The Guardian

Our farming systems and research programs are built to deal with drought, but recovery from these floods will take years – and cost billions

• Sign up for the Rural Network email newsletter
• Join the Rural Network group on Facebook to be part of the community

I try not to let significant events pass without inserting some reminders for the future, because memory fades.

It is now three weeks after the flood in New South Wales’ Lachlan Valley, and the peak is downstream. I’ve been identifying the high-water marks around our farm and the local roads.

Protests against oil and mining have been planned, as thousands of delegates arrive for UN biodiversity summit

Police in Montreal are bracing for their biggest operation in two decades, as thousands of visitors – including frustrated demonstrators – begin to arrive for the Cop15 global biodiversity summit.

Officials are expecting more than 10,000 people, including scientists and senior bureaucrats, to attend Cop15 in the Canadian city.

Young birdwatchers Mya and Arjun feel the pressure of climate breakdown and the biodiversity crisis. As two reserved teenagers on the cusp of adulthood, they find comfort in birdwatching while being distant from their peers. Fascinated by migratory patterns, Mya spends her time searching for rare bird species, while Arjun is captivated by the beauty of birdsong. As their passion for nature inspires them to raise awareness of conservation and the climate emergency in their communities, they find themselves and their voices, emerging as local leaders among a new generation of conservationists

Letter says bioenergy is wrongly deemed ‘carbon neutral’ and contributes to wildlife loss

More than 650 scientists are urging world leaders to stop burning trees to make energy because it destroys valuable habitats for wildlife.

In the buildup to Cop15, the UN biodiversity summit, they say countries urgently need to stop using forest bioenergy to create heat and electricity as it undermines international climate and nature targets. Instead, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar should be used, they say.

More than 100 photographers are making their fine art prints available to Vital Impacts, an women-owned and operated non-profit organisation that supports grassroots groups trying to protect people, wildlife and habitats

It is not fair for people to be paying such wildly varied prices for the same level of gas consumption – equity must be central to any market intervention

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, is set to intervene in the gas market to push down high bills, likely through capping wholesale gas prices and also the price of coal.

Various regulators and energy bodies will be providing advice about the best measures to take. But governments also needs to listen to those that are doing it tough paying their energy bills.

The 2022 Climate Check international survey also found support in Australia for a crackdown on ‘greenwashing’

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

Australian businesses are more likely to wind back efforts to cut carbon emissions when the economy slows than their global counterparts, a survey of 700 firms in 14 nations has found.

However, Deloitte’s gauge of private companies with annual turnover of between $US250m-$US10bn ($A366m-$A14.6bn) also found about two-thirds of the 50 Australian executives surveyed supported new regulations and a crackdown on so-called greenwashing, both higher than the global average.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

A million animal and plant species are perilously close to extinction. Their fate and ours are intimately connected

In an essay entitled The Sense of Wonder, the American conservationist Rachel Carson suggested two questions to make us think more deeply about our natural environment. “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”

Published in 1955, Carson’s call to mindfulness was influential in the burgeoning postwar environmental movement. But despite campaigners’ best efforts, the sense of jeopardy lurking within her second question is now acute. Wild animal populations are declining annually by about 2.5% as a result of habitat loss, invasive species, pollution, climate change, overfishing and overhunting. Since 1970, overall numbers are down by 69%. Livestock and the human beings who farm them now account for 96% of all the mammals on Earth. The Sumatran tiger, the Bornean orangutan and the hellbender salamander are among the million animal and plant species judged perilously close to extinction.

Laws across Australia have shifted significantly to limit protest and are being used to restrain or intimidate those who speak up

You don’t have to believe that Deanna Coco’s climate protest blocking traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge was a good idea, or helped her cause. But being sent to prison until July and denied bail while she lodges an appeal against the sentence was a bad day for democratic expression in Australia.

Coco, 32 years old and known as Violet, was part of a group of four protesters from the activist group Fireproof Australia who blocked a southbound lane on the bridge just before 8.30am on 13 April this year. While others held a banner and glued themselves to the road, Coco climbed on to the roof of a hired van and set off a flare. When police arrived, she resisted arrest.

‘The conference for nature this month in Montreal could be what Paris was for climate,’ Tanya Plibersek says

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

Australia is being urged to take a leadership role at a global summit that aims to reach what has been described as the nature equivalent of the landmark Paris agreement on climate change.

Countries will meet in Montreal for the Cop15 biodiversity summit from 7 December to work on a new framework agreement to end biodiversity decline. Campaigners say if successful it should result in the global destruction of nature being halted and reversed to the extent that wild areas and habitat for threatened species start to increase in size between now and 2030.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Ministers and experts say disputes between co-hosts unlikely to disrupt efforts to reach deal on protecting natural world

More than 10,000 scientists, government officials and activists will gather in Montreal this week for the world’s most important biodiversity conference, eager to hammer out a deal to stem habitat loss around the world and preserve sensitive ecosystems.

