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Olivier De Schutter says new economic agenda needed to tackle crises of rising inequality and ecological collapse
The global economy must be reordered to ensure it serves ordinary people around the world rather than the “frivolous and destructive demands of the ultra-rich”, according to a leading UN figure.
Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, says politicians must stop prioritising “socially and ecologically destructive growth” that only increases the profits – and serves the consumption demands – of the world’s richest individuals and corporations.
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Dublin, Helsinki, Stockholm and Tallinn among port cities more choked by sulphur oxides from ferries, analysis shows
Fume-belching ferries spew more sulphur pollution than cars in several EU capitals, analysis has found.
Dublin, Helsinki, Stockholm and Tallinn are among 13 of Europe’s 15 biggest port cities choked more by sulphur oxides (SOx) from ferries than road vehicles, data shared exclusively with the Guardian shows.
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Researchers hope restoring the original song will improve breeding prospects for birds released into the wild
Scientists have rescued the lost song of the critically endangered regent honeyeater – one of Australia’s rarest birds.
Regent honeyeaters were once seen in vast flocks across south-eastern Australia, with a distribution that ranged from Queensland to Kangaroo Island in South Australia.
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Exclusive: Schemes worth hundreds of millions of pounds to protect biodiversity and oceans likely to be substantially reduced
UK programmes to protect nature and the climate in developing countries are suffering swingeing budget cuts despite ministers’ promises, the Guardian has learned.
The cuts belie the government’s claims to be fulfilling international obligations on climate finance and are veiled behind a system that experts have criticised as opaque.
The cutting and partial closure of the £100m Biodiverse Landscapes Fund, intended to protect nature in vital ecosystems in poor regions overseas. Six regions were originally targeted, in Africa, South America and Asia, but this has been reduced to two.
Coast – a project for Climate and Ocean Adaptation and Sustainable Transition – and Pact (Prepare and Accelerate Climate Transitions) are having substantial cuts.
The future of the £500m Blue Planet Fund has been thrown into doubt despite its successful operation.
Other schemes have been reduced in scope, for instance by allowing only one year’s funding where years were expected.
Requests for data under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed spending has been slashed among the departments responsible for international climate finance (ICF).
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South Australia saw most of the season’s wildest swings with January heatwaves followed by February floods
This summer ricocheted from extremely hot to intensely wet across parts of the country, according to the Bureau of Meteorology, with South Australia experiencing some of the season’s most acute swings.
Nationwide, the 2025-26 season was the wettest in nearly a decade, with rainfall 32% higher than average across the country, according to the bureau’s summary, the rainiest since 2016-17.
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Storeton Wood, Wirral: Two centuries ago, this area teemed with workmen busying building Liverpool; more than 200m years ago very different creatures roamed here
At last, the sun shone after weeks of rain. While the distant Welsh hills were draped in snow, here on the Wirral it was dry and bright. Storeton Wood is a secondary woodland of oak, beech and silver birch, and formerly a quarry. Below, a cuprous layer of leaf has protected the soil from the recent assault of raindrops. Fallen limbs were a feast of fungi; in places, creamy white Storeton sandstone peeked through like discarded vertebrae. Great spotted woodpeckers drummed.
Standing by the remnant of George Stephenson’s quarry track, I envisaged the 1838 scene: workmen busy extracting sandstone, sudden shouts of discovery and confusion, handprints in the rock. They thought they were the signs of people perished in Noah’s flood. Victorian scientists later confirmed that they were footprints of a crocodile-like creature named Chirotherium storetonense (Chirotherium meaning “hand beast”) dating from Triassic times, 240m summers ago.
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Insect taxonomist Art Borkent has described and named more than 300 species of midges but fears his field of science is dying out, despite millions of insects, fungi and other organisms waiting to be discovered
Once Art Borkent starts speaking about biting midges, he rarely pauses for breath. Holding up a picture of a gnat trapped in amber from the time of the dinosaurs, the 72-year-old taxonomist explains that there are more than 6,000 ceratopogonidae species known to science. He has described and named more than 300 midges, mostly from his favourite family of flies. Some specialise in sucking blood from mammals, reptiles, other insects and even fish, often using the CO2 from their host’s breath to locate their target, he says. Tens of thousands remain a mystery to science, waiting to be discovered.
But to Borkent’s knowledge, nobody will continue his life’s work of identifying and studying this group of flies once he has gone.
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Though coffee is one of the world’s most important commodities, little of the profit trickles down to the farmers, while workers are abandoning the countryside in search of more lucrative jobs in the city
Mary Luz Pérez Arrubla and her brother, Rodrigo, are fourth-generation farmers cultivating coffee on steep Andean slopes near the town of Líbano, in the rich agricultural region of Tolima. Along with the rest of Colombia, the family has enjoyed a historic harvest amid surging global coffee prices, which hit record highs for the second year in a row in 2025.
Severe US tariffs imposed on Brazil and Vietnam, – the world’s two largest coffee producers – as well as poor harvests there, helped drive the surge. Both countries were hurt by the El Niño phenomenon, a cyclical weather pattern characterised by dry spells and aggravated by the climate crisis.
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A new survey shows 80% of gen Zs believe strong environmental values are as important as physical attraction when it comes to finding a partner (so you might want to start reusing your coffee cups)
Name: Green flags.
Age: This is a thing for younger people, so listen up, boomers.
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For months it has been adding to my mother’s distress when all she wanted was feed-in tariff payments go into her account
When my father died last year, nearly all thecompanies we had to notify were kind and empathetic, but notScottishPower.
It had been paying feed-in tariff (Fit) payments for electricity produced from my parents’ solar panels into his account. My parents hadbought the panels jointly in 2011, and my mother is named on the certification and was ScottishPower’s main point of contact, so she thought it would be a simple matter for the payments to be switched to her bank account. It was not.
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