Category Archives: Environment

Kenya’s first coal plant construction paused in climate victory

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Owners failed to assess environmental and community concerns, court rules, while US ambassador wades into debate in support of coal power

Kenya has been urged to halt construction of the country’s first ever coal-powered plant near the coastal town of Lamu, until an assessment is made of its environmental and cultural impact, in the latest setback to the $2bn project (£1.6bn).

Plans for the 981MW station, backed by a Chinese-led consortium, are in limbo after Kenyan judges revoked the environmental licence at the end of June. They ruled the authorities had failed to carry out a rigorous environmental assessment and to inform local people of potential impacts.

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Australia urged to invest in recycling manufacturing after Indonesia sends rubbish back

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Kickstart the domestic market so Asian countries rejecting Australian waste is no longer a problem, industry suggests

Australia could quickly solve the problem of Indonesia and other countries rejecting its waste if governments invested in recycling manufacturing as promised and required the use of recycled material in public projects, industry and environmental groups say.

Jakarta announced on Tuesday it would return 210 tonnes of Australian household rubbish – the latest demonstration of opposition in south-east Asia to receiving exported waste. Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia have each turned back shipments and warned they would not become dumping grounds for developed countries after China banned imports of foreign plastic rubbish.

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Global heating: London to have climate similar to Barcelona by 2050

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Nearly 80% of cities to undergo dramatic and potentially disastrous changes, study finds

London will have a similar climate in three decades’ time to that of Barcelona today, according to research – but if that seems enticing, a warning: the change could be accompanied by severe drought.

Madrid will feel like present-day Marrakech by 2050, and Stockholm like Budapest, according to a report on the likely impacts of the climate crisis. Around the world, cities that are currently in temperate or cold zones in the northern hemisphere will resemble cities more than 600 miles (1,000km) closer to the equator, with damaging effects on health and infrastructure.

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Country diary: a house of God open to heaven and house martins

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Segenhoe, Bedfordshire: The birds are stacked in the air above a shallow trench, taking turns to skim insects from it

A flying congregation had assembled by the church gate. We approached on foot, coming on the coffin route, a straight path through fields along which pall bearers had once carried the dead from the nearby village of Ridgmont.

Mourners might have walked through this meadow after the hay had been cut, as we did, and looked down at the grass laid out in strips to dry where it fell. Did a passage from the Bible come to mind? “All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall.”

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Dutch council forces playground to close over noise complaints

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More than 4,000 sign petition to overturn decision, which aimed to appease neighbours

A national debate has been sparked in the Netherlands after a council ordered a primary school playground to be shut for being too noisy.

Questions have been raised in the Dutch parliament and a campaign has been launched to save the playground in the wake of the decision by Nijmegen council.

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Japan’s famous Nara deer dying from eating plastic bags

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Tourists warned not to feed the animals after plastic waste found in stomachs of several dead deer

Authorities in Japan’s ancient capital Nara are warning visitors not to feed the city’s wild deer – a major tourist attraction – after several of the animals died after swallowing plastic bags.

Large amounts of plastic waste were found in the stomachs of nine of 14 deer to have died since March, according to a local wildlife conservation group.

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Pharma’s market: the man cleaning up Africa’s meat

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In Namibia a country of meat-lovers, vital expertise is needed to stop livestock spreading diseases

Wreathed in barbecue smoke, Vetjaera Haakuria gestures at the men butchering meat and cooking it over hot coals behind his back. “What have you learned about the risks of eating this?” he asks his young audience, spotless in their white lab coats. “It might contain drug residues, right? And what about diseases?”

It’s nearly noon in Windhoek, Namibia’s capital, and the market is preparing grilled meat – known locally as kapana – for the lunchtime rush. Everyone comes here, from construction workers to members of parliament. Namibians love to eat meat, and he is no exception: his tribe, the Herero, traditionally eat nothing else.

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UK’s preparation for climate crisis ‘like Dad’s Army’

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Government’s official climate advisers say the lack of proper plans to cope with heatwaves and flash floods is ‘shocking’

The government’s own advisers have declared themselves shocked that the UK has no proper plans for protecting people from heatwaves, flash flooding and other impacts of the climate crisis.

The Committee on Climate Change said the UK’s climate crisis preparations were being run like Dad’s Army and left the population at real risk, adding that funding for programmes to tackle problems resulting from global heating had been cut.

The CCC’s annual progress reports, published on Wednesday, also found that just one of the 25 emissions-cutting policies it said were vital in 2018 had been delivered in full. Lord Deben, who chairs the committee, said ministers could be sued in court if the failure to act continued.

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Vienna’s euro-a-day public transport model could waltz into Berlin

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Mayor of German capital considering €365 annual ticket to reduce traffic and pollution

Berliners could pay as little as €1 a day to use public transport for a year under plans to wean the German capital off its cars and reduce air pollution, its mayor has announced.

“Step by step I want to follow the goal of introducing an annual public transport ticket for €365,” Michael Müller told Neue Zürcher Zeitung. An annual ticket normally costs €761.

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Device could bring both solar power and clean water to millions

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Researchers say one invention could solve two problems for people lacking basic resources

A device that can produce electricity from sunlight while simultaneously purifying water has been produced by researchers, an invention they say could solve two problems in one stroke.

