The Guardian

Environmental groups and ministers have praised the ambition of the agreement, which also places emphasis on Indigenous rights

Ministers and environmental groups have praised the ambition of the historic deal reached at Cop15, which includes a target to protect 30% of the planet for nature by the end of the decade and places emphasis on Indigenous rights.

But there were also concerns about the legitimacy of the deal after China appeared to force it through.

Exclusive: DfT refuses to publish emission figures, which campaigners say could make new road projects unviable

The UK government is refusing to release the carbon emission figures behind its transport decarbonisation plan, which campaigners say could make proposed road schemes financially unviable.

The Department for Transport (DfT) is blocking academics from seeing the figures, which include data on how much car use would have to be reduced in order to reach net zero commitments.

Agreement on ’30 by 30’ target forced through by Chinese president, ignoring objections from African states

• Cop15: key points of the nature deal at a glance

Governments appear to have signed a once-in-a-decade deal to halt the destruction of Earth’s ecosystems, but the agreement seems to have been forced through by the Chinese president, ignoring the objections of some African states.

After more than four years of negotiations, repeated delays due to the Covid-19 pandemic and talks into the night on Sunday in Montreal, nearly 200 countries – but not the US or the Vatican – signed an agreement at the biodiversity Cop15, which was co-hosted by Canada and China, to put humanity on a path to living in harmony with nature by the middle of the century.

Scientists say loss may be as significant as ‘insectaggedon’ in terms of impact on soil, birds and ecosystems

Populations of earthworms in the UK may have fallen by about a third in the past 25 years, an assessment has shown.

Earthworms are vital for the healthy soil that underpins all ecosystems and scientists said a large decline would sit alongside concerns about “insectaggedon” and the global destruction of wildlife.

While other countries have made additional pledges, Australia criticised for failing to offer more than its budget commitments

• Follow our Australia news live blog for the latest updates
• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

The Greens have criticised the Albanese government for failing to offer any new money for conservation measures at a global conference aiming to secure a new agreement for nature for the next decade.

Countries have been meeting at the Cop15 summit in Montreal to negotiate targets for the protection and restoration of nature, including a target of $US200bn a year to fund conservation work.

Final agreement could bring better protection for vital ecosystems and big reforms to agriculture

A potentially transformational agreement for nature is close to being reached at Cop15 in Montreal, which could bring better protection for Earth’s vital ecosystems such as the Amazon and Congo basin rainforests, big reforms to agriculture and better protection of indigenous territories and rights.

After four years of negotiations and 12 years since the last biodiversity targets were agreed in Japan, the Chinese president of Cop15 put forward its recommendations for a final agreement after two weeks of intense negotiations at the UN biodiversity summit in Canada.

The fossil fuel industry’s campaign of naked self-interest has failed to get traction. Could this be a turning point?

Much has changed when it comes to climate and energy in Australia during 2022 but the country ends the year still needing an honest conversation about gas – what it is, the damage it does and the extent to which it is needed in the future.

Last week may eventually come to be seen as a marker of a change in how the country thinks about fossil fuels. The gas industry, backed by the Coalition and some news media, launched a campaign of naked self-interest against government plans to limit the impact of skyrocketing gas prices that echoed successful campaigns against carbon pricing and an increased mining tax a decade ago.

My brother organised a medical camp after the summer’s deadly floods – a disaster caused by powerful nations

• Fatima Bhutto is an author of fiction and nonfiction
• What was the image on your phone that defined 2022?
  Writers give their perspectives

This summer, intense monsoon rains combined with glacial melt caused super-floods across Pakistan. We are home to the second largest number of glaciers after the polar regions and, thanks to global heating, they are melting at unprecedented, terrifying speed. This is the year the climate emergency came home to me, and this is a photo that haunts me.

The floods wiped out approximately a million livestock, decimated crops, displaced 30 to 50 million Pakistanis, destroyed thousands of kilometres of roads – and months later, the damage is still going on. Stagnant water means farmers cannot plant new crops – those who could not plant rice in October, with water in certain parts remaining thigh high, will have no harvest to reap come March.

Fatima Bhutto is a Pakistani author of fiction and nonfiction

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Higher electricity prices compound the problem – as will the government’s plan to scrap ‘retained’ EU laws

The UK is falling far behind EU countries in its performance and policies on home insulation and energy efficiency, and will lose further ground if “retained laws” from the European Union are scrapped, according to a new study.

The report, by UK pressure group Another Europe is Possible and Germany’s respected Friedrich Ebert Foundation, says the UK is failing to match new EU laws which aim to double the annual rate of building renovation and reduce primary energy consumption by 39% by 2030.

