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Environmental and legal groups warn of potential huge effects on Indigenous people and the environment

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The “new global gold rush” over deep-sea mining holds the same potential pitfalls as previous resource scrambles, with environmental and social impacts ignored and the rights of Indigenous people marginalised, a paper in the Harvard Law Review has warned.

A framework for deep-sea mining – where polymetallic nodules or hydrothermal vents are mined by machine – was first articulated in the 1960s, on an idea that the seabed floor beyond national jurisdiction was a “common heritage of mankind”.

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Scientists in Britain and the US say they have engineered an enzyme that eats plastic, a breakthrough that could help in the fight against pollution. The enzyme is able to digest polyethylene terephthalate, or PET. The team from the University of Portsmouth and the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory hope to one day produce the enzyme on an industrial scale

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China's nuclear fusion research might put the country at the fore of future clean energy solutions.

Scientists at University College London (UCL) bestowed the honour on Sir David Attenborough and the documentary team.

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The UK's biggest coffee chain says it will recycle as many disposable cups as it sells by 2020.

Environmental groups have warned shale oil and gas development could increase greenhouse gas emissions and farmers are worried fracking could pollute rivers and bores across the region.

The space rock that exploded in 2008 seems to have come from the early Solar System.

State energy ministers meet this week to discuss the National Energy Guarantee. While the policy has been criticised as too modest, it would put us light years ahead of the previous climate policy paralysis. David Blowers, Energy Fellow, Grattan Institute Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Sea otters can break the shell on a shellfish by hitting it against a stone resting on their belly. This can look like clapping. Some even have a favourite stone they carry around in their armpits. David Hocking, Research associate, Monash University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Data compiled from rubbish collected by volunteers aims to encourage industry to control plastic pollution at the source

Australians are battling against a tide of millions of pieces of discarded plastic debris at beach clean-up events all across the continent, according to two years of data analysed by Guardian Australia.

Some 2,651,613 pieces of debris were collected from beaches and recorded in a database during 2016 and 2017, with about three-quarters of items made from plastics.

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The 56,000 sq km reef is thought to contain dozens of undiscovered species, in an area where a French company intents to drill for oil

Scientists aboard a Greenpeace ship have discovered a massive and unique coral reef near the mouth of the Amazon, in an area where the French company Total intends to drill for oil.

The 1,000km long and 56,000 sq km Amazon coral reef is a biome thought to contain dozens of undiscovered species that environmentalists say would be irreparably damaged if drilling for oil began – a vision at odds with the wish of oil companies hoping to explore the area’s vast estimated reserves.

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European carbon prices ended a run of seven straight days of gains on Tuesday, slipping back from the previous session’s seven-year peak as key energy prices also took a tumble.

Tucking in to less popular meats could help preserve those breeds, according to a farming charity. Here are six varieties it thinks might benefit

When you think about Britain’s endangered animals, hedgehogs, small tortoiseshell butterflies and puffins may spring to mind. But rare breeds of farm animals and horses face extinction, too.

The Rare Breed Survival Trust (RBST) published a list of endangered breeds this week. At a critical point are vaynol cattle, with only 12 breeding females remaining. The suffolk horse is similarly threatened, with 80 breeding females left. Many breeds of cow, sheep and pig make the list. The solution? According to the RBST, we should eat them.

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RGGI will hold its second allowance auction of the year on June 13, following March’s sold-out auction that featured a near two-year high in compliance-oriented purchasing.

The young female porpoise had become stranded at Grange burn near to Grangemouth.

ALLCOT is currently looking for a Senior Origination and Sustainability Manager under the supervision of the Technical director of the company. You will be responsible for the management of the team based in Madrid to work on national and international projects to reduce GHG emissions and to provide sustainability consultancy services.

Daniel Webb accrued a mountain of plastic – including many packets of Hula Hoops – and made it into a mural, now on display at Dreamland in Margate. We are overproducing and overconsuming, he says, and recycling is not the answer

We all know, in theory, that we ought to use less plastic. We’ve all been distressed by the sight of Blue Planet II’s hawksbill turtle entangled in a plastic sack, and felt chastened as we’ve totted up our weekly tally of disposable coffee cups. But still, UK annual plastic waste is now close to 5m tonnes, including enough single-use plastic to fill 1,000 Royal Albert Halls; the government’s planned elimination of “avoidable” plastic waste by 2042 seems a quite dazzling task. It was reported this week that scientists at the University of Portsmouth have accidentally developed a plastic-eating mutant enzyme, and while we wait to see if that will save us all, for one individual the realisation of just how much plastic we use has become an intensely personal matter.

One early evening in mid-2016, Daniel Webb, 36, took a run along the coast near his home in Margate. “It was one of those evenings where the current had brought in lots of debris,” he recalls, because as Webb looked down at the beach from his route along the promenade he noticed a mass of seaweed, tangled with many pieces of plastic. “Old toys, probably 20 years old, bottles that must have been from overseas because they had all kinds of different languages on them, bread tags, which I don’t think had been used for years …” he says. “It was very nostalgic, almost archaeological. And it made me think, as a mid-30s guy, is any of my plastic out there? Had I once dropped a toy in a stream near Wolverhampton, where I’m from, and now it was out in the sea?”

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A top environmental commodities trading firm is looking for a CORPORATE TRADER – CARBON MARKETS. Position based in Budapest, Madrid or Brussels.

The full EU Parliament on Tuesday gave its approval to two bills that extend to 2030 emissions goals from sectors outside the EU ETS, giving a select number of richer EU states the option of cancelling some ETS allowances to help meet the their targets more easily.