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Foreign minister Shisir Khanal tells the Guardian the world’s biggest economies need to help Nepal, which contributes less than 0.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions
Nepal is demanding $20m in climate compensation for the recent devastating floods, as a senior minister called on the world’s most polluting countries to “wake up” and accept shared responsibility for a disaster that led to the death or disappearance of more than 6,000 people.
Scientists believe the climate crisis had a role to play in the floods, which were triggered when a melting glacier partially collapsed and set off a deadly landslide and flash flooding through Chinese-controlled Tibet and Nepal in late August. So far, more than 1,300 are confirmed dead and more than 5,500 still missing, with hopes of their survival diminished after 12 days of rescue operations.
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OS index examines which ‘urban heat islands’ suffer the most – and which cope the best with rising temperatures
Portsmouth, Leicester, Exeter, Bristol and Nottingham will be among the cities that warm the most by the end of this century as global heating turns British cities into urban heat islands, according to research.
Analysis from Ordnance Survey (OS) has created a heat vulnerability index for all cities in Great Britain. Portsmouth, which sits on the south coast of England and is home to 208,000 people, is the most vulnerable to extreme heat today and into the future, according to the research from the OS, the Met Office and the data analysis company 4 Earth Intelligence.
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Researchers urge governments to help worst afflicted countries, such as Nigeria and Algeria, which rely on oil revenues for public services
Conflict, migration and economic upheaval will accompany the global move away from oil, unless governments act urgently to help the worst afflicted countries to cope, research has found.
Nigeria, Iran, Angola and Algeria are among the countries that will be severely affected, as they rely strongly on oil revenues for their government and provision of public services, but have little diversification and too little capital to cushion the blow.
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Anglers will help scientists investigate the porbeagle, tope and blue shark to boost knowledge and conservation
‘We have really cool sharks,” says Dr Lucy Hawkes. She is not referring to animals in the rich coastal waters of South Africa or Mexico, but instead talking about the species that live around Britain. Hawkes, an associate professor at the University of Exeter, is co-leading a new three-year project to investigate the lives of three of England’s most vulnerable shark species.
“I like the porbeagle, which looks like a baby great white shark,” she says. “Surfers could see one and absolutely poop their pants, but they’re not dangerous. It’s amazing that we share the water with some pretty exciting animals.”
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Estimates suggest drop in production with vineyards also concerned ‘smoke taint’ from wildfires may affect quality
French vineyards hit by severe drought and heatwaves are expected to report a 30-year low in wine production after the country’s hottest ever recorded summer, according to the agriculture ministry.
Initial estimates suggest winemakers will produce just under 34m hectolitres from this year’s harvest: a drop of 6% on last year, and 17% less than the 2021-2025 average.
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Eyam Moor, Derbyshire:It’s a place that I treasure greatly, and now it has a change of ownership that is worth celebrating
Can a landscape sigh with relief? It felt that way, pushing through bilberry and cowberry hung with pearls of overnight rain that soaked my lower legs.
On the path, dry, dusty soil had reverted to reassuring gloop. I was thrilled, at one point, to step cautiously round a puddle. Overhead, a buzzard wheeled and a small gang of swallows skimmed across heather whose purple intensity was already fading, too soon it seemed to me. To the west, a kestrel was quartering the slopes of Wet Withens.
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WMO report details extreme weather events causing climatic feedback loop with serious health consequences
Big increases in wildfires and heatwaves supercharged by the climate crisis are hindering improvements to air quality around the world, UN experts have said.
Regions that had recorded a fall in pollution emitted by cars and industrial sites are facing new threats to air quality because of exposure to smoke from wildfires, according to a new report, while rising temperatures caused by intense heatwaves are causing a surge in ground-level ozone.
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The Californian once cultivated petri dishes breathed on by artists that turned ‘murky and scary’. But now, in our dystopian age of space technocrats, she’s taking inspiration from Nasa shots of asteroids
‘I had artists from all over the world breathe over petri dishes,” says Liz Larner. “It was a piece of international art made from breath bacteria.” The American sculptor is reminiscing about her 1988 work Every Artist Gave a Breath, a fragile and strangely evolving work of art grown on agar. Exhibited in a 2022 show, it has since transformed in various ways: some bacteria has morphed into “beautiful, dried wafers in colour”, while other dishes “turned into a really weird blackish-green, really murky and a little scary”.
Larner is no stranger to making alluring work out of strange materials, from human hair and false eyelashes to leather and surgical gauze. For her first major exhibition in the UK – A Hard Line to Bend at Camden Arts Centre in London – the sculptor has been transforming single-use plastic into pieces that bristle with seductiveness and menace. “I was living in LA at the time when China stopped accepting American plastic, which was where we were sending it all to be recycled,” she says. “I started taking it to my studio – it got so huge, I had to hang it from my ceiling.”
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Gabna community fear their traditional herding routes will be sacrificed as far-right rhetoric ramps up against them
For the Swedish-Sami politician Åsa Larsson Blind, it was something of a watershed moment in the national conversation around Indigenous rights.
In late April and May, as the country geared up for this month’s elections, the deputy prime minister and energy minister, Ebba Busch, gave a series of speeches and articles publicly attacking the Sami’s rights to graze reindeer herds on their ancestral lands. Reindeer husbandry, Busch said at one press conference, “is an industry that affects very large areas, but has limited economic significance”.
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Epic plankton blooms make filming in the North Sea notoriously difficult. But a new documentary gives a rare glimpse of the kaleidoscopic life – seals, sharks, tuna, orcas and shorthorn sculpins – lurking beneath its waves
The North Sea, as even its greatest admirers will concede, often glowers an unappetising grey or brown. And we assume that its dull exterior is matched by sediment-filled waters where little life dwells. For years, the friends and family of Peter van Rodijnen wondered why the Dutch cinematographer and diving fanatic spent so much time exploring “this murky bowl of soup”. But, inspired by a childhood of watching Jacques Cousteau’s adventures in rather more enticingly temperate waters, Van Rodijnen’s dedication to North Sea diving gradually revealed its hidden wonders.
Over 20 years, as camera technology improved, Van Rodijnen obtained more and more amazing footage of marine life near his home on the Netherlands coast. Nearly a decade ago, he teamed up with director Mark Verkerk. “We started with the idea,” says Van Rodijnen, “that if somebody can make a movie about the North Sea, it’s got to be us.”
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