The UN Cop15 biodiversity summit opens on Tuesday, and will see countries negotiate this decade’s targets for protecting nature after more than two years of pandemic-related delays and just over two weeks since the end of the Cop27 climate meeting in Egypt.

The variety is a cross between commercial and wild wheats – bred in a bid to develop crops that are more resilient to the climate crisis

A new drought-tolerant variety of durum wheat has been created as part of an international breeding programme to boost climate resilience in the food system by increasing crop diversity.

Durum wheat is used to make pasta, pizza crusts, and flatbreads such as pitta and chapatis, as well as for couscous, bulgur and pastry for desserts such as baklava.

Protesters take to luxury beds and sofas in London store to call for action on ‘sky-rocketing’ energy bills

Just Stop Oil activists tucked themselves into a Harrods display bed as part of a national day of action on fuel poverty in the UK on Saturday.

Footage of the “warm up” demonstrations also showed security guards confronting protesters lying on sofas inside the shop in Knightsbridge, London.

Alok Sharma says the mine will damage the UK’s international reputation as well as the environment

A mooted new coalmine in Cumbria would be “a backward step”, the UK government’s climate champion has warned ahead of an imminent decision on the controversial plan’s future, expected this week.

Alok Sharma, whose presidency of the Cop26 international climate talks ended last month, took to Twitter on Saturday morning to slam plans for the mine, which would produce coking coal for steel production.

Once common in England and Wales, the species was hunted to local extinction about 300 years ago

With their striking long beaks and elegant white plumage, the spoonbill looks like it belongs somewhere far more exotic than the windswept saltmarshes of the UK.

But the large wading bird is enjoying a boom in numbers as landowners across the country improve wetland habitats and tree cover.

The group was awarded $1.8m and praised as an ‘inspiring women led program’ using First Nations knowledge to protect land and sea

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

The Queensland Indigenous Women Rangers Network has been awarded a £1m ($1.8m) Earthshot prize for its work on protecting the Great Barrier Reef.

The network was awarded the Revive Our Oceans category of the prizes, which was launched by Prince William and David Attenborough in 2020.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Scientists who have replaced plastic packaging with seaweed among those to be given prize by Prince of Wales

Scientists who have replaced plastic packaging with seaweed are among those who have been given a £1m prize by the Prince of Wales’s Earthshot fund.

The prize is aimed at rewarding innovative solutions to tackle the climate and biodiversity emergencies, and is named after former US president John F Kennedy’s Moonshot challenge in the 1960s, which united millions of people around the goal of putting a person on the moon within a decade.

London mayor’s demand comes as civil rights campaigners criticise PM’s promise to increase police powers

The London mayor has demanded the state response to Just Stop Oil remain “within the law”, as civil rights campaigners warned over the prime minister’s suggestion he would grant police new powers to contain the group’s protests.

After a meeting of police leaders and ministers in Downing Street on Thursday, Rishi Sunak promised police whatever powers they need to “clamp down” on the “completely unacceptable” disruptions by the climate activist group.

Fears of shortages early next year as farmers say they are having to ‘tear up’ sowing and harvesting timelines

The mild autumn has caused much of the UK’s green vegetable and potato crops to grow early, leading to a glut and a large amount of waste, and fears of shortages early next year.

Cabbages, cauliflower and broccoli that were supposed to be ready later in December or in January are ready to harvest now, with some having grown to huge sizes because of the exceptionally mild autumn.

The water companies and regulators must act, alongside changing consumer behaviour and tackling pollution at source

Thirty-two years after water privatisation, rivers in England and Wales are not improving, leakage levels are unacceptable, and massive financial engineering has not added to the resilience of the system or the ability to finance the large-scale investment we now need. It cannot and should not be allowed to go on like this.

It is easy to blame the water companies for all this. And they do indeed deserve a lot of the blame, but they are not alone in polluting our rivers. Regulators are to blame too. Ofwat could have ensured water company revenues were used to fund more investment. The way the industry watchdog set the cost of capital provided opened the door for businesses to borrow against their assets – for the benefit of owners, rather than customers. Share buybacks, special dividends and multiple takeovers were never part of the gameplan at privatisation, and nor were the excessive executive salaries. None of this should have been allowed to happen.

Dieter Helm is professor of economic policy at the University of Oxford and fellow in economics at New College, Oxford. From 2012 to 2020, he was independent chair of the Natural Capital Committee, providing advice to the government on the sustainable use of natural capital