraculous powers – as a less water-intensive alternative to rice

  • Photographs courtesy of NEN Nagaland

Whülü Thurr is a staunch believer in ancient farming traditions. “There is an old adage,” she says, “which goes ‘even a single stalk of millet can revive a dying man’.”

The 65-year-old farmer, from New Phor village in Nagaland state, north-east India, is a devotee of the ancient grain millet, and is well versed in its nutritional benefit. She is one of the few farmers here who has stayed with the traditional crop over the decades. Many other farmers in Nagaland, the majority of whom are women, have stopped growing it due to a lack of demand.

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Coronavirus closures reveal vast scale of China’s secretive wildlife farm industry

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Peacocks, porcupines and pangolins among species bred on 20,000 farms closed in wake of virus

Nearly 20,000 wildlife farmsraising species including peacocks, civet cats, porcupines, ostriches, wild geese and boar have been shut down across China in the wake of the coronavirus, in a move that has exposed the hitherto unknown size of the industry.

Until a few weeks ago wildlife farming was still being promoted by government agencies as an easy way for rural Chinese people to get rich.

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Newly waterproofed Arctic seed vault hits 1m samples

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Rapid climate change forced urgent upgrade of ‘failsafe’ doomsday storage facility

The Arctic global seed vault has reached the milestone of having 1m varieties stored in its deep freeze. The new deposits are being made after unexpected flooding of its entrance tunnel in 2017 prompted an upgrade.

Seeds from 60,000 crop varieties from across the world are being placed in the vault to back up those held in other seed banks.

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