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With different planting, and by rejecting insecticides, even small green spaces can promote biodiversity

Gardeners’ attitudes to insects, like those of humans in general, are a mixed bag. Butterflies’ brief, fluttering lives make them beloved wonders. Bees have long been a source of fascination as well as honey. But the reason why some creepy-crawlies have been classified as pests while others haven’t goes beyond appearances. Horticulturalists, like farmers, generally object to insects that eat what they grow.

This hasn’t saved the creatures that don’t consume crops or garden plants. Habitat loss resulting from urbanisation and deforestation, and pesticide use in agriculture, mean that global insect populations are in steep decline. In the UK, the number of flying insects is estimated – by looking at vehicle number plates – to have fallen by 58.5% between 2004 and 2021. Awareness of the importance of bees and other pollinators has risen in the past decade. But human dependence on insects goes beyond this. They form a crucial part of multiple ecosystems.

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French industrial minerals group Imerys is demanding the European Commission pay €40 million in damages caused by what it says is an incorrect interpretation of post-2022 ETS free allocation rules.

The party’s clashing factions table series of amendments supporting and opposing renewables development

Britain’s energy security and progress to net zero are under threat as the energy bill enters the Commons again.

Warring factions of the Tory party have tabled amendments to the bill including relaxing rules on onshore wind permissions, banning certain types of solar developments and softening a ban on oil boilers.

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Downing Street is hoping to satisfy Tory rebels, but developers say changes would leave effective ban in place

Ministers will this week announce a series of changes designed to make it easier for developers to win planning permission to build onshore wind turbines.

The government could publish proposals as soon as Tuesday on how to adapt the planning system to stop local authorities standing in the way of almost every new wind power development on land.

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Standard body The Carbon Trust is ditching its carbon neutral label for products and replacing it with marks that focus on emissions reductions and comparisons of carbon footprints.

The price of some standardised nature-based voluntary carbon contracts increased last week as volume started to return to the market following a period of low liquidity, but the market struggled to find a clear direction, with many products moving sideways.

A group of project developers have challenged academics' claims that cookstove projects are being over-credited, in an open letter published on Monday, mirroring public debates around voluntary REDD+ credits.

Ursula Von der Leyen calls for action as attacks on livestock prompt rise in complaints from farmers

The EU is to review the conservation status of wolves on the continent after a remarkable comeback of the carnivore species raised protests from farmers whose livestock have become prey.

“The concentration of wolf packs in some European regions has become a real danger for livestock and potentially also for humans,” the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said. “I urge local and national authorities to take action where necessary. Indeed, current EU legislation already enables them to do so.”

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Kenya’s President has called for African countries to join a new partnership that aims to boost renewable energy development across the continent by mobilising finance, providing technical assistance and capacity building, and engaging the private sector.

A study from the University of Leeds found that forests in South America, including the Amazon rainforest, stopped storing carbon and began releasing it during the 2015-16 El Nino event, the findings published in scientific magazine Nature showed on Monday.

Their five jaws are arranged in a shape Aristotle described as a ‘lantern’ but should have called a ‘horrible beak’

Sea urchins are as sinister as they appear. Ten years ago, in California’s vast, wavy kelp, sea urchins started to eat and breed, and eat and breed, and over seven years destroyed most of the underwater forests. Then they settled on the floor of their wasteland, forming spiny purple carpets, clicking urchin barrens along 150km of coastline. A major marine heatwave had damaged the kelp and a “sea star wasting syndrome” killed the urchins’ main predator, sunflower sea stars.

Could they be eaten by us or by otters? They could not. They had entered a zombie state and contained very little uni, the rich meat inside the urchin’s shell. And they are prepared to stay that way: dormant, alone – until they spot any kelp sprout that dares to breed out of the dead land and eat it before another urchin can. They are method actors performing The Waste Land, and we are students in an English lesson late on a hot afternoon, trying not to fall asleep as we listen to the poet’s voice on the scratchy recording, a recording that sounds like it was made in a room full of urchins, faintly clicking their spines:

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.

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The UK should link its ETS with that of the EU and implement an equivalent EU-style carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) in order to prevent any negative impacts on Northern Ireland trade as the EU CBAM enters into force on Oct. 1 and companies look to circumvent the impact of paying higher customs tariffs on carbon-intensive goods, according to a study published on Monday.

National response urgently needed to prevent further extinction of native flora and fauna, advocates say

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Advocates are calling for an urgent and coordinated national response to the threat of invasive species after the co-authors of a major international report identified it as the leading driver of biodiversity loss in Australia.

The report, from the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), was produced by 86 experts from 49 countries and details the impacts of invasive flora and fauna on ecosystems globally.

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A Seoul-based forest-focused intergovernmental organisation will receive funds of nearly $100 million from a Dutch cooperative bank to promote carbon offset initiatives in Asia. 

Hundreds of millions of dollars were pledged to support Africa’s voluntary carbon market on Monday, the first day of the inaugural African Climate Summit in Nairobi that hopes to kick start a flood of climate change investment into the continent.

Oil-producing African nations argue they should be able to use fossil fuel resources for economic growth

African leaders and campaigners are at odds over the way forward for the continent as a critical climate summit begins in Nairobi.

Some countries, such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Egypt and South Africa, have been expanding their renewable energy access and leading transition efforts on the continent, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.

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A Nairobi-based blockchain carbon credit platform has launched with a futures transaction of more than two million credits sourced from one of its founding partners.

The invasive insect threatens to get a foothold, with nests found in East Sussex, Kent, Devon and Dorset.

Alien invaders are penetrating the borders of every country in the world. Now the full extent of the problems and potential solutions have been exposed, in a new United Nations report. Andy Sheppard, Research Director CSIRO Health & Biosecurity, CSIRO Melodie McGeoch, Professor, La Trobe University Philip Hulme, Distinguished Professor in Pest Management and Conservation, Lincoln University, New Zealand Phill Cassey, Australian Research Council Industry Laureate Fellow, University of Adelaide Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

A global panel of scientists and experts on Monday sounded a planet-wide alarm over the staggering economic and environmental cost of invasive species in a report that has been approved by 143 governments.