Category Archives: Environment

Millions at risk of floods in China’s Guangdong province after heavy rain

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Officials urge municipalities to begin emergency planning after major rivers and reservoirs threaten to overflow

Major rivers, waterways and reservoirs in China’s Guangdong province are threatening to unleash dangerous floods, forcing the government to enact emergency response plans to protect more than 127 million people.

Calling the situation “grim”, local weather officials said sections of rivers and tributaries at the Xijiang and Beijiang river basins are hitting water levels in a rare spike that only has a one-in-50 chance of happening in any given year, the state broadcaster CCTV news said on Sunday.

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Sunak has ‘set Britain back’ on net zero, says UK’s climate adviser

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Chris Stark, head of the Climate Change Committee, says Tories’ decision to dilute key green policies has had huge diplomatic impact

Rishi Sunak has given up Britain’s reputation as a world leader in the fight against the climate crisis and has “set us back” by failing to prioritise the issue in the way his predecessors in No 10 did, the government’s green adviser has warned.

Chris Stark, the outgoing head of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), said that the prime minister had “clearly not” championed the issue following a high-profile speech last year in which he made a significant U-turn on the government’s climate commitments. The criticism comes after Sunak was accused of trying to avoid scrutiny of Britain’s climate policies by failing to appoint a new chair of the CCC.

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Tens of thousands protest against Canary Islands’ ‘unsustainable’ tourism model

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Organisers say 50,000 turn out to call for limit on tourist numbers, saying model makes life unaffordable and puts strain on resources

Tens of thousands of people are protesting across the Canary Islands to call for an urgent rethink of the Spanish archipelago’s tourism strategy and a freeze on visitor numbers, arguing that the decades-old model has made life unaffordable and environmentally unsustainable for residents.

The protests, which are taking place under the banner “Canarias tiene un límite” – The Canaries have a limit – are backed by environmental groups including Greenpeace, WWF, Ecologists in Action, Friends of the Earth and SEO/Birdlife.

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Tanya Plibersek rejects windfarm proposed for biodiverse Queensland forest

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Plan for 42-turbine Wooroora project withdrawn after minister signals refusal because of threat to spectacled flying-fox habitat

A proposed windfarm next to the wet tropics world heritage area in north Queensland will not go ahead after the federal government signalled it would refuse the project.

Ark Energy had proposed building the 42-turbine Wooroora Station windfarm – formerly known as the Chalumbin windfarm project – 15km south-west of Ravenshoe.

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Unilever to scale back environmental and social pledges

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Environmental groups say bosses should ‘hang their heads in shame’ as firm bows to pressure from shareholders to cut costs

Unilever is to scale back its environmental and social aims, provoking critics to say its board should “hang their heads in shame”.

The consumer goods company behind brands ranging from Dove beauty products to Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream was seen as perhaps the foremost proponent of corporate ethics – particularly under the tenure of its Dutch former boss Paul Polman.

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Letting grass grow long boosts butterfly numbers, UK study proves

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Analysis of 60o gardens shows wilder lawns feed caterpillars and create breeding habitat

Good news for lazy gardeners: one labour-saving tweak could almost double the number of butterflies in your garden, according to a new scientific study – let the grass grow long.

In recent years nature lovers have been extolling the benefits of relaxed lawn maintenance with the growing popularity of the #NoMowMay campaign. Now an analysis of six years of butterfly sightings across 600 British gardens has provided the first scientific evidence that wilder lawns boost butterfly numbers.

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Most UK dairy farms ignoring pollution rules as manure spews into rivers

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Exclusive: 80% of Welsh dairy farms inspected, 69% of English ones, 60% in Scotland and 50% in Northern Ireland breaching regulations

The majority of UK dairy farms are breaking pollution rules, with vast amounts of cow manure being spilled into rivers.

When animal waste enters the river, it causes a buildup of the nutrients found in the effluent, such as nitrates and phosphates. These cause algal blooms, which deplete the waterway of oxygen and block sunlight, choking fish and other aquatic life.

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Teenager dies after suspected crocodile attack in the Torres Strait

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Body of 16-year-old boy discovered with injuries ‘consistent with a crocodile attack’ as wildlife officers search for animal

A teenager has died after a suspected crocodile attack off an island in the Torres Strait, police have confirmed.

Thursday Island water police launched a search and rescue operation near Saibai Island after receiving reports at about 4am on Thursday that a 16-year-old boy was missing.

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Dubai floods: Chaos, queues and submerged cars after UAE hit by record rains

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Passengers report being stranded in the desert city as the international hub struggles in the wake of unusually heavy rain

Dubai is wrestling with the aftermath of extraordinary torrential rains that flooded the desert city, with residents describing harrowing stories of spending the night in their cars, and air passengers enduring chaotic scenes at airports.

Up to 259.5mm (10.2in) of rain fell on the usually arid country of the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, the most since records began 75 years ago. The state-run WAM news agency called the rains on Tuesday “a historic weather event” that surpassed “anything documented since the start of data collection in 1949”.

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Lethal heatwave in Sahel worsened by fossil fuel burning, study finds

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Deaths from record temperatures in Mali reportedly led to full morgues turning away bodies this month


The deadly protracted heatwave that filled hospitals and mortuaries in the Sahel region of Africa earlier this month would have been impossible without human-caused climate disruption, a new analysis has revealed.

Mali registered the hottest day in its history on 3 April as temperatures hit 48.5C in the south-western city of Kayes. Intense heat continued across a wide area of the country for more than five days and nights, giving vulnerable people no time for recovery.

