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Ramesh Thakur says that the boycott on the US ban the bomb conference was an open act of defiance and disrespect of a multilateral mandated disarmament process.

Interview with UN Special Rapporteur Victoria Tauli-Corpuz to mark the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples

Today is the United Nations’ (UN) International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, numbering an estimated 370 million in 90 countries and speaking roughly 7,000 languages. To mark it, the Guardian interviews Kankanaey Igorot woman Victoria Tauli-Corpuz about the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which she calls “historic” and was adopted 10 years ago.

Tauli-Corpuz, from the Philippines, was Chair of the UN Permanent Forum of Indigenous Issues when the Declaration was adopted, and is currently the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In this interview, conducted via email, she explains why the Declaration is so important, argues that governments are failing to implement it, and claims that the struggle for indigenous rights “surpasses” other great social movements of the past:

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East Riding of Yorkshire and north-east Lincolnshire among areas hardest-hit with severe downpours expected to slowly move south

Heavy rain has brought flooding to a stretch of the east coast of England, and further severe downpours are expected.

Flash flooding hit towns and villages in the East Riding of Yorkshire and north-east Lincolnshire. There was 3ft (1 metre) of standing water in parts of Withernsea and further flooding in the Grimsby and Immingham areas.

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Searching for respite from the heat in one of Rome's fountains. Max Roxxi/Reuters

Parts of Europe are having a devastatingly hot summer. Already we’ve seen heat records topple in western Europe in June, and now a heatwave nicknamed “Lucifer” is bringing stifling conditions to areas of southern and eastern Europe.

Several countries are grappling with the effects of this extreme heat, which include wildfires and water restrictions.

Temperatures have soared past 40℃ in parts of Italy, Greece and the Balkans, with the extreme heat spreading north into the Czech Republic and southern Poland.

Some areas are having their hottest temperatures since 2007 when severe heat also brought dangerous conditions to the southeast of the continent.

The heat is associated with a high pressure system over southeast Europe, while the jet stream guides weather systems over Britain and northern Europe. In 2007 this type of split weather pattern across Europe persisted for weeks, bringing heavy rains and flooding to England with scorching temperatures for Greece and the Balkans.

Europe is a very well-studied region for heatwaves. There are two main reasons for this: first, it has abundant weather observations and this allows us to evaluate our climate models and quantify the effects of climate change with a high degree of confidence. Second, many leading climate science groups are located in Europe and are funded primarily to improve understanding of climate change influences over the region.

The first study to link a specific extreme weather event to climate change examined the record hot European summer of 2003. Since then, multiple studies have assessed the role of human influences in European extreme weather. Broadly speaking, we expect hotter summers and more frequent and intense heatwaves in this part of the world.

We also know that climate change increased deaths in the 2003 heatwaves and that climate change-related deaths are projected to rise in the future.

Climate change’s role in this heatwave

To understand the role of climate change in the latest European heatwave, I looked at changes in the hottest summer days over southeast Europe – a region that incorporates Italy, Greece and the Balkans.

I calculated the frequency of extremely hot summer days in a set of climate model simulations, under four different scenarios: a natural world without human influences, the world of today (with about 1℃ of global warming), a 1.5℃ global warming world, and a 2℃ warmer world. I chose the 1.5℃ and 2℃ benchmarks because they correspond to the targets described in the Paris Agreement.

As the heatwave is ongoing, we don’t yet know exactly how much hotter than average this event will turn out to be. To account for this uncertainty I used multiple thresholds based on historically very hot summer days. These thresholds correspond to an historical 1-in-10-year hottest day, a 1-in-20-year hottest day, and a new record for the region exceeding the observed 2007 value.

While we don’t know exactly where the 2017 event will end up, we do know that it will exceed the 1-in-10 year threshold and it may well breach the higher thresholds too.

A clear human fingerprint

Whatever threshold I used, I found that climate change has greatly increased the likelihood of extremely hot summer days. The chance of extreme hot summer days, like this event, has increased by at least fourfold because of human-caused climate change.

Climate change is increasing the frequency of hot summer days in southeast Europe. Likelihoods of the hottest summer days exceeding the historical 1-in-10 year threshold, one-in-20 year threshold and the current record are shown for four scenarios: a natural world, the current world, a 1.5℃ world, and a 2℃ world. Best estimate likelihoods are shown with 90% confidence intervals in parentheses. Author provided

My analysis shows that under natural conditions the kind of extreme heat we’re seeing over southeast Europe would be rare. In contrast, in the current world and possible future worlds at the Paris Agreement thresholds for global warming, heatwaves like this would not be particularly unusual at all.

There is also a benefit to limiting global warming to 1.5℃ rather than 2℃ as this reduces the relative frequency of these extreme heat events.

As this event comes to an end we know that Europe can expect more heatwaves like this one. We can, however, prevent such extreme heat from becoming the new normal by keeping global warming at or below the levels agreed upon in Paris.

You can find out more about the methods used here.

Disclosure

Andrew King receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

The nuclear "renaissance" in the US is now over, after another two reactors abandoned, leaving consumers holding the bill.

