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Palaszczuk government and mining giant apparently at odds as Adani says ‘there are no ongoing negotiations’ on Carmichael scheme

Queensland’s government says it is still negotiating with Adani over the details of its royalties agreement for its $16.5bn Carmichael mine, despite the deal being officially agreed months ago.

Adani announced in May it had reached agreement with the government over royalty payments, after a more generous offer of concessions was scrapped amid internal pressure from within the state Labor cabinet and caucus.

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Our seafood diet must adapt, say scientists, as climate change forces some favourites to colder waters and threatens others

Britain must prepare itself for invasions of growing numbers of foreign sea creatures attracted by our warming waters, a new report has warned. Some newcomers could have devastating effects, others could be beneficial, say the researchers.

Examples provided by the team include slipper limpets that could destroy mussel and oyster beds. By contrast, new arrivals such as the American razor clam and Pacific oyster could become the bases of profitable industries for British fishermen.

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Harlech, Gwynedd Redshank circle above Ynys while Roma samphire pickers search the saltings

A flight of redshank, wings elegantly barred and bent, clatter and yelp out of a draining channel as I circle Glastraeth, the “green strand” at the mouth of the river Dwyryd, which was once a crucial Welsh wintering ground for curlews, pintails and geese.

Related: Birdwatch: Common redshank

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Veteran conservationist compares situation to a nationwide action he led against the Franklin Dam in Tasmania in the 1980s

Veteran conservationist Bob Brown has criticised the “destructive wealth and arrogance” of Indian mining group Adani at a Sydney protest against the Galilee Basin mine.

The Adani chairman, Gautam Adani, announced this week that the company would break ground on it’s $16.5bn coal mine in Queensland in October.

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The Earth has warmed by 1 degree. 2 degrees will bring with it awful consequences. Are we on track for getting the rise under control? Join Robyn Williams and a panel of energy experts at Brisbane’s World Science Festival.

At least 18 major renewable energy projects are being built or finalising commercial arrangements in north Queensland - with more in the pipeline.

Power prices are causing significant individual pain around the country, but what happens when the bill price shock starts paralysing regional businesses?

A rare native night bird makes a comeback; we turn beach coconuts into crunchy chips; go snail farming in Victoria; and meet 92-year-old former vegetable grower, turned machinery collector, Bill Ashman.

Footage of a number of waterspouts in Russia has emerged.

A powerful machine opens in Germany to probe the structure of matter to help make new drugs and materials.

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

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NGO Earthsight reports charcoal from the Chaco region has been sold in Aldi, Lidl and Carrefour in Spain and Germany

No tropical forests anywhere in the world are being destroyed more rapidly than the Chaco stretching across Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay. Not the Amazon in Brazil, nor in Indonesia, Malaysia or the Democratic Republic of Congo.

At least, that is according to a University of Maryland-led study published in 2013. And the carnage continues today. In July British NGO Earthsight released a report stating that “the latest available analysis [by Paraguayan NGO Guyra], covering January 2017, suggests that the rate of deforestation has kept pace since the Maryland paper. The Paraguayan Chaco is on course to lose more than 200,000 hectares of forest this year: an area the size of Manhattan every fortnight.”

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Marabou storks, Kamchatka brown bears and playful lion cubs are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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Thousands of people are using home air quality monitoring kits due to fears official figures are not capturing dangerous pollution levels, say Friends of the Earth

A growing number of citizens are monitoring local air quality because of fears official figures are not capturing “dangerous” levels of pollution.

The environmental charity Friends of the Earth has said 70 local groups are now using their testing kits and noted a “surprising” increase in people taking monitoring into their own hands.

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Suffolk Wildlife Trust says species including the stone curlew will benefit from the purchase.

Florence will pass by at a relatively close distance but scientists say there is nothing to worry about.

When Aric Harding, a Houston pastor and musician, returned to fetch some belongings from his home after it was flooded by Harvey, he wanted to show his son that their piano still worked. So Harding sat in the knee-deep water and played a few chords as a friend recorded the moment.

• Texas flooding: 100,000 homes damaged by Harvey – as it happened

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Students from New Taipei City collected samples from urban rivers, creeks and ports which they then froze in moulds and preserved in resin. ‘We hope when more people see this they can change their lifestyles,’ said one of the group

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The draft water quality improvement plan, released by the federal and Queensland governments this week, aims to reduce the pollution flowing from water catchments to the Great Barrier Reef over the next five years.

It is part of the overarching Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan to protect and manage the reef until mid-century.

Water quality is one of the biggest threats to the reef’s health, but the new guidelines still fall short of what’s required, given the available scientific evidence.

Read more: Cloudy issue: we need to fix the Barrier Reef’s murky waters.

