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SolarReserve unveils plans for six large scale solar tower and molten salt storage plants in South Australia, but says it needs a contract to build the first one. But will the state government reach for the sun, or fall back on old gas plants?

Climate action by Australia affects all of Sustainable Development Goals, including those on water. Pushpendra Maheshwari

Australia will join the 71st United Nations General Assembly in New York this week. Some of the discussion will focus on progressing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as agreed at the UN last year.

Australia is a signatory to the goals, but it is difficult to know where to begin, as the goals are further broken down into 169 targets. These range from eradicating extreme poverty to developing measurements of progress on sustainable development.

But new research from the University of Queensland reveals that actions on climate change (SDG 13) and global partnerships (SDG 17) are likely to influence all other efforts by Australia to achieve the other SDGs.

Australia’s role in sustainable development

The SDGs form part of the UN development agenda, Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, released in September 2015.

Unlike the preceding UN Millennium Development Goals, which ran until 2015, the SDGs apply to all countries and citizens to create a common outlook, irrespective of the country’s level of development. The new goals are to be achieved by 2030.

The Australian government has emphasised the role of the SDGs in reinforcing economic growth, development and investment in the Indo-Pacific region, and has assigned the SDGs to the portfolios of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), and Environment.

Australia’s support for the SDGs is laudable. But the focus on international trade and investment, with responsibilities placed in only two portfolios, limits Australia’s potential for significant social, economic and environmental improvement on the SDGs at home and abroad.

But where do we start?

Part of the challenge of the SDGs is their complexity and the way they link together. This may explain Australia’s limited approach to date.

To help navigate this web of goals, we mapped the most influential goals. We found the goals that affect all the others are climate action (SDG 13) and global partnerships (SDG 17), as shown in the figure below. Without these, the other goals are very difficult to attain.

Proposed relationships between 17 UN Sustainable Development Targets Global Change Institute, UQ

For example, the increased intensity of extreme weather events due to climate change will likely make it harder to achieve clean drinking water under SDG 6. In droughts, less water is available, and in floods, the water is often contaminated. Both events result in the proliferation of diseases.

These findings also identified that the goal for health and wellbeing (SDG 3) is the ultimate goal: every other SDG contributes towards this outcome. For example, a woman who has given birth to a daughter cannot achieve optimal physical, social and mental wellbeing for herself and her child without proper nutrition (SDG 2), access to clean water and sanitation (SDG 6), gender equality (SDG 5) and adequate financial resources (SDG 1).

We also found that within SDG 6, implementing the integrated water resources management target (6.5) enables the other SDG 6 targets to be met. Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin is a good example of this type of approach. There, states negotiated across borders to reduce salinity, minimise extractions and improve water quality.

Can we do it?

Linking together these goals will require high-level government co-ordination beyond merely the DFAT and environment portfolios.

Our policy analysis found that no single portfolio can take responsibility for the entire set of 17 SDGs – and that all 21 government departments have more than one SDG relevant to their responsibilities.

Australia’s ability to progress the SDGs in Australia and overseas is likely to be more attainable with the involvement and cross-collaboration of other portfolios.

Damaged and polluted waterways affect the ability to attain the Sustainable Development Goal for water and sanitation (SDG 6). Sanjog Chakraborty

The UN SDGs are an opportunity for Australia’s efforts towards sustainable development to be recognised on a global stage. To achieve progress on this complex agenda we have to understand that climate action and global partnerships are crucial to sustainable development and ultimately to health and wellbeing.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

An engineer arrives in the UK in his solar-powered tuk-tuk seven months after setting off from India on a 6,200 mile (9,978 km) journey.

Beech trees are bullies​ and​ willows are loners, says forester Peter Wohlleben, author of a new book claiming that trees have personalities and communicate ​via a ​below-ground ​‘woodwide web’

Trees have friends, feel loneliness, scream with pain and communicate underground via the “woodwide web”. Some act as parents and good neighbours. Others do more than just throw shade – they’re brutal bullies to rival species. The young ones take risks with their drinking and leaf-dropping then remember the hard lessons from their mistakes. It’s a hard-knock life.

A book called The Hidden Life of Trees is not an obvious bestseller but it’s easy to see the popular appeal of German forester Peter Wohlleben’s claims – they are so anthropomorphic. Certainly, a walk in the park feels different when you imagine the network of roots crackling with sappy chat beneath your feet. We don’t know the half of what’s going on underground and beneath the bark, he says: “We have been looking at nature for the last 100 years like [it is] a machine.”

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Amazon boss Jeff Bezos says the big, re-usable rocket he has been developing inside his Blue Origin space company will be called New Glenn, after John Glenn.

Number of new local renewable energy schemes has crashed from 76 last year after government slashed support for wind and solar

The number of new community-owned renewable energy projects of the sort backed by Jeremy Corbyn this week has plummeted after a series of government decisions have made many proposals for wind and solar farms no longer viable.

Only 10 new community energy organisations have been registered so far this year, compared to 76 last year, according to new data from the trade body Co-operatives UK.

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The city’s water agency fields mounting complaints and trades accusations with the French corporation that until recently ran the system, while prices rise

In many American cities, finding elevated lead levels in drinking water is enough to spark serious concern. But in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where many residents are delivered expensive, rust-colored and corrosive water, it’s just one of many of complaints.

On just one street, a pregnant 19-year-old and a Vietnam veteran said they no longer drink the tap water. A grandmother said she buys bottled water when she can, but other times boils the water, which can concentrate lead.

