increase font size
Draft Motion for a Resolution prepared for the EU Parliamentary Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, March 2016
Draft Motion prepared by Rapporteurs Pavel Poc (Socialists and Democrats Group), Kateřina Konečná on behalf of the European United Left and Nordic Green Left group, Bas Eickhout of the Greens / European Free Alliance Group, Piernicola Pedicini of the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy Group, Mark Demesmaeker, Sirpa Pietikäinen and Frédérique Ries. This draft Motion was carried forward for the vote in a Parliamentary Plenary Session in April 2016.
Donations can be made in euros, pounds sterling, US and Australian dollars and Swiss francs. All donations, however small, are very welcome. We acknowledge donations by email if we have the donor's address. Please let us know if you require a formal paper receipt.
Exclusive: Cop31 leader calling for global curbs on climate-heating gas has landfills producing some of world’s worst plumes
Two or three nights each week, the smell descends. Residents of villages on the rural outskirts of Istanbul don’t know what the smell is, but they have been plagued by it for years: a smell so bad they have to sleep with their windows closed even during hot summer nights. They know the source, too: the huge Silivri municipal waste dump a few miles away that is belching out stinking gases as food and other organic waste rots.
“The smell is not subtle. It suffocates you,” said Kemalettin Özenç, sitting outside a tea shop in the village of Yolçatı. “It’s worse when the air is still: sometimes families linger until midnight out here. Even when you go inside it’s inescapable.”
Continue reading...
As trawlers compete with Greenland sharks for halibut and cod, conservationists and fishers clash over what to do about misunderstood species
‘When I accidentally catch a shark, I bring it to my dogs,” Henrik Jensen, a 27-year-old from Greenland’s west coast, says casually. “I don’t let it back down because [the sharks] bully me and cut my lines.”
Jensen has fished for halibut in Ilulissat, Greenland’s third largest town, for a decade. He works an hour north of the town’s main iceberg-laden fishery, which sustains the livelihood of nearly 400 fishers. There, the halibut are bigger and more plentiful, but so are the Greenland sharks.
Continue reading...
Shadow chancellor will also promise to scrap affordable homes regulations as part of strategy to refocus on growth
The Conservatives will announce a bonfire of regulations including abolishing affordable homes and community funding rules as well as scrapping Natural England and the Environment Agency.
The shadow chancellor, Andrew Griffith, will say the party intends to “streamline regulations” that protect nature and oblige developers to include affordable homes and community services such as GP surgeries, to speed up infrastructure and housebuilding.
Continue reading...
Party in England and Wales ditches commitment to phase out nuclear in major shift in its energy policy
Green party members have voted to end the party’s opposition to nuclear power, dropping a commitment to phase out the technology in a major shift in its energy policy.
The motion, adopted at conference, removes a “blanket opposition to nuclear fission” and instead commits the Green party of England and Wales to assessing nuclear projects alongside other low-carbon technologies.
Continue reading...
FOI request shows wildfire risk scheme scrapped, as survey highlights many fire services lack proper protective gear
The government quietly scrapped plans to prepare the countryside in England for wildfires, it has been revealed. This was despite new data showing fire crews do not have the proper protective gear to tackle them.
This summer has been a potent reminder of the scale of the threat posed by the climate crisis, with the UK experiencing record-breaking wildfires after punishingly hot and dry weather turned large parts of the countryside into a tinderbox.
Continue reading...
Anthony Albanese joins about 4,000 people in Fiji for preparatory meeting for year-ending Cop31 UN climate summit
The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has declared it is “important that Pacific voices are heard” after landing in Fiji on Monday to attend his first UN climate summit since becoming prime minister more than four years ago.
Albanese joined about 4,000 people in Nadi for a preparatory meeting for the year-ending Cop31 UN climate summit in Turkey while facing criticism from his political opponents at home. Pre-Cop meetings are usually small and bureaucratic affairs, but this meeting has a double purpose: it is being held in the Pacific after Australia and regional leaders argued it would help bring global attention to the plight of countries most at risk from the climate crisis.
Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter
Continue reading...
Portskewett, Monmouthshire: For hundreds of years this has been a method of catching salmon in the Severn’s churning waters. I visit one of the few fishermen still going
Every time I cross the new Severn Bridge leaving Wales, I check the state of the tide, using a buoy in the middle of the channel. I learned to sail in these cocoa-coloured waters of the Bristol Channel, with its ferocious tidal range (the distance between low and high water) the second highest in the world. You can’t work against these currents, you can only cooperate.