The researchers say the device is not only a source of green energy but also offers an alternative to current technologies for purifying water. These, they add, often consume large amounts of electricity and require infrastructure beyond the reach of many communities that lack basic access to safe drinking water – a situation thought to affect more than 780 million people worldwide.

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World leaders have ‘a lot to answer for’ over damning figures on education

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Former prime minister of New Zealand Helen Clark condemns complacency as Unesco data shows one in six children won’t be in school by 2030

World leaders have “a lot to answer for” as new figures reveal that governments are failing to give all children an education, and that by 2030 one in six children won’t be in school.

The former prime minister of New Zealand and advocate for education Helen Clark said the figures showed “worrisome complacency on the part of countries which, just a few years ago, were so keen to hammer out an ambitious global agenda and make it a success”.

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David Attenborough: polluting planet may become as reviled as slavery

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Naturalist tells MPs radical action needed to tackle crisis but attitude of young people gives him hope

The attitude of young people towards tackling the environmental crisis is “a source of great hope”, David Attenborough has told MPs, as he predicted that polluting the planet would soon provoke as much abhorrence as slavery.

Giving evidence to the business, energy and industrial strategy committee on how to tackle the climate emergency, the naturalist and TV presenter said radical action was required.

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Glacial melting in Antarctica may become irreversible

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Thwaites glacier is likely to thaw and trigger 50cm sea level rise, US study suggests

Antarctica faces a tipping point where glacial melting will accelerate and become irreversible even if global heating eases, research suggests.

A Nasa-funded study found instability in the Thwaites glacier meant there would probably come a point when it was impossible to stop it flowing into the sea and triggering a 50cm sea level rise. Other Antarctic glaciers were likely to be similarly unstable.

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Indoor carbon dioxide levels could be a health hazard, scientists warn

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CO2 in bedrooms and offices may affect cognition and cause kidney and bone problems

Indoor levels of carbon dioxide could be clouding our thinking and may even pose a wider danger to human health, researchers say.

While air pollutants such as tiny particles and nitrogen oxides have been the subject of much research, there have been far fewer studies looking into the health impact of CO2.

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Ban government investment in fossil fuels, urges cross-party group of MPs

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UK aid projects ‘actively undermine’ efforts to tackle climate crisis, MPs and campaign groups warn

A cross-party group of MPs, backed by campaign groups, has called for an immediate ban on all investment in fossil fuels and for all UK aid to be “nature positive”.

The 28 MPs, led by Tory Zac Goldsmith and Labour’s Kerry McCarthy, with support from Amnesty International, WWF and other organisations, criticised the UK for “actively undermining” its own investment in tackling the climate emergency by continuing to fund fossil fuels through aid and export finance.

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‘The next era of human progress’: what lies behind the global new cities epidemic?

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The urge to build cities from scratch is not new – but this time they are being conceived by private multinational corporations as gilt-edged tax-exempt gated communities

At 8.30 every morning, an announcement is piped though a speaker in the ceiling of Kim Jong-won’s apartment, barking the daily bulletin in a high-pitched voice. The disembodied broadcaster details new parking measures, issues with the pneumatic waste disposal chute and various building maintenance jobs to be carried out that day.

“There’s no way of turning it off,” sighs Kim’s wife, Jung-sim, as she prepares breakfast. “I hate technology but my husband is an early adopter. He has to have everything first.”

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‘The odour of burning wakes us’: inside the Philippines’ Plastic City

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In Valenzuela City, residents blame recycling plants for pungent smells and respiratory illnesses

As noon approaches in Valenzuela City and residents prepare to have their lunch, a pungent smell of melted plastic swirls through the air, killing everyone’s appetite.

“It gets suffocating in the evening. We have to close our windows despite the heat and bury our noses under our blankets when we sleep,” says Rosalie Esplana, 40.

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The wrong kind of trees: Ireland’s afforestation meets resistance

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Residents and campaigners say fast-growing Sitka spruces are spoiling the landscape

Ireland is ramping up its response to the climate crisis by planting forests – lots of forests. East, west, north, south, the plan is to plant forests, the more the better.

With enough trees, goes the hope, Ireland can compensate for many of the cows, vehicles and fossil-burning power plants that make it one of Europe’s worst climate offenders.

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One climate crisis disaster happening every week, UN warns

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Developing countries must prepare now for profound impact, disaster representative says

Climate crisis disasters are happening at the rate of one a week, though most draw little international attention and work is urgently needed to prepare developing countries for the profound impacts, the UN has warned.

Catastrophes such as cyclones Idai and Kenneth in Mozambique and the drought afflicting India make headlines around the world. But large numbers of “lower impact events” that are causing death, displacement and suffering are occurring much faster than predicted, said Mami Mizutori, the UN secretary-general’s special representative on disaster risk reduction. “This is not about the future, this is about today.”

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Barcelona mayor promises crackdown on cruise ships

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Ada Colau will also oppose airport expansion to curb tourism and pollution

Barcelona’s mayor, Ada Colau, has pledged to restrict the number of cruise ships allowed to dock in the city and to oppose the expansion of the city’s airport, saying: “We don’t have infinite capacity.”

Colau said the limits would reduce pollution in the city, where air quality regularly exceeds World Health Organization limits for nitrogen oxide and PM10 particulates.

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