Environment

O desmatamento na Amazônia vem aumentando em meio a cortes à proteção do meio ambiente, e colocando o apoio financeiro vindo da Noruega em risco, diz ministro

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A Noruega fez uma clara ameaça ao Brasil de que caso o crescente índice de desmatamento na Amazônia não seja revertido, a ajuda financeira de um bilhão de dólares vai ser reduzida a zero. Os líderes de ambos países se encontram em Oslo, nesta sexta.

A 20% shortfall in migrant workers relied on to pick fruit and vegetables is blamed on Brexit making the UK seem ‘xenophobic’

Farms have been hit with a shortage of the migrant workers that Britain relies on to bring in the fruit and vegetable harvests, according to a series of new reports.

There was a 17% shortfall in May, leaving some farms critically short of pickers, according to a new National Farmers Union (NFU) survey. The decline is blamed on Brexit, with the vote to depart the EU leaving the UK seen as “xenophobic” and “racist” by overseas workers, according to the director of a major agricultural recruitment company.

The scientists who developed the anti-reflective film were inspired by tiny, light-trapping structures on moth eyes that help the insects avoid predators.

(Image credit: Ullstein Bild/Getty Images)

Move to block EU ban comes despite environment secretary Michael Gove saying, ‘I don’t want to water down’ EU protections

Conservative politicians are trying to stop a complete EU ban on bee-harming pesticides, despite the new environment secretary Michael Gove’s statement earlier this week, in which he said “I absolutely don’t want to water down” EU environmental protections.

Neonicotinoids are the world’s most widely used insecticides but have been banned on flowering crops in the EU since 2013. However, the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) found in 2016 that use of the pesticides on all crops poses a high risk to bees. As a result, the European commission has proposed a ban on all uses outside greenhouses, first revealed by the Guardian in March.

So far, 15,696 people have taken part in the 2017 Great British Bee Count, recording 288,341 bees, some of which are pictured here. You have eight days left to join this year’s count which will run until 30 June 2017

• Download the free app to monitor and learn about our endangered bee population and get tips for bee-friendly planting

My friend David Hoyle, who has died in a car accident aged 48, was a social scientist who devoted his life to protecting African forests and natural ecosystems for the biodiversity they harbour, for the local people who depend on them, and to secure their vital role in mitigating dangerous climate change. He worked for numerous NGOs, including VSO, WWF, and WCS, which took him to many African countries as a teacher, field project manager and national director.

The second of three children born to Mike Hoyle, a management consultant, and Marion (nee Knight), a housewife, David grew up in Farnham, Surrey, completed school at Lancing college in West Sussex and read geography at Reading University before doing a master’s in natural resource management at Edinburgh.

Environment minister Jan Szyszko has called for Białowieża to lose its heritage status, saying it was granted ‘illegally’

Poland’s environment minister, Jan Szyszko, whom green activists have criticised for allowing large-scale logging in the ancient Białowieża forest, has called for the woodland to be stripped of Unesco’s natural heritage status, banning human intervention.

Białowieża, straddling Poland’s eastern border with Belarus, includes one of the largest surviving parts of the primeval forest that covered the European plain 10,000 years ago. It also boasts unique plant and animal life, including the continent’s largest mammal, the European bison.

Thanks to globalization and climate change, the pest has spread to 60 countries, attacking coconut, date and oil palm plantations, and costing millions of dollars in damages.

(Image credit: Courtesy of Mark Hoddle/Department of Entomology, University of California Riverside)

States on the Gulf Coast are being hit with severe weather and floods as Tropical Storm Cindy moved inland Thursday morning in Louisiana.

(Image credit: Gerald Herbert/AP)

ExxonMobil and several other oil companies are backing a Republican-led plan for a carbon tax. Steve Inskeep talks to Steve Coll, author of the book Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power.

As renewables make up a bigger share of the nation's energy grid, some worry about blackouts when the wind doesn't blow. But grid operators say they're getting better at balancing energy resources.

(Image credit: Amy Sisk/Prairie Public Broadcasting)

Habitat loss, pollution, climate change, over-exploitation and poaching are all threatening a lifeline for local communities

Wildlife-based tourism is growing rapidly worldwide as the number of tourists continues to grow and as we, as travellers, seek out new and more enriching personal experiences with local cultures and wildlife. This is what inspired me to take six months unpaid leave from the grind of legal practice many years ago and backpack around South America with my little sister. Experiencing the natural beauty of places like the Amazon rainforest, Iguazú Falls and Machu Picchu and the local people fighting to protect them was life-changing.