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As talks about a complete ban on both the international and domestic markets heat up, the Swaziland government accuses western NGOs of being ‘armchair preservationists’

The government of Swaziland has called the destruction of rhino horn “extravagantly wasteful destruction” and accused western NGOs of compromising Africa’s wildlife by blocking the legalisation of the ivory and rhino horn trades.

In an official document sent to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) the government of the tiny African state claimed unnamed NGOs have become dominated by “activists who do not live with the day to day realities on the ground, who do not face the grave dangers of protecting rhinos [from poaching] in the bush, who do not cover the enormous costs necessary to protect them”.

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While the BBC no longer gives climate denial and science equal air time, it continues to struggle with creeping false balance

For years, the BBC has been criticised for the false balance of its climate change coverage. And for years, the BBC has apparently been doing “ongoing work” to fix it. So far, however, this ‘reform’ has been more like a triumph of the middling. Yes, the BBC may broadcast less outright misinformation, but as a scientist and a citizen, I still feel let down by its continually careless handling of climate denial - most recently two weeks ago. This nod to mediocrity is a disservice to science, to public trust, and to the biggest news story in the world. And it is a huge, missed opportunity.

As a young PhD graduate working on climate change solutions, I am confronted daily by a world where the warnings of science are undercut by Fox ‘News’ and its ilk. It is a very different world to the trustworthy BBC broadcasts of David Attenborough and the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures that I grew up with, which helped inspire me to become a scientist. But as a recent BBC News segment by Science Editor David Shukman sadly reminded me, those worlds can too easily collide.

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Vessel aiming to be the ‘Solar Impulse of the seas’ will be powered solely by renewable energies and hydrogen during its six-year voyage

Dubbed the “Solar Impulse of the seas”, the first boat to be powered solely by renewable energies and hydrogen hopes to make its own historic trip around the world.

A water-borne answer to the Solar Impulse – the plane that completed its round-the-globe trip using only solar energy in July – the Energy Observer will be powered by the sun, the wind and self-generated hydrogen when it sets sail in February as scheduled.

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Survey finds nearly one-quarter of businesses already generating some of their power needs with rooftop solar – 83% seriously considering it.

AECOM has been appointed as the Owner’s Engineer for the A$360 million, 180 MW Mount Emerald Wind Farm in North Queensland.

Kickstarting the carbon capture and storage industry with a state-backed company will deliver the clean electricity needed to meet climate targets more cheaply than Hinkley Point C, says government advisory group

The UK must immediately kickstart an industry to capture and bury carbon emissions in order to save consumers billions a year from the cost of meeting climate change targets, according to a high-level advisory group appointed by ministers.

This requires the setting up of a new state-backed company to create the network needed to pipe the emissions into exhausted oil and gas fields under the North Sea, the group said.

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Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Wales Our loft has become a maternity roost from which the brown long-eared bats emerge at dusk to scour the surrounding area for incautious insects

Nearly a century ago, someone bought part of the pasture at the end of the lane and built the house we’ve lived in for about a quarter of its life. This quiet spot faces east into the Cambrian Mountains and the builder cleverly oriented the house to ensure the best view from the front windows.

Related: Bats at large, unseasonably, on a mild winter afternoon

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Australian climate policy is being framed on the basis that the country should proceed as slowly as it possibly can – a course that is being justified by technology cost estimates heavily tilted against solar. No wonder the CCA is so confused.

The 17yo Pelican Point gas generator, deemed a "new competitor" by SA govt, withdrew its services just over a week before Northern coal plant closed.

关于如何保护濒危物种，世界正站在一个十字路口，9月份两次至关重要的全球性会议就这一紧迫问题展开讨论。翻译：奇芳(中外对话/chinadialogue)

消费者和收藏家们都想得到各种稀罕物：鲟鱼子、蛇皮手袋、鲨鱼肉和鱼翅、野生的雪莲球茎、珍贵的红木家具、质量上乘的沉香油，以及珍稀的鸟类、爬行动物、仙人掌和兰花这些动植物活体。但他们极少会停下来想想这些东西的来源。要知道，如今世界上有70多亿人每天都在通过药物、食品、衣服、家具、香料和奢侈品等各种方式消耗着生物多样性。人们对于取自自然的产品的需求不断增加，野生物种面临的压力也在不断增大。

人类从自然获取资源的能力是无限的，现代交通的范围更是无疆的。世界每年的国际旅客人数多达11亿人次，每天有10万个航班，每年的集装箱数量多达5亿个，合法的和非法的野生动植物产品可以被运到世界任何角落。扩大全球贸易、促进发展与保护野生动植物之间的矛盾愈演愈烈，有时他们的目标看起来甚至是南辕北辙。

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Grant King steps down with his exceptionally high regard diminished by the APLNG adventure, while APA flags a new pipeline, betting on rising gas prices.

Tesla's Elon Musk says suite of updates to Tesla's Autopilot system, including an increased reliance on radar technology, a "threefold improvement in safety."

Australia has no plan for managing disused mines but a company has a novel solution for producing renewable energy

Gold was discovered on the Copperfield river in north-western Queensland in 1907. As men flocked to find their fortune, a small township was established and named for the state’s then premier, William Kidston. For close to 100 years, Kidston was a mining town.

But, in 2001, the largest operation – a Canadian-owned goldmine – shut down. The site became another of the roughly 50,000 “orphaned” mines littered across Australia.

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