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Work begins in Dubai on world's largest solar tower with storage facility, featuring a 260m tower.

Tony Abbott has drawn new battle-lines with interviews and an article that is a horror-show of ignorance, bias, conservative ideology and political dogma. Turnbull's efforts to appease the right wing has gotten him and the Australian economy nowhere.

A shareholder resolution highlighting the chasm between BHP’s stated climate policy and the pro-coal advocacy of its mining industry lobby has pushed the company to commit to reconsidering its membership of the hardline Minerals Council of Australia.

Western Power pilot shows stand-alone solar + battery + diesel systems 15 times more reliable than grid, and could save $300 million in avoided network upgrade costs – but only if rules are change changed to allow the systems to be rolled out.

New data shows home battery storage installations set to treble in 2017, even without a price fall. Once the technology gets cheaper, says SunWiz, batteries will be as ‘common as the backyard pool.’

ACT government opens third competitive grants round, in a $4m extension of its home battery storage subsidisation scheme.

The Australian buries its admission that Tuesday's front page lead was fabricated, and still seeks to portray a cost saving to consumers as an extravagant "payday" for rich Saudi man.

Rivalries in Orkney more than 4,500 years ago led to competition between communities, according to new research.

Six people lost their lives when Typhoon Doksuri smashed into central Vietnam on September 16, the most powerful storm in a decade to hit the country.

Although widespread evacuations prevented a higher death toll, the impact on the region’s most vulnerable people will be extensive and lasting.

Read more: Typhoon Haiyan: a perfect storm of corruption and neglect.

Government sources report that more than 193,000 properties have been damaged, including 11,000 that were flooded. The storm also caused widespread damage to farmland, roads, and water and electricity infrastructure. Quang Binh and Ha Tinh provinces bore the brunt of the damage.

Central Vietnam is often in the path of tropical storms and depressions that form in the East Sea, which can intensify to form tropical cyclones known as typhoons (the Pacific equivalent of an Atlantic hurricane).

Typhoon Doksuri developed and tracked exactly as forecast, meaning that evacuations were relatively effective in saving lives. What’s more, the storm moved quickly over the affected area, delivering only 200-300 mm of rainfall and sparing the region the severe flooding now being experienced in Thailand.

Doksuri is just one of a spate of severe tropical cyclones that have formed in recent weeks, in both the Pacific and Atlantic regions. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and, most recently, Maria have attracted global media coverage, much of it focused on rarely considered angles such as urban planning, poverty, poor development, politics, the media coverage of disasters – as well as the perennial question of climate change.

Disasters are finally being talked about as part of a discourse of systemic oppression - and this is a great step forward.

Vietnam’s vulnerability

In Vietnam, the root causes of disasters exist below the surface. The focus remains on the natural hazards that trigger disasters, rather than on the vulnerable conditions in which many people are forced to live.

Unfortunately, the limited national disaster data in Vietnam does not allow an extensive analysis of risk. Our research in central Vietnam is working towards filling this gap and the development of more comprehensive flood mitigation measures.

Central Vietnam has a long and exposed coastline. It consists of 14 coastal provinces and five provinces in the Central Highlands. The Truong Son mountain range rises to the west and the plains that stretch to the coast are fragmented and narrow. River systems are dense, short and steep, with rapid flows.

These physical characteristics often combine with widespread human vulnerability, to deadly effect. We can see this in the impact of Typhoon Doksuri, but also to a lesser extent in the region’s annual floods.

Flood risk map by province using Multi-Criteria Decision-Making method and the national disaster database. Author provided

Rapid population growth, industrial development and agricultural expansion have all increased flood risk, especially in Vietnam’s riverine and coastal areas. Socially marginalised people often have to live in the most flood-prone places, sometimes as a result of forced displacement.

Floods and storms therefore have a disproportionately large effect on poorer communities. Most people in central Vietnam depend on their natural environment for their livelihood, and a disaster like Doksuri can bring lasting suffering to a region where 30-50% of people are already in poverty.

When disaster does strike, marginalised groups face even more difficulty because they typically lack access to public resources such as emergency relief and insurance.

The rural poor will be particularly vulnerable after this storm. Affected households have received limited financial support from the local government, and many will depend entirely on charity for their recovery.

Better research, less bureaucracy

This is not to say that Vietnam’s government did not mount a significant effect to prepare and respond to Typhoon Doksuri. But typically for Vietnam, where only the highest levels of government are trusted with important decisions, the response was bureaucratic and centralised.

This approach can overlook the input of qualified experts, and lead to decisions being taken without enough data about disaster risk.