The UN World Tourism Organisation estimates that 7% of world tourism relates to wildlife tourism, growing annually at about 3%, and much higher in some places, like our Unesco world heritage sites. A WWF report shows that 93% of all natural heritage sites support recreation and tourism and 91% of them provide jobs. In Belize, more than 50% of the population are said to be supported by income generated through reef-related tourism and fisheries.

Butterflies are vanishing from cities even faster than in the countryside – from paving, pesticides or just plain heat. But some cities are luring them back

The purple plumes of railway-side buddleias are emptied of insects. A single white butterfly is dancing, alone, in a grassy park. Suburban gardens are unvisited by red admirals or small tortoiseshells.

The disappearance of butterflies from the British countryside over the past half-century is well documented, but a new study warns that they are also vanishing from UK cities, more quickly than in rural areas.

A data map of 25 London cycling corridors could be crucial for future superhighways, but critics say it’s a distraction from getting the job done

Mike Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, once said “in God we trust; everyone else bring data”. London has moved towards the mantra of one man who transformed a city for cycling by using a major data analysis to show where cycling routes could be built to get the greatest number of people on to two wheels.

Transport for London (TfL) has taken census data, cycle counts, surveys and data from the city’s hire bikes to identify future urban development and growth hotspots and collision data. They have created a map of 25 corridors across London, along which the greatest number of cycling trips could be generated.

Craig Kelly’s argument that a reverse auction would allow coal power plants to compete doesn’t stack up

The latest push by pro-coal lobbyists and some Coalition MPs – for the clean energy target proposal to be dropped in favour of a reverse auction that could be used to fund a new coal power station – has left analysts wondering if they are actually trying to “blow up” the debate.

The idea was raised, after the Minerals Council of Australia – the coal lobby – suggested it to Coalition backbenchers, as part of a campaign against chief scientist Alan Finkel’s clean energy target.

Huge and unexplained bloom has fishers racing to save their nets, and scientists hurrying to study the rare animal

A rare, tiny marine creature known as the “unicorn of the sea” has swarmed in its millions on the west coast of America, ruining fishermen’s nets and baffling scientists who are scrambling to find out more about them.

Fishers along the west coast have told researchers that in some places they are unable to catch anything because the pyrosome clusters are so dense and tightly packed. Their hooks, when pulled from the ocean, wriggle with the odd-looking creatures, which are sometimes referred to as “sea pickles” or “fire bodies”.

World-first climate and health framework from 30 health and medical groups calls for recognition of citizens’ ‘right to health’

To save hundreds of lives and billions of dollars, Australia should rapidly phase out coal power stations and establish strong emissions reduction targets, according to a coalition of 30 major health and medical groups.

Related: Australia warned it has radically underestimated climate change security threat

Exclusive: Shadow climate change minister rubbishes idea of federal finance for coal-fired power and says ALP will not back an energy target that includes it

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The shadow climate change minister, Mark Butler, has blasted the idea that the commonwealth could finance new coal-fired power stations, and is holding to Labor’s declaration that it will not support a clean energy target if coal is in the mix.

In an interview with Guardian Australia’s politics live podcast, Butler has also articulated a significantly tougher line on the controversial Adani coalmine than the Labor leader, Bill Shorten – saying it would “not be a positive thing for Australia for the Adani mine to go ahead”.

World’s largest banks lent $87bn to oil, coal and LNG companies in 2016 – a 22% drop from a collective $111bn worth of lending in 2015

The world’s biggest banks have reduced their lending to some of the most carbon-intensive sectors of the fossil fuel industry by billions of dollars, marking a potentially seismic shift against coal investment, a new study says.

The report commissioned by environmental groups tracked the lending decisions of 37 banks across Australia, the US, Europe, Canada, China and Japan in the first calendar year since the signing of the Paris climate agreement.

Investigation into what ignited the wildfires, and why they proved so deadly, is just beginning. Some people want a ban on plantings of eucalyptus: a common tree that is extremely flammable.

(Image credit: Miguel Riopa/AFP/Getty Images)