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Exclusive: ‘Deep-rooted injustices’ affect billions of people due to location of wells, pipelines and other infrastructure
A quarter of the world’s population lives within three miles (5km) of operational fossil fuel projects, potentially threatening the health of more than 2 billion people as well as critical ecosystems, according to first-of-its-kind research.
A damning new report by Amnesty International, shared exclusively with the Guardian, found that more than 18,300 oil, gas and coal sites are currently distributed across 170 countries worldwide, occupying a vast area of the Earth’s surface.
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Dozens storm venue at climate conference that has encouraged NGOs and Indigenous groups to play unprecedented role in talks
There were tussles between protesters and security guards at the Cop30 climate talks late on Tuesday night, when a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people stormed the conference centre in Belém.
Several dozen men and women, some in brightly coloured feather headdress, ran through the entrance, pushing at least one door off its hinges, before striding through the metal detectors and entering the Blue Zone.
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Working with jaguars in Brazil’s Pantanal was a huge source of joy. But the wildfires are getting worse. This is Abbie’s story
Location Pantanal, Brazil
Disaster Wildfires, a number of years
Abbie Martin splits her time between captaining a boat in the Virgin Islands and doing research in Brazil’s Pantanal, a region that includes the world’s largest tropical wetland and where she founded the Jaguar Identification Project. Fires in the Pantanal have reached new extremes, killing at least 17 million vertebrate animals and burning 27% of the vegetation cover in 2020. Climatebreakdown made the Pantanal drier between 2001-21, increasing the occurrence of above-average fires in the region.
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I had always wanted to see one and on a trek in Guyana there he was, his appearance quite bizarre
Seeing a special bird can take enormous effort, as I discovered recently on a quest in the jungles of Guyana. As we headed along a narrow river towards our destination, we had to cope with heat and humidity and navigate huge rocks and fallen logs. All this just to see a baby bird.
I say baby, but harpy eagles – named after mythical ancient Greek spirits with a raptor’s body and a woman’s head – are easily the biggest bird of prey in the Americas, and one of the largest in the world.
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Sefton, Merseyside: These longhorns will be here till spring, roaming (almost) free, disturbing the ground, creating a foothold for native wildlife
They’re huddled at the entrance to their enclosure: a quartet of broad‑backed ruminants contemplating their winter lodgings. They arrived yesterday, when the dunes were under siege from wind and rain. But these are hardy cattle and there are plenty of hollows in which to shelter. This group might be here until April – there’s no rush to explore.
The council’s Green Sefton service has two winter-grazing enclosures over more than 228 hectares of the Ainsdale and Birkdale Sandhills nature reserve. English longhorns, on loan from the Lancashire Wildlife Trust, are used for conservation grazing to help manage the sand dune grassland and dune slack habitats. At other times of the year, herpetologists might encounter sand lizards, great-crested newts and natterjack toads. Today I’m visiting to view the cattle up close, to understand this project and its benefits.
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World’s biggest polluter on track to hit peak emissions target early but miss goal for cutting carbon intensity
China’s carbon dioxide emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months, analysis reveals, adding evidence to the hope that the world’s biggest polluter has managed to hit its target of peak CO2 emissions well ahead of schedule.
Rapid increases in the deployment of solar and wind power generation – which grew by 46% and 11% respectively in the third quarter of this year – meant the country’s energy sector emissions remained flat, even as the demand for electricity increased.
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A regenerative scheme has shown early promise, with herders hopeful it can restore degraded pastures
Ibrahima Ka, dressed in flowing indigo robes, gathers his herd with those of his neighbours before a stretch of lush, untouched pasture. The bellowing, heaving and trampling of 350 impatient zebu cows behind a wire perimeter marks a break with centuries of herding tradition in Senegal, west Africa. Rather than roaming freely across the country’s vast grasslands, shepherds tightly pack the herd together, confining them to graze in short, intensive bursts before being moved to a new plot.
Ka, the village chief of Thignol, is spearheading the first pilot of “mob grazing” in Senegal, aiming to mimic, on a much smaller scale, how wildebeest flow across the Serengeti, moving to protect themselves against lions and cheetahs. The idea that intense grazing can regenerate grasslands rather than accelerate their decline has been controversial. Initially, proponents argued it could help to solve the climate crisis through storing carbon in regenerated grasslands – a claim with little scientific basis. But there is some evidence that the method can boost biodiversity and grassland health in dry areas such as Senegal.
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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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