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The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

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Poor harvests in extreme weather conditions have led to a tripling of cocoa prices – but farmers have seen no benefit

Around the world this holiday weekend, people will consume hundreds of millions of Easter eggs and bunnies, as part of an annual chocolate intake that can exceed 8kg (18lb) for every person in the UK, or 5kg in the US and Europe. But a global shortage of cacao – the seed from which chocolate is made – has brought warnings of a “chocolate meltdown” that could see prices increase and bars shrink further.

This week, cocoa prices rose to all-time highs on commodity exchanges in London and New York, reaching more than $10,000 a tonne for the first time, after the third consecutive poor harvest in west Africa. Ghana and Ivory Coast, which together produce more than half of the global cacao crop, have been hit by extreme weather supercharged by the climate crisis and the El Niño weather phenomenon. This has been exacerbated by disease and underinvestment in ageing plantations.

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Activists say plan to remove 200 felines near Old San Juan fortress within six months is not enough time and worry cats will be killed

A non-profit organization said Thursday that it sued the US National Park Service over a plan to remove Puerto Rico’s famous stray cats from a historic district in the US territory.

The lawsuit filed by Maryland-based Alley Cat Allies comes four months after the federal agency announced it would contract an animal welfare organization to remove an estimated 200 cats that live in an area surrounding a historic seaside fortress in Old San Juan.

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The six-part series 'Mammals' will air this Sunday at 19:00 GMT.

California Carbon Allowances (CCA) declined while Washington Carbon Allowances (WCA) rallied during the Mar. 21-27 period, as market participants remarked on the unexpected volatility following North American Carbon World (NACW) in San Francisco.

British Columbia will introduce legislation to “backstop” federal plans to impose an emissions cap on Canada’s oil and gas sector, the province announced Friday, in an effort to defend the measure against the risk of cancellation by a new administration in Ottawa.

A Canada-headquartered voluntary carbon offset originator on Thursday reported an annual net loss of $35.5 million (C$48.1 mln) in 2023 amid halved credit sale prices, despite ongoing restructuring efforts to reduce operating costs.

The last coal-fired power plant in New England will close by 2028, its owner announced this week, handing environmental activists a victory.

Tightening the calculation of emissions from voluntary cookstove credits will almost wipe out abatement for under $10 per tonne, finds a report.

A US-based carbon credit insurance company has closed a $10 million investor raise, bringing several new firms on board and attracting the support of multiple angel investors.

Nearly half of around 590,000 African voluntary credits from biomass improved projects were recently sold ahead of issuance, and above secondary market prices, a carbon financier told Carbon Pulse Thurdsay, after last week announcing a hefty investment into electric cookstoves.

Chile officially approved the first eight carbon projects eligible for payment of its $5/tonne national carbon tax Wednesday, operationalising a new offsetting mechanism announced last year.

A UK energy firm announced Thursday that it has reached a five-year agreement for the sale of 25,000 tonnes of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) credits to a Calgary-headquartered project developer at $350/tonne, according to a Thursday press release.

A German court has ruled an airline should not have advertised flights as 'carbon neutral' because they were offset with voluntary credits from forestry conservation projects that could not ensure the promised compensation.

ICE's Phase 1 CORSIA-eligible futures hit a record high this week, with the front-December trading above $20/tonne on Thursday, in the wake of a UN decision not to approve carbon credits from any new voluntary standards.

Oil and gas producers worldwide aim to quadruple the amount of reserves sanctioned for development within the decade, research finds, in direct contrast to scientific warnings that new fossil fuel investments must end in order to limit warming to 1.5C.

Several commonly accepted vegetation indices used to estimate forest carbon baselines produce noisy data and risk over- or under-crediting, while multifaceted canopy height estimates are more consistent, according to research published this month.

A Montreal-based carbon removal company announced Thursday a partnership with a Los Angeles-headquartered direct air capture (DAC) firm to further deploy the emerging technology in Canada.

Southern and coastal EU regions suffer more harshly from climate-related disasters than others, while policies to address global warming like the EU ETS disproportionately impact poorer segments of society, according to data collected by the EU executive.

The EU needs to develop technical capabilities and set up a proper regulatory structure in order to effectively remove large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, including creating a European carbon central bank, according to a study published on Thursday.