Category Archives: Environment

African leaders call for equity over minerals used for clean energy

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‘Crucial’ UN resolution attempts to avoid repeat of injustices produced by Africa’s fossil fuel sector

In an attempt to avoid the “injustices and extractivism” of fossil fuel operations, African leaders are calling for better controls on the dash for the minerals and metals needed for a clean energy transition.

A resolution for structural change that will promote equitable benefit-sharing from extraction, supported by a group of mainly African countries including Senegal, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Chad, was presented at the UN environmental assembly in Nairobi on Wednesday and called for the sustainable use of transitional minerals.

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Houthis deny targeting underwater cables amid marine disaster warning

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Yemeni government warns of Red Sea environmental disaster after cargo ship struck by rebels last week

Houthi leaders have denied they have targeted critical underwater sea telecommunication cables, as Yemen’s UN-recognised government warned of an imminent marine environmental disaster if a cargo ship struck by the rebels last week was not quickly rescued.

The Rubymar, a Belize-flagged but British-owned bulk carrier, has been drifting in the Red Sea after it was struck by two missiles. The ship, which is feared to be in danger of sinking, is leaking an 18-mile oil spill and carrying 41,000 tonnes of volatile fertiliser.

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Queensland school among 25 entities supplied with mulch that could be contaminated with friable asbestos

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Revelation comes amid NSW asbestos crisis after contaminant found in mulch at more than 60 Sydney locations

A school is one of 25 entities in Queensland’s south-east that were supplied mulch that could be contaminated with friable asbestos.

The state’s department of environment (DESI) confirmed the dangerous material was found at waste facility NuGrow on 20 February in a proactive investigation by the government after asbestos was discovered at more than 60 sites across New South Wales in what has become an ongoing crisis in that state.

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Tata confirms Somerset will be home to £4bn battery factory

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Indian conglomerate says gigafactory in Bridgwater will bring about 4,000 jobs to region

The Indian conglomerate Tata has confirmed Bridgwater in Somerset as the site of its new £4bn battery factory, which will bring about 4,000 jobs to the region.

Tata’s battery business, Agratas, said it had bought land at the Gravity Smart campus off the M5, just outside the town.

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Shell must clean up pollution before it leaves Niger delta, report says

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Firm told it must take responsibility for toxic legacy of pollution and safe decommissioning of abandoned oil infrastructure

The oil firm Shell cannot be allowed to withdraw from the Niger delta before it takes responsibility for its toxic legacy of pollution and the safe decommissioning of abandoned oil infrastructure, a report says.

Shell plc is preparing to divest from the delta but a report warns that it must remain until it has cleaned up its legacy of pollution.

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Cash-strapped London council starts crowdfunding drive to pay for green upgrades

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Southwark asks residents to invest as little as £5 to help fund eco-projects such as cycle hangars and school upgrades

Deep cuts to government funding have led a council in south London to ask its residents to invest their own money, for a financial return, to build cycle hangars, new LED street lighting and green upgrades at schools and leisure centres.

In the midst of a financial crisis hitting town halls across England, councillors in Southwark have resorted to a crowdfunding scheme to raise £6m over the next six years to help fund climate-friendly projects.

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‘People put a lot of hope on me’: Estonia’s youngest MP already making waves

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Hanah Lahe is just 24 but she is already a leading voice for change in the former Soviet Baltic state

Hanah Lahe can’t remember the fall of the iron curtain. Estonia’s youngest MP grew up surfing the web and consuming American television. Just nine years before her birth, it was all so different. When borders reopened after the end of Soviet rule in 1991, Estonians rushed to stare at bananas, enthralled by the arrival of this new, exotic fruit.

“People were standing in line sometimes not even to buy, but just to have a look at them. Those who would buy them would not even eat them because it was such a big thing,” says Lahe, 24, recounting a story her grandmother told her. “When a plastic bag from another country that had a big brand name arrived, people would use it all the time.”

