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We need international gatherings if we are to find a common language to resist environmental destruction

In the autumn of 1945, the Scotsman newspaper reported excitedly on an ambitious project to establish Edinburgh as a world centre for music and drama. It would host the first great postwar international art assembly in Europe, with a mission to celebrate the “flowering of the human spirit”. Two years later, the Edinburgh international festival was born.

Seven decades on, that flowering might sometimes appear overabundant. Scotland alone has 18 book festivals this year, while the Association of Festival Organisers, which is currently updating a survey from 2022, estimates that, despite a ripple of post-Covid closures, there will as many as 900 music jamborees across the UK. Faced with the double whammy of shrinking incomes and vanishing subsidies, prices have risen and audiences have aged, while organisers face an annual scramble to fill gaping holes in their budgets that yawn wider the more brave and imaginative they are. Meanwhile, the search for alternative sources of funding, either from business or from overseas, has been repeatedly complicated by ethical issues.

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Fourteen new migratory species will be protected under the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) as delegates at the UN summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan committed to raising transboundary efforts on wildlife conservation.

At Native Cat Flat in Victoria’s Alpine national park, four fenced-off areas show a strikingly different ecology,  highlighting the damage wrought by more than 2,700 feral horses in the area. Behind the fences, lush sphagnum, dense vegetation, grass tussocks, shrubs and herbs thrive. Outside the plots, the ground is pockmarked with deep hoofprints, and the native grasses are overgrazed, exposing endangered animals in the area — which rely on dense vegetation — to predators

• ‘Feral horses don’t know state borders’: the push to protect Victoria’s Alpine national park

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British producers to back EU’s proposed regulations to stop trade in adulterated honey

Britain’s beekeepers are backing ­proposed new rules to combat fraud in the supply chain, ensuring a jar of honey can be traced on its journey of up to 5,000 miles from the beehive to the shop shelf.

The European parliament has agreed new labelling rules and a project to establish a traceability system for honey from harvesting to the consumer. The proposed rules are part of an overhaul of the “breakfast directives”, including the honey directive.

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Vast reforestation a major reason for ‘warming hole’ across parts of US where temperatures have flatlined or cooled

Trees provide innumerable benefits to the world, from food to shelter to oxygen, but researchers have now found their dramatic rebound in the eastern US has delivered a further, stunning feat – the curtailing of the soaring temperatures caused by the climate crisis.

While the US, like the rest of the world, has heated up since industrial times due to the burning of fossil fuels, scientists have long been puzzled by a so-called “warming hole” over parts of the US south-east where temperatures have flatlined, or even cooled, despite the unmistakable broader warming trend.

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Rapid ocean warming and unusually hot winter days recorded as human-made global heating combines with El Niño

February is on course to break a record number of heat records, meteorologists say, as human-made global heating and the natural El Niño climate pattern drive up temperatures on land and oceans around the world.

A little over halfway into the shortest month of the year, the heating spike has become so pronounced that climate charts are entering new territory, particularly for sea-surface temperatures that have persisted and accelerated to the point where expert observers are struggling to explain how the change is happening.

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A carbon offset ratings agency has found that an ACR-approved improved forest management (IFM) project registered with California state regulator ARB has been over-credited by more than double, largely for allegedly failing to exclude heavily sloped areas unlikely to be harvested.

The British Columbia government sees less stringent emissions benchmarks for large industry under its Output-Based Pricing System (OBPS) set to take effect this spring, although certain aspects remain more stringent than other Canadian jurisdictions, documents published Friday showed.

US power plants cut their CO2 emissions by 7% year-on-year in 2023, as a shift from coal-fired generation to gas helped move the country closer to its clean electricity targets.

Regulated entities reduced length in California Carbon Allowances (CCAs) and Washington Carbon Allowances (WCAs), but added to RGGI Allowance (RGA) net holdings, while speculators continued to take profits across North American carbon markets, data published by the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Friday showed.

Governor of Maryland on Friday unveiled a $90 mln initiative to support the state's climate targets by expanding EV charging infrastructure, increasing electric school buses, and electrifying communal infrastructure.

Canada’s environment ministry has watered down its proposed performance standard that is intended to mobilise the country’s electricity grid to hit net zero by 2035 following months of critical feedback.

Seventy perc ent of pregnant women in state had herbicide dicamba in their urine, up from 28% in an earlier study

Pregnant women in a key US farm state are showing increasing amounts of a toxic weedkiller in their urine, a rise that comes alongside climbing use of the chemicals in agriculture, according to a study published on Friday.

The study, led by the Indiana University school of medicine, showed that 70% of pregnant women tested in Indiana between 2020 and 2022 had a herbicide called dicamba in their urine, up from 28% from a similar analysis for the period 2010-12. The earlier study included women in Indiana, Illinois and Ohio.

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IUCN has launched a C$30 million initiative focused on protecting marine ecosystems while supporting women, in collaboration with the government of Madagascar.

Elephant forest activity is correlated with higher levels of aboveground carbon (AGC) storage, according to a preprint of a new study, though the direction of the causal relationship, if any, remains unclear.

One of the largest Web3 firms in the voluntary carbon market is planning a rebound in tokenising carbon credits on the back of the ICVCM’s Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) stamp of high integrity.

Clean electricity will need to cover the largest share of the EU’s shift away from fossil fuels, while green hydrogen will be key in just a few hard-to-electrify sectors, according to research published on Friday.

Plans for a blended finance regenerative agriculture facility that could raise billions of dollars are underway, led by Pollination and the Green Climate Fund, Carbon Pulse has learned.

Protests against Australia’s transition to renewable power have attracted a wide coalition of interests, from mainstream parties to the wild shores of conspiracy

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The protest signs at last week’s rally against renewables in Canberra spoke of hyperlocal concerns – but also cabals and plots of global proportion.

Some spoke of immediate worries linked to environmental policies: “Oberon betrayed by state forestry”; and “Say no to Twin Creek wind farm”.

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Prices of biochar carbon credits are slated to shrink over the next two years despite growing demand, mainly due to increasing supply and competition, according to analysts.