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Regulator accused of ‘massaging figures’ by telling staff to pause inspections at poorly performing waste sites until January

The Environment Agency told staff in September to stop inspecting the most poorly performing waste sites until January in order to meet corporate compliance targets, it can be revealed.

The regulator has been accused of “massaging the figures”, with an insider telling the Ends Report and the Guardian that a lack of resources means the body is “failing to do its statutory duty in a timely manner”.

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The NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers have ended their partnership with carbon offset startup Aspiration, which was previously a sponsor of the professional basketball team and is now under investigation by US regulators for potentially misleading customers, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

A venture using synthesized whale poo to stimulate phytoplankton growth in the ocean leading to increased carbon sequestration, says that the process has gigatonne-scale potential for carbon removal and could generate ‘deep blue carbon removal’ credits in future.

A twice-weekly summary of our biodiversity news plus bite-sized updates from around the world. All articles in this edition are free to read (no subscription required).

Four organisations in Norway have teamed up to form Norwegian Marine Restoration (NoMaRe), a collaborative platform seeking to restore the more than 5,000 square kilometres of kelp forests that have been lost along the coast over the past decades.

A Norwegian-Indian company has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a state government forest department in India to develop a 100,000-hectare environmental conservation project, aiming to contribute to the voluntary carbon market.

Russia’s nascent voluntary carbon market has claimed another milestone after a copper producer announced it would retire carbon credits to offset its emissions.

EU carbon prices moved in a relatively narrow range for much of the morning, trading higher despite briefly plunging to another 17-month low amid a short burst of aggressive selling, as traders eyed a rally in natural gas prices after three days of declines.

The European Union needs to remove barriers to investments in clean technologies to ensure that the Green Deal paves the way to new, sustainable economic growth, speakers said in Davos on Thursday.

The UN has called on countries to swiftly ratify the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdictions (BBNJ) agreement, with 59 more to go after Chile this week became the first country to do so.

China on Thursday published its National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) under the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), confirming its 30% nature protection target while eyeing far-reaching regulatory reforms and a broad range of funding options for ecosystem conservation and restoration.

Civil society and environmental groups have released a joint statement expressing concern at an unexpected meeting called by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government to discuss forest plans, including carbon crediting from natural resources.

Singapore-based Climate Impact X (CIX) had to let staff go last year but in a statement to Carbon Pulse Thursday said it had to “adjust [its] internal structure to ensure the team is aligned with the roles and skills necessary to support our business priorities.”

One of the largest commercial banks in South Korea has agreed to participate in a REDD+ forest protection project, the first domestic lender to do so.

Fishing nets churn up carbon from the sea floor, more than half of which will eventually be released into the atmosphere

Scientists have long known that bottom trawling – the practice of dragging massive nets along the seabed to catch fish – churns up carbon from the sea floor. Now, for the first time, researchers have calculated just how much trawling releases into the atmosphere: 370m tonnes of planet-heating carbon dioxide a year – an amount, they say, that is “too big to ignore”.

Over the study period, 1996-2020, they estimated the total carbon dioxide released from trawling to the atmosphere to be 8.5 to 9.2bn tonnes. The scientists described trawling as “marine deforestation” that causes “irreparable harm” to the climate, society and wildlife.

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The Clean Energy Regulator has handed out just over 1 million Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) in its first issuance for 2024, as the government announced A$70 mln ($45.8 mln) in federal funding to develop the Bell Bay hydrogen hub in Northern Tasmania.

The ocean-poisoning superyachts of global plutocrats are a symbol of the class that’s really behind Britain’s misfortunes

Rishi Sunak is in thrall to just two syllables: small boats. Plunging wages, extortionate heating bills, collapsing public services – such trivia does not detain the UK’s first Goldman Sachs prime minister from his Peloton. But small boats crossing the Channel? These he will vow to stop, fulminating in speeches, plastering the words across his lectern as if in a deadly pandemic.

To pull it off, he is yet again this week burning through his dwindling political capital, just like those tech venture capitalists he adores. So he’s declaring Rwanda safe for refugees – which, according to our supreme court, is like claiming black is white – while handing Rwanda hundreds of millions of pounds (its president was yesterday promising a refund). Our chief lawmaker promised this week to break international law and to strip asylum seekers of court protection – or, as he termed it, “the legal merry-go-round”.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

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Regional collaboration on carbon capture and storage (CCS) got another boost this week as the Asia Natural Gas and Energy Association (ANGEA) and the Global CCS Institute signed an agreement focused on policy development and advocacy for CCS.

When males die from sex-fuelled exhaustion, still-living members of the species are known to feast on fallen comrades

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If you are exploring our beautiful Australian wilderness this year, keep an eye out for animals behaving in interesting ways. You never know what you might see, as our research team discovered.

In 2023, our colleague from Sunshine Coast council, Elliot Bowerman, took a two-night trip to New England national park – its 1,500-metre-high mountain peaks are some of the loftiest on Australia’s mid-east coast.

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Dragging heavy fishing nets across the ocean floor was newly discovered to be a significant source of CO2 pollution in the atmosphere, to the extent that it could more than double the annual CO2 emissions of the entire global fishing fleet, according to a study published Thursday.