Biden poised to sign measure into law as US faces criticism at Cop15 biodiversity conference over failing to sign 30-year-old pact to protect nature

As the UN meets in Montreal to discuss saving biodiversity without the US, whose representatives are joining only as observers, conservationists are hailing one American step in the right direction: a likely ban on the trade of shark fins.

Although shark finning – the practice of cutting off shark fins and dumping the rest of the body back into the ocean – is illegal in the US, much of the trade in fins happens in US territory. As many as 73 million sharks are finned around the world each year.

The revelation that researchers had succeeded in creating a nuclear fusion reaction that generated more energy than it consumed made reassuring reading last week. For almost half a century, I have reported on scientific issues and no decade has been complete without two or three announcements by scientists claiming their work would soon allow science to recreate the processes that drive the sun. The end result would be the generation of clean, cheap nuclear fusion that would transform our lives.

Such announcements have been rare recently, so it gave me a warm glow to realise that standards may be returning to normal. By deploying a set of 192 lasers to bombard pellets of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, researchers at the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Livermore, California, were able to generate temperatures only found in stars and thermonuclear bombs. The isotopes then fused into helium, releasing excess energy, they reported.

This year’s best photography from Guardian Australia’s photographic team and freelance photographers across Australia and New Zealand

Despite backing calls to protect 30% of world’s land and sea by 2030, UK has no such target in its own plans

The UK’s environment targets are a missed opportunity to protect Britain’s rainforests, cold water coral reefs, chalk streams and peat bogs, environmentalists have said, amid accusations of hypocrisy over the government’s position at Cop15.

On Friday, the environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, announced the government’s legally binding targets at the UN summit in Montreal, where the world is negotiating this decade’s agreement to protect biodiversity on Earth, with talks expected to conclude on Monday.

A Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Vandenberg space force base, California, carrying the Swot satellite – short for surface water and ocean topography – into orbit. The international mission, jointly developed and operated by Nasa and the French space agency CNES, in partnership with the British and Canadian space agencies, aims to give scientists an unprecedented view of the bodies of water that cover about 70% of the Earth, and help researchers better understand climate breakdown

Modelling shows that if we continue on current trajectory, global heating will drive a cascade of extinctions in plants and animals

Earth could lose more than a tenth of its plant and animal species by the end of the century on current trends, according to new research which comes as nearly 3,000 scientists call for action from governments to stop the destruction of nature in the final days of negotiations at Cop15.

The climate crisis will drive an accelerating cascade of extinctions in the coming decades, as predators lose their prey, parasites lose their hosts, and temperature rises fracture Earth’s web of life, according to the researchers, who warn of the risk of co-extinctions in a paper published on Friday in Science Advances.

Environment secretary disappoints campaigners by failing to set overall targets for river health and protected habitats

The UK government has undermined talks at the Cop15 biodiversity conference by failing to set targets for water quality or habitat protections in England, campaigners have said.

Environmental experts have been disappointed by the delayed legally binding targets mandated by the 2021 Environment Act, which were released on Friday, six weeks after the deadline.

Exclusive: government hopes ban in UK waters will protect birds, including puffins, that feed on small fish

Sandeel fishing in UK waters could be banned next year under “gamechanging” government plans to protect puffin and kittiwake numbers, the Guardian can reveal.

The sandeel is a small fish that is critical to marine food webs in the UK, and is an important part of many seabird diets. For example, the number of kittiwakes – which are particularly sandeel-dependent – has fallen by half in the UK since the 1960s, with diminishing availability of prey during the breeding season thought to be mainly responsible.

In the past 12 months I have learned that the mass extermination of the Amazon is a climate catastrophe – and much more

I thought it was a blood moon at first. The dark orange glow appeared at dusk on the far side of the shimmering silver band that is the Xingu River. It was just before 8pm, after the parrots had squawked back to their nests and the insects and frogs were noisily starting the forest nightshift. A flash of lightning from a cloud appeared above almost the same location but the rest of the sky was clear. How could there be a storm? I peered more intently and took a photograph that I could magnify. And there was the answer – a fire, which grew fiercer as I watched, the flames spreading sideways and upwards, flickering red and yellow, billowing smoke into the sky, sparking flashes of lightning every couple of minutes.

I felt sick to the stomach. The Amazon rainforest was being destroyed in front of my eyes. I have been writing about the climate crisis for 16 years, always with a sense of horror but until now, mostly with a sense of distance. This was the first time I had seen it from my home, and it was stranger than I expected. I had not realised until that moment that fire can create its own lightning storms, by creating pyrocumulonimbus, which scientists describe as “the fire-breathing dragon of clouds”.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including hungry puppies, a snow leopard and migratory birds

A selection of the winning and highly commended images in the British Ecological Society’s annual competition Capturing Ecology, taken by international ecologists and students across the globe. From a hungry mother leopard hunting to the calm of a bird floating on water, the images illustrate the intricacies of nature and our relationship with the natural world