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Texas wildfires: nuclear weapons factory shuts down amid evacuations

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Unseasonably warm temperatures, strong winds and dry grasses fuel Smokehouse Creek fire, the largest in the state

The main facility that assembles and disassembles America’s nuclear arsenal shut down its operations on Tuesday night as fires raged out of control in Texas.

Pantex issued a statement online saying it had paused operations until further notice. “The fire near Pantex is not contained,” the company said. “Response efforts have shifted to evacuations. There is a small number of non-essential personnel sheltered on-site.”

Since 1975, Pantex has been the US main assembly and disassembly site for its atomic bombs. It assembled the last new bomb in 1991. In the time since, it has dismantled thousands of weapons. Pantex is located 30 miles (48km) east of Amarillo.

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Labour would lift block on onshore windfarms, says Ed Miliband

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Tory government has ‘ducked’ difficult decisions, leading to higher bills, says shadow energy secretary

Labour has claimed a “culture of inertia and stasis” has blocked renewable energy projects under the Conservatives and says the party will overturn a de facto onshore wind ban “at the stroke of a pen” if it wins the general election.

The shadow energy secretary, Ed Miliband, told energy industry executives at a conference in London on Tuesday that Labour would immediately rip up a decade-long effective block on large onshore wind developments in England if elected.

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‘Joyful madness’: ANU scientist wins global prize for ‘dancing his PhD’ about kangaroos

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Four-minute video features drag queens, twerking, ballerinas, a classical Indian dancer and a bunch of friends from Canberra

The former Canberra scientist Dr Weliton Menário Costa said it “felt like winning Eurovision” when he learned he had won the global “Dance Your PhD” competition, for his quirky interpretive take on kangaroo behaviour.

His four-minute video titled Kangaroo Time features drag queens, twerking, ballerinas, a classical Indian dancer, and a bunch of friends Costa acquired from his time studying at the Australian National University.

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Sunak stands with net zero and climate conspiracy group at farming protest

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Demonstration against Welsh Labour policy included No Farmers No Food campaign calling for end to climate measures, and Welsh Tory leader

Rishi Sunak attended a protest alongside a group which has posted conspiracy theories about climate change, and which campaigns against net zero, the Observer can reveal.

The prime minister has been accused of “pandering to extremists” by farmers and wildlife groups, who have asked him to “listen to reason and logic” rather than conspiracy theories.

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‘Poisoned by chemicals’: citizen scientists prove River Avon is polluted

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Charity blames the decline of invertebrates on farming, sewage and run-off from roads and homes, months after the Environment Agency told them the water in Wiltshire river was clean


A citizen science programme has revealed the decline of one of the country’s most significant chalk streams after claims by Environment Agency officials that it had not deteriorated. The SmartRivers programme run by the charity WildFish, which surveys freshwater invertebrates, reported “strong declines in relation to chemical pressure” on the River Avon in Wiltshire. It said its data indicated a decline in the condition of the river over the last five years.

The charity compiled a report on its findings after the conservation groups say they were told at a meeting by the Environment Agency in August that “the Avon has not deteriorated in water quality in the last five years”. David Holroyd, head of water quality for Wiltshire Fishery Association, said the numbers of invertebrates collected in spring and autumn samples from 2019 and 2023 at 11 sites on the upper Avon had shown a decline.

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Weather tracker: Contrasts in cold and heat break records in China

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Xinjiang in north-west recorded minus 52.3C, while Badu in south recorded 38C – the largest temperature contrast recorded in a single country

China’s Xinjiang region, in the far west of the country, experienced record-breaking low temperatures of -52.3C on 18 February, surpassing a 64-year-old record for the region. The figure was just shy of the lowest national temperature of -53C, which was recorded in the Heilongjiang region in January last year.

The extreme weather has caused big disruption after the lunar new year celebrations, with blizzards and ice leaving people stranded on roads and railways. On the same day, Badu in the south of China recorded a maximum temperature of 38C, meaning there was a staggering temperature difference of 90.3C across the country. This is the largest temperature contrast ever recorded for a single country, surpassing the US in January 1954 by a whole degree Celsius.

