-
Defra promised in March to work towards free access to data on large plots in England and Wales
The government has refused to say when the public will be able to freely access information about who owns large plots of land across England and Wales.
Emma Reynolds, the previous secretary of state for the environment, announced in March that the paywall protecting large amounts of the Land Registry would be partly lifted.
Continue reading...
-
As climate breakdown pushes families to starvation, many feel forced to ‘sacrifice’ daughters to save siblings. Photographer Elise Blanchard travelled the country speaking to girls as young as eight, 10 and 14 who have been engaged or married to repay debts or pay for food
‘I’m not happy about this,” says 11-year-old Khatira, who was sold into marriage to repay debts, sitting in her home in Qala-e-Naw, capital of Badghis province in north-west Afghanistan. “She was healthy before her engagement, now she is worried and cries a lot,” says her 40-year-old mother, Noor Bibi.
When her 20-year-old husband-to-be comes to her home, Khatira runs away. Since her engagement, she has stopped going outside because she “is ashamed of having a husband in front of the other girls”, says her mother.
Shepherds watch over their sheep in the hills of Bala-Murghab, Badghis province, north-west Afghanistan. By March, the pasture was already too dry for the season
Continue reading...
-
Peru’s anchoveta have made up about a 10th of the entire global commercial fishing catch since 1970, more than any other fish. A combination of warming seas and decades-long overfishing spells disaster
On 10 June 2026, the government of Peru made a decision that it knew would hurt one of the world’s major fishing industries. It stoppedall anchoveta fishing boats from going out to sea, suspending the fishing season. At first the order was temporary, but in mid-August, the suspension turned into a total closure. This was no easy call. For one thing, it was a brutal blow to the Peruvian economy.
Peruvian anchovies – the scientific name is Engraulis ringens – are not the salty, punch-packing little fillets in a puttanesca sauce or caesar salad dressing. That is a different species – Engraulisencrasicolus – which is smaller, tastier and found mostly in the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Only a small part of Peru’s anchoveta catch is eaten in fish form. The rest – more than 90% – is immediately processed as fishmeal and fish oil, packed in sacks and barrels, and shipped to fish, shellfish and seaweed farms, factory farms and nutritional supplement producers around the world.
Continue reading...
-
Peak of French mountain now 4,807 metres high and fluctuates year by year due to changes in Alpine climate
Western Europe’s highest mountain shrank by more than a metre last year. The peak of Mont Blanc in France now stands 4,807.47 metres above sea level, a team of surveyors said on Wednesday, putting “the roof of Europe” 1.29 metres lower than in 2025.
The mountain is about 4,792 metres tall but the summit constantly shifts as heat, wind and precipitation change the thickness of snow and ice on top. The height scientists recorded during an expedition last month was 1.88 metres greater than it was in 2023, when it reached the lowest levels in recent memory.
Continue reading...
-
Downe, Kent: It’s hard not to feel the earth move by a visit to the great man’s house. He truly valued these creatures of the dirt
The garden beds are moistened by steady rain, but the ground is still unyielding. A blackbird hops across bare soil. A dart, a jab, and up it comes – a wriggling tube of pink flesh. A simple catch. But when I rummage in the dirt, my only reward is loam under the fingernails. Perhaps I should have brought a bassoon.
I’ve come to Down House. Here, Charles Darwin changed the world. And here he wrote his last book, its title usually shortened for convenience: Earthworms.
Continue reading...
-
Golf clubs, private schools and car washes may face tighter rules from water companies as England’s drought continues
Three water companies are seeking to impose severe restrictions on businesses as the drought continues across most of England, putting rivers and wildlife under huge pressure.
Golf clubs and private schools could be barred from using mains water to irrigate playing fields and courses, and commercial car washes stopped from operating, under “non-essential use bans” being sought by the companies.
Continue reading...
-
Government says ambition for 2036 will be good for food and climate resilience, but concerns remain over funding
The government has set an ambition to increase the share of English land farmed organically to 10% by 2036, but concerns remain over how the transition will be funded.
Currently, just 3.4% of England’s agricultural land is farmed organically, one of the smallest shares in Europe. France, for example, farms 10.4% of its land organically, and aims to increase this to 18% by 2027.
Continue reading...
-
Cultivating the nutritious bugs means families can raise livestock and enrich their own food, while lowering pressures on the land
A few minutes’ walk from his home in the Kyaka II refugee settlement, Kanane Bikanyale feeds black soldier fly larvae to chickens in a coop above a fishpond. The larvae disappear in a scrum of chickens. Nearby, more larvae grow in modified jerrycans, while adult flies are kept in netted boxes.
Bikanyale kept chickens before he fled to Uganda from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). But the cost of conventional feed and shortages of ingredients made them increasingly difficult to raise – a widespread pressure for millions of smallholder farmers whose margins are tight.
Kanane Bikanyale tends to his black soldier fly larvae in a rearing unit in the Kyaka II refugee camp in Uganda
Continue reading...
-
At Bybi in Copenhagen, a dedicated group of staff and volunteers have built a community for all centred on the production of honey – much of which is given away for nothing. Could it be replicated elsewhere?
The bees at Bybi, a collective of beekeepers in Copenhagen, live on the roof. Their home is a complex of Victorian buildings, right in the centre of the city, that looks like an idealised vision of the modern social enterprise, ennobled by the architecture of the past. It’s a place of cottage industry in concert with nature, where the marginalised are brought in from the fringes and corporations stand waiting to help, where jobs happen but a lot of the work is done by volunteers, and where – this bit is important – a lot of time is spent discussing ideas.
Oliver Maxwell, Bybi’s 48-year-old founder, encourages me to examine the buildings more closely. They were once a prison, a workhouse and a hospital; their functions today – a homeless shelter, a young offender institution and, until recently, a job centre – are not so different. Denmark’s Victorian transformation, from “agricultural backwater to industrialised agriculture”, was reflected in how they treated people, Maxwell says.
Continue reading...
-
Should you look for French seams or overlocking? Is dry-clean only a red flag? And how do you spot quality when shopping online? We asked the pros
• How to make your leather last a lifetime
Take a look at the outfit you’re wearing now: how many times have you worn each item? And how long have you had them? Just over 10 years ago, Eco-Age founder Livia Firth and journalist Lucy Siegle launched the 30 wears challenge to encourage people to buy clothes they would wear at least 30 times.
The 30 wears challenge is a great concept. As a journalist interested in sustainable fashion, I’ve enjoyed applying this rule for years and found the goal can often be surpassed, but with one proviso: clothing must be chosen carefully. The goal is only realistic if garments are of good enough quality to stand up to repeated wear. So, how do you know if your clothes really are well made? Does it mean you have to spend a fortune on them? Do you need to know the difference between a French seam and an overlock seam? And how can we judge clothing quality before buying if we are, like 37% of Britons, getting most of our clothes online? I spoke to experts to find out.
Continue reading...