Our research has generated a more detailed picture of disaster risk (focused on flood hazard) in the region. We have looked beyond historical loss statistics and collected data on hazards, exposure and vulnerability in Quang Nam province.

Left: flooding hazard map for Quang Nam province. Right: risk of flooding impacts on residents, calculated on the basis of flood hazards from the left map, plus people’s exposure and vulnerability. Author provided

Our findings show that much more accurate, sensitive and targeted flood protection is possible. The challenge is to provide it on a much wider scale, particularly in poor regions of the world.

Reduce risk, and avoid creating new risk

An effective risk management approach can help to reduce the impacts of flooding in central Vietnam. Before a disaster ever materialises, we can work to reduce risk - and avoid activities that exacerbate it - for example land grabbing for development, displacing the poor, environmental degradation, discrimination against minorities.

Read more: Irma and Harvey: very different storms, but both affected by climate change.

It is critical that subject experts, particularly scientists, are involved in decisions about disaster risk - in Vietnam and around the world. There must be a shift to more proactive approaches, guided by deep knowledge both of the local context and of the latest scientific advances.

Our maps will help planners and politicians to recognise high-risk areas, prepare flood risk plans, and set priorities for both flood defences and responses to vulnerability. The maps are also valuable tools for communication.

But at the same time as emphasising data-driven decisions, we also need to advocate for a humanising approach in dealing with some of the most oppressed, marginalised, poor and disadvantaged members of the global community.

Jason von Meding receives funding from the Australian government and Save the Children for collaborative projects in Vietnam.

Chinh Luu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

There’s plenty the public can do to help conservation, writes Austin Brady of the Woodland Trust

It’s not just in North America where ash trees face extinction (Report, 15 September). It’s now five years since ash dieback was first confirmed in the UK. The disease has now been recorded at more than 1,300 locations and is expected to kill many thousands of trees. The spread of emerald ash borer is already a growing concern in Europe. But positive steps are being taken. Planting more trees now, using a greater diversity of tree species, will help bolster the landscape against future losses. The Woodland Trust aims to plant 64 million trees over the next decade. The public can also help scientists detect the arrival of new pests. Observatree is a project by conservation bodies that has trained more than 200 volunteers UK-wide to do just that.
Austin Brady
Director of conservation, Woodland Trust

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My friend and colleague Duncan Huggett, who has died aged 52 of a brain tumour, kept his love of the natural world to the fore in his work with the RSPB, the Environment Agency and the Marine Conservation Society.

At the Environment Agency he was the man people turned to when flood risk management ran into conflict with conservation, and his work there was fundamental in establishing a solid scientific base for future investments in natural flood management.

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Schools in capital worst affected by air pollution are in most socially deprived areas with high levels of obesity, finds study

Tens of thousands of the poorest children in London are facing a cocktail of health risks including air pollution, obesity and poverty that will leave them with lifelong health problems, according to a new report.

The study found that schools in the capital worst affected by the UK’s air pollution crisis were also disproportionately poor, with high levels of obesity.

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The human-waste bomb recently found clogging up a London sewer has an unlikely admirer – a Scottish renewable energy company

For a 130-tonne mass of grease, bound as hard as concrete by thousands of tampons, wipes and used tissues, the Whitechapel fatberg is in surprisingly high demand.

Last week, the Museum of London announced it wants to display a chunk of the human-waste bomb, recently unearthed in east London, as a way “to raise questions about how we live today”. Now, a Scottish biodiesel company is taking a piece to turn into fuel.

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The ambitious goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C is still within reach, a study indicates.

Could the hefty price tag to keep Liddell open prevent it from ever happening?

Better data would reassure consumers that price changes are the result of real problems, such as weather or machinery failure, rather than market manipulation.

Claxton, Norfolk Though I admire – and fear – spiders, I love bumblebees. To see this one so enmeshed required an effort of will not to intervene

I saw them as I went to the bin. In the web of a female garden cross spider, a worker common carder bee hung upside down. The two were plainly engaged in combat and I crouched to observe the drama more closely.

Yet there were more emotions at play in this encounter than mere curiosity. For although I admire spiders, I absolutely love bumblebees. To see this insect so enmeshed and at risk of being eaten required an effort of my will not to intervene. In his gloriously funny 1950 book The Spider, John Crompton admitted that he freed bees from webs without further ado.

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Liddell coal generator visit reveals a work-force that wants it to close. Even betting agencies are punting on its closure.

In Tal Klein’s new novel, The Punch Escrow, humans have successfully tackled disease and climate change, but powerful corporations control everything.

Two new live graphs show renewable energy share and energy emissions in each state. Rooftop solar is lowering emissions significantly during the day.