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Colombia vows to put nature at the heart of global environmental negotiations

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The environment minister Susana Muhamad says nature is a ‘pillar’ of fighting the climate crisis

The next round of global biodiversity negotiations will put nature at the heart of the international environment agenda, Colombia’s environment minister has said, as the country prepares for the Cop16 summit.

Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, who is expected to be the Cop16 president, said the South American country would use the summit to ensure nature was a key part of the global environmental agenda in the year building up to the climate Cop30 in the Brazilian Amazon in 2025, where countries will present new plans on how they will meet the Paris agreement.

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UK quits treaty that lets fossil fuel firms sue governments over climate policies

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Britain joins France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands in withdrawing from charter it says ‘penalises’ shift to net zero

The UK is pulling out of a treaty that lets fossil fuel firms sue governments over their climate policies.

The government said the UK was withdrawing from the energy charter treaty after efforts to modernise it ended in stalemate.

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‘It was a big cat’: claimed Cumbrian leopard sighting fails to convince experts

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Research from the Royal Agricultural University suggests possible big cat presence in the UK, but others say evidence is flimsy

When you think of four-legged British wildlife, the first animal that comes to mind may not be a black leopard.

Yet that is exactly what Sharon Larkin-Snowden insists she has seen roaming the Cumbrian countryside over the past few months. The 52-year-old part-time construction worker was first told about alleged sightings of the so-called Beast of Cumbria in November, when local farmers noticed “unusual activity” on their land. But it wasn’t until later in the month that she claims to have had her own sighting.

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Jim Ratcliffe’s vast petrochemical plant in Antwerp faces new legal challenge

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Proposed Project One cracking plant is ‘hugely destructive’, says Client Earth

The creation of the biggest petrochemical plant in Europe in 30 years faces a new legal challenge by a group of NGOs arguing that the true impact of the development on people, nature and the climate has not been considered.

Client Earth lodged papers on Wednesday evening in court which aim to halt the building of Project One, a vast cracking plant to produce the chemicals to make plastic, which is being built in Antwerp by Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s company Ineos.

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‘Safe’ air-quality levels in US, UK and EU still harmful for health, study says

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Even small amount of exposure to minute soot particles – known as PM2.5 – raises the risk of cardiovascular disease

The sooty air pollution spewed out by cars, trucks and factories is causing widespread harm to people’s hearts and lungs even with the smallest amounts of exposure, with government regulations still routinely allowing for dangerous risks to public health, two major new studies have found.

There is no safe amount of a microscopic form of airborne pollution known as PM2.5, consisting of tiny particles of soot measuring less than the width of a human hair, for heart and lung health, US researchers found, with even small amounts raising the risk of potentially serious problems.

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Removing UK climate protesters’ defence ‘could erode right to trial by jury’

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Attorney general’s attempt to end climate protesters’ use of consent defence is slippery slope, says KC

A UK government attempt to remove one of the last remaining defences for climate protesters would be a slippery slope to the erosion of the constitutional right to trial by jury, the court of appeal was told on Wednesday.

The attorney general, Victoria Prentis KC, is arguing that one of the last available defences being used by environmental protesters should be removed. Prentis is making the appeal in the case of a defendant known as C, after a string of acquittals by juries of defendants for acts of criminal damage involving daubing paint on buildings.

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University of Florida student senate passes ‘green new deal’

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In a rebuke to Governor Ron DeSantis’s denialism, the student body calls for campus-wide measures to tackle the climate crisis

The University of Florida student senate voted in favour of a “green new deal” late on Tuesday, becoming the first public university to adopt such a resolution through student government.

The mandate – which was unanimously passed – calls for sweeping campus-wide measures to tackle the climate crisis that include just transition, total divestment from fossil fuels, disclosure of the university’s financial ties within the private sector and a ban on receiving research funding from the fossil fuel industry.

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