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The influential African figure champions smallscale agriculture in an increasingly insecure global climate

At vast global gatherings like the COP22 UN climate conference, which has just concluded in Marrakech, the seductive grandeur of the occasion frequently strips attention from the people, in faraway places, who climate change threatens the most.

But on Wednesday at the COP, during a panel discussion on how agriculture can support the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal for zero hunger, Kanayo F. Nwanze brought these forgotten people into the spotlight with an impassioned plea. To achieve food security in a changing climate, we need to focus on the world’s smallscale farmers—who are not only responsible for the bulk of food production in developing countries, but ironically face some of the worst threats to their own food security, Nwanze said. As the president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), an organisation that invests in smallscale agriculture in rural environments around the world, Nwanze’s work to highlight the importance of these farmers on the global agriculture scene won him the inaugural Africa Food Prize in 2016.

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Holmsley Inclosure, New Forest Each silk button spangle gall has a minute larva inside. Looked at later under the microscope, they remind us of a scrumptious doughnut

We drop down the side of this woodland on a bright day buffeted by a cold wind. First planted in 1811 with scots pine and oak, its fences now enclose a wide variety of trees. We turn along the eastern edge to find the lower gate and, on entering, are plunged into a claustrophobic tangle of branches, before quickly coming to a narrow path close set with brambles on one side and hollies on the other. The recent rains have made the soil beneath the fallen leaves a muddy squelch, deeply incised with fresh bike tracks.

Getting our eyes in, we begin to see a host of small brown and greyish fungi tucked into the patchwork of sodden foliage and decaying leaf-fall. For us, most of them are “little brown jobbies”, as they are known to those without sufficient skill to identify them. We notice, too, some so much smaller that we are drawn into a Lilliputian world.

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Theresa May is being warned not to use scientists and academics as pawns in negotiations over Brexit.

The next head of the UN global climate talks calls on the US to save Pacific islands from global warming.

For more than three decades, this man has spent hundreds of hours each year with his forehead pressed to a plane window counting birds. It's one of the longest running and largest wildlife surveys on the planet.

The Obama administration bans offshore drilling in the Arctic but Donald Trump could rip up the ban.

It’s easy to get lost in the old Moroccan medina – just as disorientating as the UN climate process, where emission-cutting goals are being bartered too

Marrakech has an ancient heart — centuries old and unafraid to show it — and it has all the ingredients needed to disorientate an outsider. You get lost, often.

Lanes in the centuries-old medina are narrow and the walls are high, making it impossible to spot a landmark and get a fix on where you are.

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Should we only eat meat we kill ourselves?

Rising sea levels and upstream dams threaten the long term viability of the Mekong Delta, but there is a plan to save it.

Five years after the last rabbit was killed, endangered birds such as the black-browed albatross are growing in numbers

Eight species of threatened seabird have begun to recover on Macquarie Island, signalling a possible end to 130 years of death and destruction on the sub-Antarctic outpost.

The island has been formally declared pest-free, five years after the last rabbit was killed.

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US Department of the Interior says ‘fragile and unique’ Arctic ecosystem at risk if drilling allowed, possibly by pro-fossil fuels Trump administration

Barack Obama’s administration has ruled out drilling for oil and gas in the pristine Arctic Ocean, throwing up a last-ditch barrier to the pro-fossil fuels agenda of incoming president Donald Trump.

The US Department of the Interior said that the “fragile and unique” Arctic ecosystem would face “significant risks” if drilling were allowed in the Chukchi or Beaufort Seas, which lie off Alaska. It added that the high costs of exploration, combined with a low oil price, would probably deter fossil fuel companies anyway.

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Bangladesh and Ethiopia among 48 countries to pledge tougher carbon targets and a switch to 100% renewable energy

Some of the world’s poorest countries have pledged to dramatically cut their carbon emissions and rapidly move to 100% renewable power, as the UN climate summit in Marrakech drew to a close on Friday.

The announcement followed a final declaration by nearly 200 nations affirming their “highest political commitment” to combatting climate change, in a thinly-coded warning to the incoming US president, Donald Trump.

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The survival of elephants depends on what humans do now. Join us on Tuesday 22 November from 1-2.30pm to discuss how to save this threatened species

3.56pm GMT

We know that elephant populations are collapsing at a frightening rate and that the driving forces behind this collapse are a global appetite for ivory and, just as worryingly, human/elephant conflict for space and resources.

Earlier this year, the world’s governments agreed to recommend the closure of domestic ivory markets. This is a serious step towards the eventual complete shutting down of the ivory trade, but now new questions are arising:

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Representatives from 47 of the world's most disadvantaged nations have promised that they will generate all their future energy needs from renewables.

From tractor beams to warp drive, sci-fi has inspired serious real-life research.

Members of the critically endangered species are cared for and nursed back to health before their release at the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme’s rehabilitation centre in Kuta Mbelin, North Sumatra, Indonesia

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A pheasant that sports Donald Trump’s hairdo, a line of baboons and a ‘teddy bear’ bee and among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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Election of a climate sceptic as US president sparks outpouring of donations and a surge in planned protests and court challenges

The global green movement is preparing for the fight of its life against efforts by Donald Trump to rollback action on climate change, with a surge in fundraising, planned court challenges and a succession of protests.

Environmental activists said the election of a climate change denier as US president, along with the prospect of former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin and various oil billionaires holding senior posts, has prompted an “outpouring” of donations.

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Policy Exchange paper argues government should stick with carbon price floor until coal is fully forced off the grid, reports BusinessGreen

Policy Exchange has become the latest organisation to call for the retention of the UK’s carbon price floor ahead of next week’s autumn statement, arguing changes to the policy would seriously undermine the government’s efforts to phase out coal power by 2025.

The influential thinktank joins the CBI and trade body Energy UK in arguing the levy should be kept in place, despite lobbying from some industry groups calling for it to be axed.

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Sometimes, a tune can say so much more than an image or words. Here, we turn almost 150 years of global temperatures into music. The higher the temperature, the higher the pitch of the note. And the louder the note, the more carbon there is in the atmosphere

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