Big energy retailers didn’t so much blink, as wink in face of Turnbull’s “eyeballing” episode. Here’s why they will be high fiving each other in the Qantas lounge at Canberra airport.

The PM only had to push energy reforms slightly further to make a world of difference, and protect consumers from the "laziness tax" exploited by utilities.

Canadian start-up claims it can deliver lowest installed cost per kWh for bulk energy storage with compressed air technology.

ARENA-backed project to test whether excess solar and wind can be used to produce cheap hydrogen, and as a long-term energy storage option.

Wenlock Edge Rain hardens summer’s lushness and the vivid knapweed seems loaded with the uncanniness of the season

On the windmill meadow, above a green rind of grasses and below their fidgety seedheads in the rain is the dotty purpling of knapweed.

The jet stream divides August in Europe. As the south swelters in life-threatening temperatures, this side of the shower curtain is cool, wet and, after Lammas Day, thistly.

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Decision enrages environmental groups, with Lock the Gate calling it a ‘very dark day for farming’ in the state

Glencore’s multibillion-dollar Wandoan coalmine proposal has been granted mining leases years after it was shelved amid falling commodity prices and a ramped-up global response to climate change.

On Tuesday Queensland’s natural resources and mines minister, Dr Anthony Lynham, approved three 27-year leases covering 30,000 hectares for the first stage of its $7bn mine near Roma.

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Euro Solar forced to surrender STCs or replace PV modules after being found to have installed non-compliant solar panels, as part of a Clean Energy Regulator crackdown on Australia’s rooftop solar industry.

The Tasmanian Energy Minister andHydro Tasmania CEO inspected progress on the Cluny Power Station Upgrade and Refurbishment, which once installed will boost generation efficiency by about three per cent.

Scientists study the chemistry of penguin plumage to track the birds' movements.

More than 1,000 of the endangered species, which come from one island off Portugal, have hatched in captivity in a world first

In what is believed to be a world first, one of the rarest spiders has been bred in captivity at Bristol Zoo Gardens. More than 1,000 Desertas wolf spiderlings, classed as critically endangered, have hatched. Keepers hand-reared some from tiny eggs as they are so precious. At birth, they measure 4mm across, but they will grow to 12cm, with a 4cm body.

The species is found in a single valley on Deserta Grande, one of the Desertas islands near Madeira, Portugal. There are about 4,000 adults left in the wild and it is hoped that some of the spiderlings can be returned to their home.

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Gene drives aim to deliberately spread bad genes when invasive species such as mice reproduce. Colin Robert Varndell/shutterstock.com

What if there was a humane, targeted way to wipe out alien pest species such as mice, rats and rabbits, by turning their own genes on themselves so they can no longer reproduce and their population collapses?

Gene drives – a technique that involves deliberately spreading a faulty gene throughout a population – promises to do exactly that.

Conservationists are understandably excited about the possibility of using gene drives to clear islands of invasive species and allow native species to flourish.

Read more: Gene drives may cause a revolution, but safeguards and public engagement are needed.

Hype surrounding the technique continues to build, despite serious biosecurity, regulatory and ethical questions surrounding this emerging technology.

Our study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggests that under certain circumstances, genome editing could work.

The penguins on Antipodes Island currently live alongside a 200,000-strong invasive mouse population. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY Good and bad genes

The simplest way to construct a gene drive aimed at suppressing a pest population is to identify a gene that is essential for the pest species’ reproduction or embryonic development. A new DNA sequence – the gene-drive “cassette” – is then inserted into that gene to disrupt its function, creating a faulty version (or “allele”) of that gene.

Typically, faulty alleles would not spread through populations, because the evolutionary fitness of individuals carrying them is reduced, meaning they will be less likely than non-faulty alleles to be passed on to the next generation. But the newly developed CRISPR gene-editing technology can cheat natural selection by creating gene-drive sequences that are much more likely to be passed on to the next generation.

Read more: Now we can edit life itself, we need to ask how we should use such technology.

Here’s how the trick works. The gene-drive cassette contains the genetic information to make two new products: an enzyme that cuts DNA, and a molecule called a guide RNA. These products act together as a tiny pair of molecular scissors that cuts the second (normal) copy of the target gene.

To fix the cut, the cell uses the gene drive sequence as a repair template. This results in a copy of the gene drive (and therefore the faulty gene) on both chromosomes.

This process is called “homing” and, when switched on in the egg- or sperm-producing cells of an animal, it should guarantee that almost all of their offspring inherit the gene-drive sequence.

As the gene-drive sequence spreads, mating between carriers becomes more likely, producing offspring that possess two faulty alleles and are therefore sterile or fail to develop past the embryonic stage.

Will it work?

Initial attempts to develop suppression drives will likely focus on invasive species with rapid life cycles that allow gene drives to spread rapidly. House mice are an obvious candidate because they have lots of offspring, they have been studied in great detail by biologists, and have colonised vast areas of the world, including islands.

