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Solar PV and pumped hydro project proposed for abandoned gold mine in north Queensland shortlisted for funding by Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility.

Wenlock Edge: Shropshire It’s easy to see how the comma butterfly got its English name, but devilishly hard to work out where the French one came from

I crept up on the butterfly as its wings flexed, pumping like delicate bellows, as it took in salts from dried dog urine. For a moment I thought it might be a fritillary – the upper sides of the wings were a rich orangey-brown with complex dark markings, the kind of colour unique to the old slide transparencies of Agfa film.

Then it detected my presence and flew up powerfully, manoeuvred in a seemingly random pattern, and settled on a leaf of yellow flag iris. I could see by the shape of its wings, like holes clipped from the edges of a bus ticket, that it wasn’t a fritillary but a comma butterfly.

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Federal energy minister says AEMO is best placed to assess what storage levels are needed to stabilise Australia's grid.

Securing Queensland’s future energy supply was the number one agenda item when the newly commissioned Queensland Energy Security Taskforce met for the first time today.

A conservative billionaire is building the country’s largest wind farm. Republican lawmakers want to raise the tax on wind.

Global spending on energy fall by 12% overall in 2016 but clean energy spending is on the up.

Australian Automobile Association argues government plan will cost consumers more but government says petrol savings will offset any rise

The Australian car industry has tried to kill any government move to cut greenhouse gas emissions from cars, arguing it would increase the cost to consumers and contradicting comprehensive government modelling.

The government plans to introduce emissions standards for new cars, releasing a series of proposed targets in discussion papers and seeking input from industry and other stakeholders.

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These rules replace those under section 2.2.4. of the Carbon Neutral Program Guidelines (version 4.0).

These rules replace those under section 2.2.4. of the Carbon Neutral Program Guidelines (version 4.0).

These rules replace those under section 2.2.4. of the Carbon Neutral Program Guidelines (version 4.0).

New rules are urgently needed to protect the open seas, scientists warn.

The invasive lionfish poses a number of threats in the Atlantic Ocean – can it be stopped by a robot?

Our ancestors could be to blame for the wide variety of human sleeping habits, from larks to night owls.

Scientists use smartphones to track and rank activity levels around the world.

The UK government formally announces a more-than-£100m investment in new satellite and rocket test facilities.

UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee has issued its strongest decision yet about climate change, acknowledging the worldwide threat posed to many World Heritage properties.

The decision (see pages 26-27 here), set to be adopted today at the completion of the Committee’s annual meeting in Krakow, Poland, “expresses its utmost concern regarding the reported serious impacts from coral bleaching that have affected World Heritage properties in 2016-17 and that the majority of World Heritage coral reefs are expected to be seriously impacted by climate change”.

It also urges the 193 signatory nations to the World Heritage Convention to undertake actions to address climate change under the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global average temperature increase to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial temperatures.

This decision marks an important shift in the level of recognition by the Committee tasked with protecting World Heritage properties, apparently jolted by the devastating bleaching suffered by the majority of World Heritage coral reefs around the world.

In the past, the Committee has restricted its decisions to addressing localised threats such as water pollution and overfishing, choosing to leave the responsibility to address global climate change to other parts of the United Nations.

In the preamble to its latest decision, the Committee has recognised that local efforts alone are “no longer sufficient” to save the world’s threatened coral reefs.

But while this is an encouraging progression, some members of the Committee are still struggling to come to terms with addressing the global impacts of climate change. This is despite the impacts becoming more pronounced on other World Heritage properties, including glaciers, rainforests, oceanic islands, and sites showing the loss of key species.

The World Heritage-listed glacial landscape around Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps. Steinmann/Wikimedia Commons The ‘jewels’ of marine world heritage

Last month, UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre released the first global scientific assessment of the impact of climate change on all 29 World Heritage-listed coral reefs that are “the jewels in the World Heritage crown”.

The report paints a dire picture, with all but three World Heritage coral reefs exhibiting bleaching over the past three years. Iconic sites like the Great Barrier Reef (Australia), the Northwest Hawaiian islands (United States), the Lagoons of New Caledonia (France), and Aldabra Atoll (Seychelles) have all suffered their worst bleaching on record.

The most widely reported damage was the unprecedented bleaching suffered by the Great Barrier Reef in 2016-17, which killed around 50% of its corals.

