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Draft Motion for a Resolution prepared for the EU Parliamentary Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, March 2016
Draft Motion prepared by Rapporteurs Pavel Poc (Socialists and Democrats Group), Kateřina Konečná on behalf of the European United Left and Nordic Green Left group, Bas Eickhout of the Greens / European Free Alliance Group, Piernicola Pedicini of the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy Group, Mark Demesmaeker, Sirpa Pietikäinen and Frédérique Ries. This draft Motion was carried forward for the vote in a Parliamentary Plenary Session in April 2016.
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Investigation by Guardian and Carbon Brief finds just a fifth of funds to fight global heating went to poorest 44 countries
China and wealthy petrostates including Saudi Arabia and UAE are among countries receiving large sums of climate finance, according to an analysis.
The Guardian and Carbon Brief analysed previously unreported submissions to the UN, along with data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), that show how billions of dollars of public money is being committed to the fight against global heating.
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Advocates say conservative states’ push to define gender as ‘biological sex’ would backslide on decade-old language within the UN
A row over the definition of the term “gender” threatens to bog down pivotal talks at the Cop30 climate summit.
Before the UN talks in Brazil, hardline conservative states have pushed to define gender as “biological sex” over their concerns trans and non-binary people could be included in a major plan to ensure climate action addresses gender inequality and empowers women.
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When the rain started I had to find a way home to my children. I could never have imagined how long it would take. This is Ruchira’s story
Location Mumbai, India
Disaster Maharashtra floods, 2005
Ruchira Gupta is an English-to-Hindi interpreter, a former lawyer, and mother of two daughters. In 2005, she was working at a small law firm in Mumbai, India when heavy rainfall flooded the country’s western state of Maharashtra, killing 926 people. Between 1950 and2015, there was a threefold increase in extreme rain events in India.
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From Taradell to Galicia, cooperatives are supplying cheap, clean electricity to homes and helping tackle fuel poverty
It began in the small Catalan town of Taradell as a plan to provide local people with allotments where they could grow their own food.
Four activists came together with the aim of promoting good environmental practices in local agriculture and business, as well as supplying renewable energy. The project, however, was about much more than growing vegetables.
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Charvet Drucker captures dramatic video and photos of seal being hunted by orcas in Salish Sea, north-west of Seattle
A wildlife photographer on a whale-watching trip in waters off Seattle captured dramatic video and photos of a pod of killer whales hunting a seal that survived only by clambering on to the stern of her boat.
Charvet Drucker was on a rented 20ft (6 metre) boat near her home on an island in the Salish Sea about 40 miles north-west of Seattle when she spotted a pod of at least eight killer whales, also known as orcas.
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The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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Crook, County Durham: There’s a contemplative pleasure to gathering up the leaves this time of year, and it’s a benefit to legions of invertebrates and toadstools too
I can hear the distant, angry growl of a leaf blower, carried on the wind, nature’s leaf blower. Otherwise, it’s quiet here in the garden, sheltered by a high hedge, raking fallen leaves, one of autumn’s contemplative tasks, reviving memories of watching for first signs of their unfurling in spring, and sitting in their shade during summer’s heatwaves.
An ever-changing palette of colours settles on the path: today, burnt orange and cinnamon shades of Amelanchier, crimson spindle, yellow hawthorn, scarlet cherry foliage. What to do with them? There are too many to consign to the compost heaps. Send them away in the garden waste wheelie bin? Corral them in a chicken wire cage until they eventually become crumbly leaf mould? There’s another option: raking them back under the trees and hedge, into the flowerbeds, closing a loop in the cycle of life. Six years of doing just that has produced some wonderful displays of woodland toadstools. First to show this year were clusters of lilac-tinted wood blewits (Lepista nuda), followed by sepia boletes (Xerocomellus porosporus) with domed caps cracked like crazy paving. Pallid, warty puffballs are shouldering aside layers of decay, ready to shed their spores.
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Climate summit in Brazil needs to find way to stop global heating accelerating amid stark divisions
“It broke my heart.” Surangel Whipps, president of the tiny Pacific nation of Palau, was sitting in the front row of the UN’s general assembly in New York when Donald Trump made a long and rambling speech, his first to the UN since his re-election, on 23 September.
Whipps was prepared for fury and bombast from the US president, but what followed was shocking. Trump’s rant on the climate crisis – a “green scam”, “the greatest con job ever perpetrated”, “predictions made by stupid people” – was an unprecedented attack on science and global action from a major world leader.
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Host uses Indigenous concepts and changes agenda to help delegates agree on ways to meet existing climate goals
Shipping containers, cruise ships, river boats, schools and even army barracks have been pressed into service as accommodation for the 50,000 plus people descending on the Amazon: this year’s Cop30 climate summit is going to be, in many ways, an unconventional one.
Located in Belém, a small city at the mouth of the Amazon river, the Brazilian hosts have been criticised for the exorbitant cost of scarce hotel rooms and hastily vacated apartments. Many delegations have slimmed down their presence, while business leaders have decamped to hold their own events in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
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Brazil’s president welcomes world leaders while navigating divided government, promising action on deforestation and emissions
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has welcomed world leaders to Belém for the first climate summit in the Amazon, where conservationists hope he can be a champion for the rainforest and its people.
But with a divided administration, a hostile Congress and 20th-century developmentalist instincts, this global figurehead of the centre left has a balancing act to perform in advocating protection of nature and a reduction of emissions.
Continue reading...Health Secretary Wes Streeing says patients could be harmed by the 5-day strike.
BMA Scotland says ministers went back on a pay agreement but Health Secretary Neil Gray says it is a "fair, affordable, equitable pay offer".
Two mothers who experienced pelvic girdle pain say being aware of the risk will help people seek treatment.
Almost half of patients given a heart pump, after the NHS had raised concerns about it, died soon after.
At the end of September, the backlog stood at 7.39 million in England.
The health secretary launches strongest criticism yet of the union ahead of Friday's strike by resident doctors.
They show cells that control blood sugar are more vulnerable in early childhood.
Closing submissions are being made in an employment tribunal brought by eight female nurses.
Brittany Miller is known for posting food and lifestyle content to her three-and-a-half million followers.
Experts say patients are being harmed by cancer diagnosis and treatment delays.
Deep in the mountains of Palawan, Conservation International scientists are capturing what few people ever see: the secret lives of the Philippines’ rarest species.
At Maido — the Lima restaurant recently crowned the best in the world — one of the star dishes is paiche, a giant prehistoric river fish.Its journey to the table begins on a small family farm deep in Peru’s Amazon.
“Jane Goodall forever changed how people think about, interact with and care for the natural world,” said Daniela Raik, interim CEO of Conservation International.
Conservation International’s Neil Vora was selected for TIME’s Next 100 list — alongside other rising leaders reshaping culture, science and society.
Climate change is happening. And it’s placing the world’s reefs in peril. What can be done?
After decades of negotiation, the high seas treaty is finally reality. The historic agreement will pave the way to protect international waters which face numerous threats.
The Amazon rainforest, known for lush green canopies and an abundance of freshwater, is drying out — and deforestation is largely to blame.
The ocean is engine of all life on Earth, but human-driven climate change is pushing it past its limits. Here are five ways the ocean keeps our climate in check — and what can be done to help.
In a grueling and delicate dance, a team led by Conservation International removes a massive undersea killer.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. These pictures might be worth even more. An initiative featuring the work of some of the world’s best nature photographers raises money for environmental conservation.
