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Botanist and ecologist who aimed to increase our understanding of the plants and natural landscapes around us

Michael Proctor, who has died aged 88, was a leading botanist and ecologist who specialised in the study of natural vegetation and the British flora. His studies of rock roses and his scientific portraits of Malham Tarn, the Burren in western Ireland, and the bogs and oakwoods on Dartmoor are regarded as classics of postwar ecological research. With his lifelong friend Peter Yeo, he wrote two important, semi-popular books on the pollination of plants, The Pollination of Flowers (1973) and The Natural History of Pollination (1996). He was also a renowned plant photographer.

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Researchers in Queensland modify Cavendish bananas to protect them from devastating Panama disease fungus

A multibillion-dollar banana industry at risk of a deadly disease could be saved by genetic modification that created a line of bananas resistant to Fusarium wilt tropical race 4, also known as Panama disease.

Researchers at Queensland University of Technology genetically modified Cavendish bananas using a gene found in a south-east Asian banana subspecies that naturally displayed resistance.

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World governments have acknowledged for the first time that ‘first peoples’ can play a leadership role in protecting forests and limiting global warming

Indigenous groups claimed a victory at the UN climate talks in Bonn on Wednesday as governments acknowledged for the first time that they can play a leadership role in protecting forests and keeping global temperatures at a safe level.

Long marginalised and often criminalised in their home countries, the “first peoples” – as they often refer to themselves – also achieved breakthroughs in terms of official international recognition of their rights, autonomy and participation in negotiations.

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Government proposal to give tax relief for offshore oil would increase emissions and contradicts the nation’s progressive stance in Bonn

Brazil is planning a fire-sale of its oil resources before shrinking global carbon budgets push down demand and prices, environmental groups have warned.

The focus of concern is a government proposal for up to $300bn in tax relief to companies that develop offshore oilfields that opponents claim would use up 7% of humanity’s emission budget if global warming is to be kept below 2C.

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‘Very worrying finding’ from nearly 11km deep confirms fears that synthetic fibres have contaminated the most remote places on Earth

Animals from the deepest places on Earth have been found with plastic in their stomachs, confirming fears that manmade fibres have contaminated the most remote places on the planet.

The study, led by academics at Newcastle University, found animals from trenches across the Pacific Ocean were contaminated with fibres that probably originated from plastic bottles, packaging and synthetic clothes.

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The US cashes in on timber from ‘devastated’ areas – but the land is actually ‘the rarest and most biodiverse habitat in the Sierra Nevadas’, says an expert

Less than a mile from Yosemite national park, Chad Hanson is wading through a sea of knee-high conifers that have burst from the ashes of the vast 2013 Rim fire. The US Forest Service essentially says the baby trees don’t exist.

The agency says that “catastrophic” fires have “devastated” parts of the forest, painting an eerie picture of swaths of blackened tree trunks like something out of a Tim Burton film.

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Astronomers have found a cool, Earth-sized planet that's relatively close to our Solar System.

Al Gore’s new film is worth watching

Al Gore’s new movie ‘An Inconvenient Sequel’ is, in some ways, similar to his groundbreaking Inconvenient Truth project, but different in other ways. Those key differences are why I recommend you watch it.

This movie successfully accomplishes a number of interweaving tasks. First, it gives some of the science of climate change. Gore gets his science right. I remember his first movie, which I thought was more steeped in science and data than this one, so based on my recollection this new picture is somewhat abbreviated. That’s a good thing because the science is settled on climate change. That is, the science is settled that humans are causing current climatic changes and the science is settled that we are observing these changes throughout the natural world.

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Women bear the heaviest brunt of global warming, and are less empowered to contribute to solutions. A new action plan agreed at the Bonn climate talks aims to reverse this inequality, writes Hilda Heine, Marshall Islands president

The women of the Marshall Islands and the Pacific have been fighting colonialism and injustice for a long time. They bore the brunt of the long term effects of nuclear testing, and women leaders like Lijon Eknilang and Darlene Keju-Johnson brought these issues to the international stage.

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Report shows around £15bn of assets worldwide have been shifted away from coal companies in the past two years as concern over climate risk rises

A growing number of insurance companies increasingly affected by the consequences of climate change are selling holdings in coal companies and refusing to underwrite their operations.

About £15bn has been divested in the past two years, according to a new report that rates the world’s leading insurers’ efforts to distance themselves from the fossil fuel industry that is most responsible for carbon emissions.

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Every year buoyant bundles rise from a spawning coral, giving the impression of an upside-down snowstorm. Line K Bay, Senior Research Scientist and Team Leader, Australian Institute of Marine Science Andrew Heyward, Principal Research Scientist, Exploring Marine Biodiversity, Australian Institute of Marine Science Andrew Negri, Principal Research Scientist, Australian Institute of Marine Science Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

North Devon and beyond Roaring deer and singing wrens, mossy scree and ferny oaks, the swish of the sea and other snapshots of a 100-mile walk

The sight and sound of sea accompanies half our 100-mile walk from Braunton Great Field almost to Taunton, south of the Quantocks. From the coastal path, distant views of Lundy give way to those of south Wales, sometimes catching light from the lowering sun, but more often masked in cloud. Low tide reveals shining sand at Saunton; a swimmer heads for flat water off Croyde to “bob around” on his afternoon off.

Next morning at Woolacombe, surfers ride big waves before dawn. That day, drizzle enhances the vividness of green grass and orange bracken between the slippery jagged slate of Morte and Bull Points, above vertiginous cliffs and tiny coves scattered with lumps of quartz. The zigzag descent to Ilfracombe was engineered for Victorian tourists, as were the resort’s tunnels, bored through cliffs towards tidal bathing pools.

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Greenpeace calls out CBA for "weakest climate policy" of Big Four, and billions invested in new fossil fuels, despite Paris commitment.

BHP has been told its legacy mines in north America could support more than 500MW of solar, wind and storage, turning liabilities into potential assets.

Horizon gets ARENA funding for renewable-based micro-grid trials that will reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

European insurers are limiting their exposure to the coal sector, while American and Australian insurers continue to support business as usual.

As international talks focus on need for rapid deployment of renewables, little attention is paid to the minerals that needed to build these technologies.

Can technology to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere really help prevent dangerous climate change?

President Trump's climate adviser says that the US is looking to revive Bush-era climate forum.

People in Vunidogoloa had to move 2km (1.24m) inland, and say climate change is to blame.