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Some nine million national-scale deforestation reduction credits have again been made available to the voluntary carbon market this week, with initial buying limited but far greater potential volumes promised within weeks.

Historical accounts show the upokororo was once common in rivers across the country. It’s now officially extinct, but is there a chance survivors could still be found in remote waterways? Lachie Scarsbrook, DPhil Student, University of Oxford Kieren Mitchell, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Zoology, University of Otago Nic Rawlence, Senior Lecturer in Ancient DNA, University of Otago Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Some carbon project developers care less about climate outcomes than they do about protecting nature or supporting vulnerable communities, a virtual event heard Wednesday – a stance that risks complicating fungibility for a market already struggling to simplify trading.

A blue carbon offset project in Myanmar has planted 1,500 hectares of mangrove forest to complete its first development stage, its backers said in an update on Wednesday.

Organisers call on nations to carry on crucial climate negotiations despite differences on geopolitical issues

The Egyptian hosts of the next UN climate summit have issued a plea for countries to set aside tensions and animosity over the Ukraine war for the sake of focusing on the climate crisis.

Egypt will host the Cop27 conference in Sharm El-Sheikh in November, intended as a forum for companies to fulfil the promises they made at the landmark Cop26 summit in Glasgow last year.

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Carbon tax reforms recently unveiled by Colombia's newly elected leftist President Gustavo Petro are viewed by some observers as including controversial provisions that impose new limits on the use of offsets, measures that are causing confusion amongst stakeholders and potentially dimming the prospects for the passage of the legislation.

Hartlepool and Heysham 1, operational for four decades, are due to close in 2024 but EDF says that is under review

France’s EDF is considering extending the life of two British nuclear power plants due to the severity of the energy crisis.

EDF said on Wednesday that it would review whether there was a case to keep open the Hartlepool nuclear power plant in County Durham and Heysham 1 on the north-west coast of England near Lancaster. Both plants had been scheduled to close in March 2024.

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A carbon credit ratings agency has given a cookstove project in Nepal and a group of hydropower plants in China, both accredited by Verra, a reasonable chance of avoiding a tonne of CO2

Czechia is set to stick to its compromise plans in its efforts to broker a united stance among EU nations for bloc's REPowerEU strategy, despite some member states objecting to raiding the ETS-derived Innovation Fund, an official told Carbon Pulse on Wednesday.

‘Colossal amount’ of leaked methane, twice initial estimates, is equivalent to third of Denmark’s annual CO2 emissions or 1.3m cars

Scientists fear methane erupting from the burst Nord Stream pipelines into the Baltic Sea could be one of the worst natural gas leaks ever and pose significant climate risks.

Neither of the two breached Nord Stream pipelines, which run between Russia and Germany, was operational, but both contained natural gas. This mostly consists of methane – a greenhouse gas that is the biggest cause of climate heating after carbon dioxide.

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The IC-VCM’s carbon credit standard-setting process should add more safeguards for host communities, ban oil firms from trading and offsetting the units while ensuring they are all correspondingly adjusted, a cross-stakeholder coalition said on Wednesday.

EUAs gave up further ground on Wednesday, with prices settling at their lowest in more than six months as the market continued to digest EU lawmaker plans on allowance sales to fund the REPowerEU package, while investment funds' record net short position in the futures market also drew focus.

A sustained 10% drop in EU power demand over the winter as proposed by Brussels could lead to a 26% drop in electricity sector emissions, according to analysts, though this scenario would be ambitious given the scale of such a curtailment.

Wildfires, floods, heatwaves, hurricanes and drought are not waiting for politicians to act – the president must step in

Millions of people across the United States have witnessed, often tragically, how the climate crisis is here and levying steep costs on communities. Black, Indigenous, and other frontline communities, including those in my home state of West Virginia, are experiencing these impacts – measured in lives lost, homes destroyed, and livelihoods upended – first and worst.

Hurricane Fiona, which has washed away mothers and fathers from their children and left nearly all of Puerto Rico without power, and the remnants of Typhoon Merbok, which destroyed homes and inundated western Alaska with historic levels of water, underscored this reality more than a week ago. And Hurricane Ian, which is about to push into Tampa, Florida, will underscore it again as it leaves entire communities in Florida and the Southeast inundated with water and likely without power and access to essential services.

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The proposals would ensure the power of our wind and waves is harnessed for everyone – not just foreign governments and multinationals

How can Britain achieve 100% clean energy by 2030? Yesterday, Keir Starmer set out an answer: a new publicly owned clean energy generator. Great British Energy would own, run and invest in new, clean energy infrastructure, from offshore wind to tidal and solar. Operating as a generating company, not energy retailer, it would have the potential both to reduce our household fuel bills and create a future of clean, affordable, abundant energy.

The full scale and details of Great British Energy are yet to be determined. But though Labour’s proposal may appear novel in Britain, public ownership of renewables is already commonplace. Indeed, nearly half of the UK’s offshore wind capacity is publicly owned – just not by the British public. Instead, it is owned by foreign governments.

Mathew Lawrence is director of Common Wealth and co-author of Owning the Future with Adrienne Buller

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The EU should scrap key elements of its proposed “Fit for 55” reforms of the EU ETS amid the current energy crisis, leaving the market in its current format to protect industry’s competitiveness, a lobby group said on Wednesday.

Exclusive: A further 35,000 flights have operated almost empty, with climate campaigners calling the revelations ‘shocking’

More than 5,000 completely empty passenger flights have flown to or from UK airports since 2019, the Guardian can reveal.

A further 35,000 commercial flights have operated almost empty since 2019, with fewer than 10% of seats filled, according to analysis of data from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). This makes a total of about 40,000 “ghost flights”.

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A web3 company on Wednesday launched a new digital token that is backed by a combination of carbon emissions reductions and biodiversity gains.

Tony Juniper urges government to ‘foster both economic and environmental growth’

Liz Truss has been issued a veiled warning over new government policies by the head of Natural England, who says “even bankers need to eat, drink and inhale clean air”.

Tony Juniper, chair of the nature watchdog, has outlined the vital relationship between the economy and nature in Wednesday’s Guardian, as charities across the country revolt over government plans to slash nature protections and potentially remove environmental requirements from farming subsidies.

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Our economic system depends on the natural world. Growth that results in the destruction of nature will, in the end, cease

As we debate how best to integrate environmental and economic goals, it is perhaps worth remembering that even central bankers need to eat, drink and inhale clean air. Food and water security, protection from climatic extremes, the carbon cycle, public health and the replenishment of the very air we breathe all depend on nature. It is less that nature is part of our economy, and rather that our entire economic system is a wholly owned subsidiary of nature.

During recent years there has been a series of expert reviews revealing the scale of the social and economic risks that accompany the continued degradation of nature. Some interpret these findings as a reason to oppose economic growth. The key question is, however, not about growth per se, but the style and quality of growth that we pursue. Growth that results in the destruction of nature will, in the end, cease. Economic development that, by contrast, moves toward net zero greenhouse gas emissions and the recovery of nature is a very different prospect.

Tony Juniper CBE is chair of Natural England. Before taking up this role in April 2019, he was executive director for Advocacy and Campaigns at WWF-UK, a Fellow with the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and president of the Wildlife Trusts

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