The draft plan, which is open for comment until October, presents several important and commendable advances in the management of water quality on the Great Barrier Reef. It addresses all land-based sources of water pollution (agricultural, urban, public lands and industrial) and includes social, cultural and economic values for the first time.

The principal sources of pollution are nitrogen loss from fertiliser use on sugar cane lands, fine sediment loss from erosion on grazing lands, and pesticide losses from cropping lands. These are all major risk factors for the Great Barrier Reef.

The draft plan also presents updated water quality targets that call for reductions in run-off nutrients and fine sediments by 2025. Each of the 35 catchments that feeds onto the reef has its own individual set of targets, thus helping to prioritise pollution-reduction measures across a region almost as large as Sweden.

The reef’s still suffering

The Great Barrier Reef suffered coral bleaching and death over vast areas in 2016, and again this year. The 2017 Scientific Consensus Statement, released with the draft water quality plan (and on which one of us, Jon Brodie, was an author), reports:

Key Great Barrier Reef ecosystems continue to be in poor condition. This is largely due to the collective impact of land run-off associated with past and ongoing catchment development, coastal development activities, extreme weather events and climate change impacts such as the 2016 and 2017 coral bleaching events.

Stronger action on the local and regional causes of coral death are seen to be essential for recovery at locations where poor water quality is a major cause of reef decline. These areas include mid-shelf reefs in the Wet Tropics region damaged by crown of thorns starfish, and inner-shelf reefs where turbid waters stop light reaching coral and seagrass. Human-driven threats, especially land-based pollution, must be effectively managed to reduce the impacts on the Great Barrier Reef.

But although the draft plan provides improved targets and a framework for reducing land-based pollution, it still doesn’t reflect the severity of the situation. The 2017 Scientific Consensus Statement reports that “current initiatives will not meet the water quality targets” by 2025.

This is because the draft plan does not provide any major new funding, legislation or other initiatives to drive down land-based pollution any further. As the statement explains:

To accelerate the change in on-ground management, improvements to governance, program design, delivery and evaluation systems are urgently needed. This will require greater incorporation of social and economic factors, better targeting and prioritisation, exploration of alternative management options and increased support and resources.

Read more: The Great Barrier Reef’s safety net is becoming more complex but less effective

The draft plan calls on farmers to go “beyond minimum standards” for practices such as fertiliser use in sugar cane, and minimum pasture cover in cattle grazing lands. But even the minimum standards are unlikely to be widely adopted unless governments implement existing legislation to enforce the current standards.

The draft plan is also silent on the impact of land clearing on water quality, and the conversion of grazing land to intensively farmed crops such as sugar cane, as proposed in the White Paper on Developing Northern Australia.

The federal and Queensland governments have committed A$2 billion over ten years to protect the Great Barrier Reef. Under the draft plan, about half of this (A$100 million a year) will be spent on water quality management. This is not an increase in resourcing, but rather the same level of funding that has been provided for the past seven years.

More than loose change

There is a very strong business case for major increases in funding to protect the Great Barrier Reef. Even with conservative assumptions, the economics firm Jacobs has estimated that protecting the industries that depend on the reef will require A$830 million in annual funding – more than four times the current level.

Read more: What’s the economic value of the Great Barrier Reef? It’s priceless.

The draft water quality plan acknowledges the need for a “step change” in reef management, and to “accelerate our collective efforts to improve the land use practices of everyone living and working in the catchments adjacent to the Reef”.

This need is echoed in many other reports, both government and scientific. For example, the 2017 Scientific Consensus Statement makes several wide-ranging recommendations.

One of them is to make better use of existing legislation and policies, including both voluntary and regulatory approaches, to improve water quality standards.

This recommendation applies to both Commonwealth and Queensland laws. These include the federal Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act 1975, which restricts or bans any activities that “may pollute water in a manner harmful to animals and plants in the Marine Park”, and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, which prohibits any action, inside or outside the marine park, that affects the Great Barrier Reef’s World Heritage values.

Another recommendation is to rethink existing land-use plans. For instance, even the best practice in sugar cane farming is inconsistent with the nitrogen fertiliser run-off limits needed to meet water quality guidelines. One option is to shift to less intensive land uses such as grazing in the Wet Tropics region – a priority area for nitrate fertiliser management because of its link to crown of thorns starfish outbreaks. This option is being explored in a NESP project.

These changes would require significantly increased funding to support catchment and coastal management and to meet the draft plan’s targets. Government commitment to this level of management is essential to support the resilience of the Great Barrier Reef to climate change.

Jon Brodie receives funding from the Australian Government; Queensland Government; UNEP; the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, NZ; Melbourne Water; NSW EPA. He was also an author of the 2017 Scientific Consensus Statement: Land Use Impacts on Great Barrier Reef Water Quality and Ecosystem Condition.

Laurence McCook is a Partner Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

Alana Grech does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.