The scientific report predicts that without large reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, all 29 reefs will “cease to exist as functioning coral reef ecosystems by the end of this century”.

Reefs can take 10-20 years to recover from bleaching. If our current emissions trajectory continues, within the next two decades, 25 out of the 29 World Heritage reefs will suffer severe heat stress twice a decade. This effectively means they will be unable to recover.

It should also be noted that the majority of World Heritage coral reefs are far better managed than other reefs around the world, so the implications of climate change for coral reefs globally are much worse.

All coral reefs are important

Almost one-third of the world’s marine fish species rely on coral reefs for some part of their life cycle. There are also 6 million people who fish on reefs in 99 countries and territories worldwide. This equates to about a quarter of the world’s small-scale fishers relying directly on coral reefs.

Half of all coral reef fishers globally are in Southeast Asia, and the western Pacific Island nations also have high proportions of reef fishers within their populations. In total, more than 400 million people in the poorest developing countries worldwide live within 100km of coral reefs. The majority of them depend directly on reefs for their food and livelihoods.

Coral reefs provide more value than any other ecosystem on Earth. They protect coastal communities from flooding and erosion, sustain fishing and tourism businesses, and host a stunning array of marine life. Their social, cultural and economic value has been estimated at US$1 trillion globally.

Recent projections indicate that climate-related loss of reef ecosystem services will total more than US$500 billion per year by 2100. The greatest impacts will be felt by the millions of people whose livelihoods depend on reefs.

Where else?

Recognising that the majority of the World Heritage coral reefs are expected to be seriously impacted by climate change is a good start. However, the Committee cannot afford to wait until similar levels of adverse impacts are evident at other natural and cultural heritage sites across the world.

The World Heritage Committee and other influential bodies must continue to acknowledge that climate change has already affected a wide range of World Heritage values through climate-related impacts such as species migrations, loss of biodiversity, glacial melting, sea-level rise, increases in extreme weather events, greater frequency of wildfires, and increased coastal erosion. To help understand the magnitude of the problem, the Committee has asked the World Heritage Centre and the international advisory bodies “to further study the current and potential impacts of climate change on World Heritage properties”, and report back in 2018.

Two of the key foundations of the World Heritage Convention are to protect the world’s cultural and natural heritage, and to pass that heritage on to future generations. For our sake, and the sake of future generations, let’s hope we can do both.

Jon C. Day previously represented Australia as a delegate to the World Heritage Committee between 2007-2011. He worked for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority between 1986 and 2014, and was one of its directors from 1998 to 2014.

Office of the chief economist projects market will grow by 8.7% by 2022, but Institute for Energy Economics says this is based on out of date analysis

As Australia mulls the building of its biggest-ever export thermal coal mine, its biggest foreign buyers look set to reduce their consumption, driving down the price of Australian coal, and the profitability of its mines.

Japan, South Korea and Taiwan together buy about 30% of the world’s exported thermal coal, including 70% of Australia’s export coal.

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Huge spike in Queensland land clearing destroys ecological communities and habitat of threatened species, according to analysis

The federal government is allowing the huge spike in land clearing in Queensland to destroy threatened ecological communities, the habitat of threatened species and increase pollution on the Great Barrier Reef by failing to enforce environmental law, according to analysis by WWF.

Following the weakening of land clearing laws in Queensland in 2013, the rate of clearing there has tripled to almost 300,000 hectares each year.

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Foreign secretary confirms government’s pledge, despite absence from manifesto

A total ban on ivory sales in the UK could still be introduced by the British government, foreign secretary Boris Johnson has said, signalling a possible U-turn that has been welcomed by conservationists.

In their 2015 manifesto the Conservatives promised to “press for a total ban on ivory sales”. But the pledge was quietly taken out of this year’s Tory manifesto, sparking anger among conservation organisations, which say that by allowing the trade to continue, the UK is fuelling elephant poaching.

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A white humpback whale, known as Migaloo, was spotted swimming off Australia’s Gold Coast on Tuesday. The whale was making its annual migration towards the Great Barrier Reef. Up to 5,000 humpbacks migrate north up Australia’s east coast between April and August each year from waters in the Antarctic to feed and breed in warm tropical waters

• Humpback whales charge a pod of killer whales in Monterey Bay – video
  

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