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Environment minister says severe drought is ‘aggravating’ factor as smoke engulfs Porto Velho city

The Brazilian government has deployed almost 1,500 firefighters to the Amazon as the most severe drought in decades is turning the rainforest’s usually moist vegetation into kindling and flames.

Despite a sharp decrease in deforestation since the president, Lula da Silva, took power in January 2023, there have reportedly been 59,000 fires in the forest since the start of the year, the highest number since 2008, according to satellite data from the National Institute for Space Research.

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Demand for fuel oil from the maritime sector is expected to peak by the mid-2020s, displaced in large part by LNG and increasingly efficient ships, according to a global energy consultancy.

Green MP tells home secretary sending Just Stop Oil activist to prison is unjust and waste of resources

A 20-month prison sentence handed to a 77-year-old woman for a climate protest on the M25 is disproportionate, unjust and a waste of resources, the Green MP Carla Denyer has said.

In a letter to Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, Denyer called the jailing of Gaie Delap three weeks ago “an example of an ongoing and serious problem with disproportionate sentencing for climate activists”.

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Just cutting carbon emissions will not prevent climate breakdown, says Susana Muhamad before Cop16 in Colombia

Humanity risks catastrophic global heating if it focuses only on decarbonisation at the expense of restoring the natural world, Colombia’s environment minister has said in the lead-up to the world’s key nature summit later this year.

Susana Muhamad, who will be president of the UN biodiversity Cop16 summit in Cali in October, said that a singular focus on cutting carbon emissions while failing to restore and protect natural ecosystems would be “dangerous for humanity” and risk societal collapse.

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features

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Monitoring technologies commonly mentioned in biodiversity credit methodologies still have limitations that experts should take into account when engaging in nature markets, a study has said.

Questionable exemptions for developers from England’s biodiversity net gain (BNG) rules are throttling demand for the market, a lawyer at Environment Bank has said.

An Ecuadorian legislative committee’s approval of reforms to the country's environmental code means it has cleared the last major hurdle to legalising carbon markets, according to an industry attendee speaking to Carbon Pulse, hastening a regulated voluntary market and carbon-financed national conservation fund.

A project to divert food waste from landfill and incineration has launched in the US, where the sale of voluntary carbon credits will incentivise grocers to redirect edible waste food to donation centres, according to the developer.

The overlap between humans and wildlife is expected to grow across more than half of land worldwide by 2070, with potentially grave implications for habitat and species conservation, a paper has said.

European carbon moved slightly lower within a narrow trading range on Thursday as much of the recent gas-fuelled volatility appeared to be absent, while a comparatively strong auction helped mitigate early losses.

Indonesia and Japan have agreed to carry out a broad decarbonisation programme for the Southeast Asian country's energy sector, with multiple research projects in the pipeline. 

A multinational energy company has unveiled a new technology that aims to tackle power industry emissions of sulfur hexafluoride, which is 24,300 times more potent than CO2, with an eye on creating a voluntary carbon methodology for projects in the future.

A carbon dioxide removal (CDR) firm has issued a swathe of credits to a series of large US corporations in what it described as a turning point for carbon markets. 

Another Australian company this week announced a decision to look more closely at changing the way it tackles net zero with a plan for only “limited” use of carbon credits and a plan to leave the government’s Climate Active programme.

Testing, testing... South Australian households were given little warning as SAPN conducted tests of its rooftop solar curtailment mechanism on Thursday.

The post Households may lose an hour of solar power as network tests rooftop PV switch-off appeared first on RenewEconomy.

One of China's inland provinces is aiming to secure credits issued under the national voluntary programme from its large-scale afforestation project by the end of this year.

Gold Standard has revealed its first methodology for mangrove projects, which enables remote-sensing for measurement and impact quantification.

A Bogota-based carbon developer is piloting a biodiversity credit conservation project in an Indigenous reserve in the Amazon, planning to put the first credits on sale after COP16 in Colombia, the company has told Carbon Pulse.

I’ve relearned the meaning of seasonality – and how fragile the natural systems that sustain us really are

A few months ago, when I received an email about an available allotment in my area, I struggled to remember when I had signed up for one. It turns out I had done so two years ago, fuelled by my envy for those with gardens during lockdown. Back then, all I wanted was a small bit of outdoor space that felt like my own, to plant flowers, herbs and, at a push, some chillies. A place where I could read and write in the sun, safe from distractions.

Now I was being presented a half plot of available land (125 square metres!) with an established apple tree in the middle – which I mistook for a cherry because of its pink blossom. “You’ll have to have a trial period, to see how you get on,” the woman showing me around said. She meant business. The plot, which was bigger than I could dream of, was beautiful but overgrown – getting it started would require proper graft. I wasn’t sure I had it in me.

Diyora Shadijanova is a journalist and writer

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Four research programmes suggest a likely increase in pine plantations across agricultural land in New Zealand, even with a low or zero carbon price.