Today I get down to sea level itself, to meet Martin Morgan. He’s secretary of the Black Rock Lave Net Fishery, started by his great-grandfather over 100 years ago, and has known these grounds between the two Severn crossings since childhood. He’s fished the Grandstand, the Hole and the Gruggy, all using a traditional method of netting salmon – lave nets.
Continue reading...
An international symbol for the city, the sign is also hallmark of the region’s environmental richness
Atop Mount Lee, in the heart of Los Angeles, the wind is quiet. Two red-tailed hawks sail above, barely flapping as they coast the thermal air like surfers on a wave. Standing beside the giant letters of the Hollywood sign, the city seems peaceful. On a clear day, blocks and blocks of homes unfold beneath and the skies reveal sights all the way to Catalina Island – 10 miles out, across the Pacific.
That’s the beauty seen from the Hollywood sign.
Continue reading...
A statewide initiative pairs climate-focused coursework with community service – and is spreading to other states
As a student at a high school not far from Denver’s main airport, Anthony Muñoz wondered whether the jet fuel from airplanes flying above his campus was harming living things.
An avid gardener, Muñoz partnered with a local university to create a garden on the campus of his charter school, Vista Academy, filling it with native plants that could detect ground-level ozone pollution. He also worked with climate scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a federal office in nearby Boulder, who directed Muñoz on what data to collect, what the condition of leaves reveals about air quality and why milkweed matters for monarch butterfly migration.
Continue reading...
The co-founder of the Right to Roam campaign and author of The Book of Trespass discusses the Oxfordshire riverside community he calls home and how Hardwick Hall has been taken back by the people
On the banks of the Thames in South Oxfordshire, the Hardwick estate has been owned by the Rose family for generations. When Sir Charles Rose, a banker, sportsman, yachtsman and aviator, sped through the lanes in his Rolls-Royce in the early days of motoring, he inspired Kenneth Grahame to create Mr Toad in The Wind in the Willows. Grahame’s character became a symbol of decadent aristocracy whose foolishness leads to the temporary loss of a fine house to weasel-socialists.
Now Toad Hall has been taken over for good and Nick Hayes, artist, writer and co-founder of the Right to Roam campaign, has had a riverside view of this striking turn of events. When Hayes, who lives on a beautiful wide-beamed barge on the Thames, became the Hardwick estate’s artist-in-residence, he discovered that Rose’s heirs are, in effect, disinheriting themselves. The estate is gradually being turned into a charity which will be run by the tenants and the alternative community that has grown up in its shelter.
Continue reading...US psychiatrist and neurologist Karl Deisseroth and his German colleagues Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel have been awarded for their work.
Early recommendations could be issued if evidence highlights patient safety risks, the chair says.
Hugo Flint-Cahan, 34, was fatally attacked by Rolando Torres-Pena, 22, at a mental health trust in east London.
At least 32 children have died in India's Balaghat district since May amid outbreaks of measles and malaria.
A force should have flagged mental health services after a family called about their son, IOPC says.
Social anxiety is more common than many think. Here's what you need to know about the condition.
The PM was at times emotional during his conference speech in which he outlined his long-term plan for the UK.
Andy Burnham wants to outline his ideas for a free-at-the-point-of-use social care system in his first speech to Labour conference as prime minister.
Sir Andrew Dilnot, who proposed reforms 15 years ago, says the cost of such a scheme would be "very substantial".
Andy Burnham said the proposed care service would be laid out in detail and put on the ballot at the next general election.
Deep in the mountains of Palawan, Conservation International scientists are capturing what few people ever see: the secret lives of the Philippines’ rarest species.
At Maido — the Lima restaurant recently crowned the best in the world — one of the star dishes is paiche, a giant prehistoric river fish.Its journey to the table begins on a small family farm deep in Peru’s Amazon.
“Jane Goodall forever changed how people think about, interact with and care for the natural world,” said Daniela Raik, interim CEO of Conservation International.
Conservation International’s Neil Vora was selected for TIME’s Next 100 list — alongside other rising leaders reshaping culture, science and society.
Climate change is happening. And it’s placing the world’s reefs in peril. What can be done?
After decades of negotiation, the high seas treaty is finally reality. The historic agreement will pave the way to protect international waters which face numerous threats.
The Amazon rainforest, known for lush green canopies and an abundance of freshwater, is drying out — and deforestation is largely to blame.
The ocean is engine of all life on Earth, but human-driven climate change is pushing it past its limits. Here are five ways the ocean keeps our climate in check — and what can be done to help.
In a grueling and delicate dance, a team led by Conservation International removes a massive undersea killer.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. These pictures might be worth even more. An initiative featuring the work of some of the world’s best nature photographers raises money for environmental conservation.