In our study we developed a mathematical model to predict whether gene drives can realistically be used to eradicate invasive mice from islands.

Our results show that this strategy can work. We predict that a single introduction of just 100 mice carrying a gene drive could eradicate a population of 50,000 mice within four to five years.

But it will only work if the process of genetic homing – which acts to overcome natural selection – functions as planned.

Evolution fights back

Just as European rabbits in Australia have developed resistance to the viruses introduced to control them, evolution could thwart attempts to use gene drives for biocontrol.

Experiments with non-vertebrate species show that homing can fail in some circumstances. For example, the DNA break can be repaired by an alternative mechanism that stitches the broken DNA sequence back together without copying the gene-drive template. This also destroys the DNA sequence targeted by the guide RNA, producing a “resistance allele” that can never receive the gene drive.

A recent study in mosquitos estimated that resistance alleles were formed in at least 2% of homing attempts. Our simulation experiments for mice confirm this presents a serious problem.

After accounting for low failure rates during homing, the creation and spread of resistance alleles allowed the modelled populations to rebound after an initial decline in abundance. Imperfect homing therefore threatens the ability of gene drives to eradicate or even suppress pest populations.

One potential solution to this problem is to encode multiple guide RNAs within the gene-drive cassette, each targeting a different DNA sequence. This should reduce homing failure rates by allowing “multiple shots on goal”, and avoiding the creation of resistance alleles in more cases.

To wipe out a population of 200,000 mice living on an island, we calculate that the gene-drive sequences would need to contain at least three different guide RNA sequences, to avoid the mice ultimately getting the better of our attempts to eradicate them.

From hype to reality

Are gene drives a hyperdrive to pest control, or just hype? Part of the answer will come from experiments with gene drives on laboratory mice (with appropriate containment). That will help to provide crucial data to inform the debate about their possible deployment.

We also need more sophisticated computer modelling to predict the impacts on non-target populations if introduced gene drives were to spread beyond the populations targeted for management. Using simulation, it will be possible to test the performance and safety of different gene-drive strategies, including strategies that involve multiple drives operating on multiple genes.

Thomas Prowse receives funding from the ARC and NHMRC

Joshua Ross receives funding from the ARC, NHMRC and D2D CRC.

Paul Thomas receives funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council.

Phill Cassey has received funding from the ARC and the Invasive Animals CRC.

Secretary of state Rex Tillerson directs staff to make clear US wants to help other countries use fossil fuels, diplomatic cable shows

US diplomats should sidestep questions from foreign governments on what it would take for the Trump administration to re-engage in the global Paris climate agreement, according to a diplomatic cable seen by Reuters.

The cable, sent by the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, to embassies on Friday, also said diplomats should make clear the United States wants to help other countries use fossil fuels.

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The eight foxes have started "training" in the back garden of a family in Leicester.

Since their trial reintroduction in Devon, the animal’s engineering skills have reduced floodwater and created a paradise for local wildlife. Should we bring them back for good?

At a secret location in the rolling pasture of west Devon lies a marshy patch of farmland protected by £35,000-worth of solar-powered electric fencing. This isn’t to keep people out but to restrain the tree-chomping, river-damming residents of these three hectares. Outside the fence is a typical small valley, with a trickle of a stream, willow thickets and pasture grazed by cattle. Inside the enclosure, the tiny stream has been blocked by 13 dams, creating pools and half-metre-wide canals. These have been built by Britain’s newest wild mammal, the beaver, which uses its waterways like we do – to transport goods. And as the beavers have coppiced trees, the willow thicket has been replaced with sunny glades of wild flowers – marsh thistles, watermint, meadowsweet – which dance with dragonflies and butterflies.

“The beavers have transformed this little trickle of a stream into a remarkable, primeval wetland,” says Mark Elliott, lead beaver project officer of Devon Wildlife Trust, which released two beavers here in 2011. “This is what the landscape would have looked like before we started farming, and it’s only six years old. That’s the amazing thing.”

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当野生动植物的存亡关系到当地居民切身利益时，他们就会成为野生动植物的最佳保护者，约翰·斯坎伦写到。

• The world needs wildlife tourism. But that won’t work without wildlife
  

随着全球游客人数不断增长，旅行者们钟情于探索地方文化和观赏野生动植物，寻求更为丰富、更新奇的个人体验，以野生动植物为基础的旅游业正在全球范围内迅速升温。而这也促使我几年前决定从法律事业的苦海中暂时抽身，申请了6个月的无薪假期，和妹妹一起背上行囊走上了南美之旅。欣赏亚马逊雨林、伊瓜苏瀑布、马丘比丘等地的自然美景，了解保护这些美景的当地人，改变了我的一生。

联合国世界旅游组织估计，全球7%的旅游与野生动植物旅游相关，并以每年3%的速度增长，而且增长率在世界遗产地等地区还要高得多。世界自然基金会的一份报告显示，全球自然遗产中有93%支持娱乐和旅游活动，91%提供就业机会。据说在伯利兹城，超过50%的人口以珊瑚礁相关的旅游和渔业为生。

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