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‘Russia doesn’t care’: Sweden sounds alarm over unsafe oil fleet

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Foreign minister warns of environmental catastrophe in Baltic Sea as he accuses Moscow of using unseaworthy vessels

Russia appears prepared to create “environmental havoc” by sailing unseaworthy oil tankers through the Baltic Sea in breach of all maritime rules, the Swedish foreign minister has said.

Speaking to the Guardian during his first visit to London since Sweden became a Nato member, Tobias Billström called for new rules and enforcement mechanisms to prevent the ageing and uninsured Russian shadow fleet causing an environmental catastrophe. About half of all Russian oil transported by sea passes through the Baltic Sea and Danish waters, often operating under opaque ownership, and using international waters to try to avoid scrutiny.

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California cracks down on farm region’s water pumping: ‘The ground is collapsing’

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Region near Tulare Lake has been put on ‘probation’ as overpumping of water has caused faster sinking of ground

Even after two back-to-back wet years, California’s water wars are far from over. On Tuesday, state water officials took an unprecedented step to intervene in the destructive pumping of depleted groundwater in the state’s sprawling agricultural heartland.

The decision puts a farming region known as the Tulare Lake groundwater subbasin, which includes roughly 837-sq-miles in the rural San Joaquin valley, on “probation” in accordance with a sustainable groundwater use law passed a decade ago. Large water users will face fees and state oversight of their pumping.

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Fossils found in Somerset by girl, 11, ‘may be of largest-ever marine reptile’

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Experts believe remains belong to a type of ichthyosaur that roamed the seas about 202m years ago

Fossils discovered by an 11-year-old girl on a beach in Somerset may have come from the largest marine reptile ever to have lived, according to experts.

The fossils are thought to be from a type of ichthyosaur, a prehistoric marine reptile that lived in the time of dinosaurs. The newly discovered species is believed to have roamed the seas towards the end of the Triassic, about 202m years ago.

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Tasmanian devil analysis challenges study suggesting facial tumour disease decline

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Cambridge scientists critique research that concluded the disease is no longer a threat to the species’ survival

Cambridge researchers have challenged a previous study which had concluded a facial cancer that devastated the Tasmanian devil population was on the decline.

Devil facial tumour disease, a fatal cancer spread through biting and sharing of food, first emerged in the 1980s. The spread of DFTD led to the species being listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2008.

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Europeans care more about elephants than people, says Botswana president

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Westerners see elephants as pets, said Mokgweetsi Masisi, whose government threatened to send 30,000 elephants to Germany and the UK to demonstrate their dangers

Many Europeans value the lives of elephants more than those of the people who live around them, the president of Botswana has said, amid tensions over potential trophy hunting import bans.

Botswana recently threatened to send 30,000 elephants to the UK and Germany after both countries proposed stricter controls on hunting trophies. The country’s president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, said it would help people to understand human-wildlife conflict – which is among the primary threats to the species – including the experiences of subsistence farmers affected by crop-raiding by the animals.

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Elephant seal makes ‘epic’ trek back after Canadian officials relocate him

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Notorious for drawing large crowds, Emerson was removed by officials who were surprised to find him back in Victoria in a week

Last week, gun-wielding conservation officers stuffed a 500-lb elephant seal in the back of a van, drove him along a winding highway in western Canada and left him on a remote beach “far from human habitation”.

The plan was to move the young seal far from British Columbia’s capital city, where over the last year, he has developed a reputation for ending up in “unusual locations”, including flower beds, city parks and busy roads.

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Extreme coral bleaching event could spell worst summer on record for Great Barrier Reef

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Floods, cyclones, heat stress and predatory starfish contributing to impacts as fourth planet-wide bleaching event confirmed

The Great Barrier Reef is in the midst of what could be its worst summer on record with a widespread and extreme coral bleaching event coming on top of floods, two cyclones and outbreaks of coral-eating starfish, according to an official Australian government report.

The “summer snapshot” report released by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Australian Institute of Marine Science said: “Compared [with] previous summers, cumulative impacts have been much higher this summer and a widespread bleaching event is still unfolding.”

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Desert city of Dubai floods as heaviest rainfall in 75 years hits UAE

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City records more than 142mm of rain in a day, about as much as it expects in a year and a half, as highways and malls flooded

Highways and malls have been flooded, schools have been closed, and flights disrupted at one of the world’s busiest airports after the United Arab Emirates experienced what the government described as its largest amount of rainfall in 75 years.

At least one person was killed, a 70-year-old man who police said was swept away in his car in Ras Al Khaimah, one of the UAE’s seven emirates.

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Cost of fire-ant outbreak in Australia could be much higher than ‘flawed’ earlier prediction, data shows

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Australia Institute says 2021 analysis had 15-year timeframe when modelling of the invasive species is usually over 20 to 30 years

The cost of a widespread fire ant outbreak may be far higher than predicted in “flawed” government modelling provided to ministers in the fight against the highly invasive species, new research suggests.

The Australia Institute data, released on Wednesday, found that red imported fire ants will cost Australians more than $22bn by the 2040s if left to run rampant, with the benefits of achieving eradication estimated to be three to nine times greater than the $3bn needed to achieve that eradication.

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300,000ha Queensland cattle station bought for conservation after $21m donation

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State government and Nature Conservancy jointly purchase Vergemont station, which contains habitat for endangered night parrots

A Queensland outback cattle station the size of Yosemite national park which includes key habitat for the elusive night parrot has been acquired for conservation after an anonymous donation of $21m.

Vergemont station, 110km west of Longreach, was acquired in a joint purchase by the Queensland government and the Nature Conservancy, which brokered the deal. The group said it is likely the single largest philanthropic contribution to land protection in Australia.

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