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A huge cleanup effort has seen volunteers working to remove beads by hand and machine. They can only wait and see the extent of damage to wildlife and dune habitat
Just past a scrum of dog walkers, about 40 people are urgently combing through the sand on hands and knees. Their task is to try to remove millions of peppercorn-sized black plastic biobeads from where they have settled in the sand. Beyond them, a seal carcass grins menacingly, teeth protruding from its rotting skull.
Last week, an environmental disaster took place on Camber Sands beach, on what could turn out to be an unprecedented scale. Eastbourne Wastewater Treatment Works, owned by Southern Water, experienced a mechanical failure and spewed out millions of biobeads on to the Sussex coastline. Southern Water has since taken responsibility for the spill. Ironically, biobeads are used to clean wastewater – bacteria attach to their rough, crinkly surface and clean the water of contaminants.
Camber Sands is one of England’s most popular beaches, with rare dune habitat
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Swamped by lobbyists and hobbled by a lack of urgency, there are fears Cop could become a sprawling spectacle that betrays those who depend on it most
Thousands of diplomats, activists, journalists and lobbyists are gathering in the sweltering, tropical heat of Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon, for the Cop30 climate talks.
Since Brazil was awarded the hosting duties three years ago, hopes have been high that the Amazonian Cop – taking place in the country that hosted the Earth summit where the global fight for the climate first began – could be a turning point in the fight against climate breakdown.
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Respected ocean expert Katy Soapi continues to advocate to protect Tetepare, one of the last untouched places in Solomon Islands
Scientist Katy Soapi’s earliest memories are of the sea. She grew up on Rendova, a lush island in western Solomon Islands, and life centred around the ocean.
“I remember when the big waves came, we would dive under them and come up laughing on the other side. Being part of those natural elements brought me so much joy.”
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Cranbrook, Kent: We have no culture of consuming acorns in Britain, but they have a place in my kitchen, especially in a boom year such as this
I tire of hearing the term “abundance” in relation to autumn, and yet the word unavoidably reverberates as the season unfolds, until even I am tempted to use it. Wild food is everywhere, as is a frenzy of gathering and preservation, a ritualised nod to that which was once essential.
Not every year is the same, though. Several species don’t fruit every autumn, but instead coordinate with others of their kind on so called mast years to produce a bumper crop: a highly evolved tactic that serves to overwhelm the frenzied gatherers, both human and animal, so enough seed will survive to germination.
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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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One in every 25 participants at 2025 UN climate summit is a fossil fuel lobbyist, according to Kick Big Polluters Out
More than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists have been granted access to the Cop30 climate negotiations in Belém, significantly outnumbering every single country’s delegation apart from the host Brazil, new analysis has found.
One in every 25 participants at this year’s UN climate summit is a fossil fuel lobbyist, according to the analysis by the Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition, raising serious questions about the corporate capture and credibility of the annual Cop negotiations.
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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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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.
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Photo: Vivian Grisogono
