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Exclusive: Rising flood risks driven by climate change could release chemicals from ageing sites – posing threats to ecosystems
Thousands of landfills across the UK and Europe sit in floodplains, posing a potential threat to drinking water and conservation areas if toxic waste is released into rivers, soils and ecosystems, it can be revealed.
The findings are the result of the first continent-wide mapping of landfills, conducted by the Guardian, Watershed Investigations and Investigate Europe.
Disclaimer: This dataset may contain duplicate records. Duplicates can arise from multiple data sources, repeated entries, or variations in data collection processes. While efforts have been made to identify and reduce duplication, some records may remain.
Journalismfund.eu provided funding support for the investigation.
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About 3.2 million people on Sumatra island have been affected, 2,600 have been injured and 504 are missing
The number of people killed by floods and landslides on Indonesia’s Sumatra island rose to 708 on Tuesday, the country’s disaster agency said, with 504 people missing.
The toll was a sharp increase from the 604 dead reported by the agency on Monday.
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Cristina Dorador is on an urgent mission in the world’s highest desert, the Atacama in Chile. As the rise of drug-resistant superbugs kills millions per year, Cristina has made it her mission to uncover new, life-saving antibiotics in the stunning salt flats she has studied since she was 14. Against the magnificent backdrop of endless plains, microscopic discoveries lead her team of scientists to question how critically lithium mining is damaging the delicate ecosystem and impacting Indigenous communities
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In the tropical dry forests of northern Colombia, a small team is gradually restoring the degraded habitat of the rare cotton-top tamarin
Luis Enrique Centena spent decades silencing the forest. Now, he listens. Making a whistle, the former logger points up to a flash of white and reddish fur in the canopy. Inquisitive eyes peer back – a cotton-top tamarin, one of the world’s rarest primates.
“I used to cut trees and never took the titís into account,” says Centena, calling the cotton-tops by their local name. “I ignored them. I didn’t know that they were in danger of extinction, I only knew I had to feed my family. But now we have become friends.”
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Exclusive: Pollution targets set out alongside nature recovery projects to allay concerns over housebuilding
Wood-burning stoves are likely to face tighter restrictions in England under new pollution targets set as part of an updated environmental plan released by ministers on Monday.
Speaking to the Guardian before the publication of the updated environmental improvement plan (EIP), the environment secretary, Emma Reynolds, said it would boost nature recovery in a number of areas, replacing an EIP under the last government she said was “not credible”.
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EU’s Copernicus monitoring service hails ‘reassuring sign’ of progress observed this year in hole’s size and duration
The hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic this year was the smallest and shortest-lived since 2019, according to European space scientists, who described the finding as a “reassuring sign” of the layer’s recovery.
The yearly gap in what scientists have called “planetary sunscreen” reached a maximum area of 21m sq km (8.1m sq miles) over the southern hemisphere in September – well below the maximum of 26m sq km reached in 2023 – and shrank in size until coming to an early close on Monday, data from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (Cams) shows.
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Fernilee, Derbyshire: You could hardly blame them for flaunting their spectacular plumage, and that’s what the males do in their glittering mating display
It’s funny to think that the 80 ducks present on this reservoir before me would have been unthinkable in my childhood. Even stranger is that we now get the birds on our garden pond. Yet all the known sites in the 1970s were in southern England and were often inflected towards landed privilege and material wealth. Windsor Great Park was one of their more prestigious addresses, but the other stronghold for the country’s entire population was at Virginia Water in Surrey (where the average house price today is £1.4m).
Even the name of this hole-nesting waterfowl – mandarin duck – arose because the people bringing them back from China wanted to conjure both their exoticism as well as their elite status. In those days, the idea was further backed by hard cash. In 1864, the Zoological Society of London had to pay £70 for just two pairs. At that price in today’s values, my 80 Fernilee birds would be worth £158,820.
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Banks of servers operating 24/7 generate massive amounts of heat, requiring power to run and cool them
Datacentre power demand in Australia could triple in five years and is forecast to exceed by 2030 the energy used by electric vehicles.
Datacentres now draw about 2% of electricity from the National Grid, about 4 terawatt hours of power. The Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) expects that share to rise rapidly – growing 25% year-on-year – to reach 12TWh, or 6% of grid demand, by 2030, and 12% by 2050.
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Exclusive: Swedish carmakers push to retain target as Germany lobbies to help its own industry by softening cutoff date
As the battle lines harden amid Germany’s intensifying pressure on the European Commission to scrap the 2035 ban on production of new petrol and diesel cars, two Swedish car companies, Volvo and Polestar, are leading the campaign to persuade Brussels to stick to the date.
They argue such a move is a desperate attempt to paper over the cracks in the German car industry, adding that it will not just prolong take up of electric vehicles but inadvertently hand the advantage to China.
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From Thailand to Indonesia, torrential flooding has carried away people’s possessions and homes, upending entire communities
Aminah Ali, 63, was at home in the Pidie Jaya district of Indonesia’s Aceh province when the rains started at midnight on Wednesday. The waters rose gradually. It seemed like the usual flooding that happens during monsoon season, but then came a loud roar of water: her village was suddenly inundated.
With help from her son, she managed to clamber on to her rooftop, where she waited for 24 hours. Flood waters, 3 metres high, stretched into the distance. “I saw many houses being swept away,” she said.
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