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Funeral for fossil fuels held as part of ‘Great People’s March’ calling on governments to step up climate efforts
The streets of Belém echoed with indigenous chants, classical Brazilian songs and calls for environmental justice on Saturday as tens of thousands of people marched to demand urgent action on the climate and nature crisis.
Activists from around the world converged on the Amazonian host city of COP30, urging negotiators to ramp up ambition.
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Desert kingdom depends on oil dollars but its people already face a climate ‘at the verge of livability’. What’s going on?
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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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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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Area’s MP says it would cost more than local council’s annual budget to remove the 10-metre high pile of waste
Fly-tippers have dumped a “mountain of illegal waste” in Oxfordshire so large that removing it could cost more than the local council’s annual budget, the area’s MP has said.
Hundreds of tonnes of waste, stacked 10 metres high, appeared in a field between the River Cherwell and the A34 near Kidlington. One charity called the huge dump of rubbish “an environmental catastrophe unfolding in plain sight”.
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In January the island’s beaches were inundated with waves of plastic pollution, a phenomenon that has been getting worse by the year. Photographer and film-maker Sean Gallagher travelled to Bali to document the increasing tide of rubbish washing up on beaches and riverbanks, and the people facing the monumental challenge of cleaning up. His portraits are on show now as part of the 2025 Head On photo festival at Bondi Beach promenade until 30 November
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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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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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