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Report finds regenerative approach could yield economic benefits while helping to meet environmental targets
The degradation of nature in the UK will lop nearly 5% off the country’s GDP if the private sector does not make a greater effort to halt the decline, experts have warned.
Conversely, investing in nature can produce economic returns for companies in a range of sectors, from manufacturing and construction to food, according to a report from the Green Finance Institute (GFI) and WWF.
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Before Peter Betts died in 2023, he wanted to pass on what he had learned over many years of negotiating at Cops – including how Paris 2015 was saved at the last bell
On 15 March 2022, I was on a video call with a dear friend when I experienced a twitching on the left-hand side of my face and a slurring of my speech. My wife, Fiona, took me to hospital because we both thought I was having a stroke, and I spent the journey in the car adjusting to my probable death. Interestingly, I did not feel fear or anger; only sadness and disappointment that it was all going to end sooner than I had expected. I survived: but six days later, we learned that the cause of my condition was a particularly aggressive form of brain tumour called a glioblastoma.
Since then I have read a number of accounts written by cancer sufferers. Many of them start with an uncertain diagnosis, often with a reasonable percentage chance of survival. But unlike these accounts it was absolutely clear that the tumour would kill me: there was no cure and I was given a median life expectancy of 15 to 18 months. Of course, I hoped to do better than the median, but the medical team said that clinging to that possibility would probably be a mistake because it would distract me from enjoying the time I had left. My immediate reaction was genuinely to recognise that in some respects I was lucky. Some people drop dead with no warning, whereas I would perhaps have a year to come to terms with and make sense of my life. This enabled me from the beginning to take a positive approach to my situation and determined me to make the most of the little time I had.
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Nämdö, Stockholm archipelago: A holiday to the Baltic has forced me to undergo a perspective shift to appreciate its scale and intricate wateriness
By the third week in August, Swedish school terms have restarted and the thousands who make the Stockholm archipelago their summer home have returned to the city. Ferries have switched to winter timetables and people are outnumbered by fallow deer.
I try to get my bearings using the chart hanging in my cousin’s summerhouse, but the white-tailed eagle view of 30,000 islands, islets and skerries is baffling. A boat is essential, and my son makes the necessary perspective shift before I do. “It’s like the Lake District in reverse,” he says. “The land is water and the lakes are islands.” I see what he means. There is something about the ice-worn geology and the vegetation dominated by pines, alder and birch that feels familiar, but the scale and intricate wateriness of the place is as confusing as it is beguiling.
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For more than a decade, scientists have been puzzling over what was causing billions of starfish to dissolve into piles of white goo. Sea star wasting disease has ravaged starfish populations, wiping out 90% of the once common sunflower sea star. Now, researchers have finally identified the culprit. Madeleine Finlay speaks to Dr Melanie Prentice, one of the team to crack the case. She explains the impact the disease has had on the marine environment, how they found the pathogen responsible, and what it means for sea stars’ recovery
Scientists identify bacterium behind devastating wasting disease in starfish
Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod
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Views of forward-thinking artist and writer who lived off land in national park celebrated at museum in Glastonbury
She was considered an eccentric by some, eking out a frugal existence on a wild English moor, surviving off the land and exchanging her sketches of the countryside for meals.
But the first museum exhibition on the life and work of the largely forgotten nature writer and artist Hope Bourne highlights that her views on the environment, recycling, access to the countryside – even rewilding – were ahead of her time.
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As wildfires rage in southern Europe and crop losses only set to increase in the coming years, producers are getting creative to beat the heat
“I’m not ready to change jobs,” says Stellios Boutaris, a wine producer with vineyards in Naoussa and Amyndeon in northern Greece, as well as on the island of Santorini. But, he adds, “we cannot do it the way our fathers did.”
Boutaris is determined to keep producing in the region and keep the family business going but says “the curve is not looking good” as the climate crisis puts pressure on producers across the Mediterranean.
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The bottlenose in Lyme Bay has become a local celebrity – but experts warn human interaction could be putting everyone at risk
No one knows why Reggie, the solitary-sociable bottlenose dolphin, has chosen to linger alone in Lyme Bay, away from his pod or family group. Lone cetaceans are rare in UK waters – Reggie is believed to be the 16th in 35 years – but young males do sometimes break away to live alone, probably explained by their fission-fusion society.
But now he is off Dorset, and his fate, marine experts say, lies in our hands.
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After a wrecked ship spewed oil into the pristine waters off Pointe d’Esny, destroying sea life and livelihoods, a group of women turned to the land to change their fortunes
Sandy Monrose never imagined herself as a farmer. Descended from generations of fishers on the breezy south-eastern tip of Mauritius, she has the Indian Ocean running through her veins. But when a merchant ship slammed into the coral reef, turning the sea inky black with toxic fuel and sinking the local economy, she and a group of local women turned to the land to feed their families.
Five years after the Japanese-owned MV Wakashio ran aground off the white sands of Pointe d’Esny, her “model farm” in the nearby nature reserve of La Vallée de Ferney is flourishing. Sitting under a metal-roofed gazebo, she surveys the formerly tired plot she secured from landowner Ferney Ltd, now a joyous riot of greens, bursting with papaya and banana trees, and patches of onions, potatoes, taros, manioc, bok choi, winged beans and lots more besides.
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Walter Mikac, who lost his wife and two daughters in the 1996 shooting, warns that Labor-backed Shooters party bill will weaken national firearms agreement
For Walter Mikac, the gun reform that followed the Port Arthur massacre was the slimmest of silver linings to come from that day.
After a gunman killed 35 people, including his wife, Nanette, and two young daughters, Alannah and Madeline, Mikac became one of the strongest voices on the need for better gun laws across Australia.
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In the country’s north, people recall the terror of soaring flood waters that killed hundreds, and blame authorities for poor planning
As flood waters surged through the streets and submerged the houses, Bilawal Jamshed rushed to the rooftop with his family, terrified the water would swallow everyone in Mingora, Swat, in Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Everything happened in seconds, as if a dam had burst and water rushed toward us. We were lucky it was morning and we could escape to the rooftops. Imagine if it had happened at night,” says Jamshed, 36, while walking through streets still filled with foul-smelling sludge, as residents and volunteers struggle to clean up more than a week after the devastating floods.
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