The Guardian

The UN climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, opens for another day of talks

Cop27 has been termed the African Cop – but we have reported on the difficulties some African activists have faced in attending the summit. And yesterday our video reporter in Sharm el-Sheikh, Nikhita Chulani, spoke to the Ugandan activist Nyombi Morris who was turned away from the talks.

When 24-year-old Ugandan activist Nyombi Morris arrived in Egypt for the Cop27 climate summit he was turned away from the high-level talks because he did not have the right accreditation. Only country delegates and some members of the press were allowed in the events for heads of states and government officials.

“Why are we here?”, asked Nyombi, adding that the world leaders and negotiators who are currently deciding how far to push climate action need to quickly change the way they work and who they listen to, saying right now he doesn’t think it is right to truly call this an African Cop.

“You have to frontline the voices of African youth activists, because these are the innovators. These are the ones implementing actions, not our leaders, our leaders are just always in the office, but you are excluding us. So it is time to understand that this event is in Africa. We need to give African voices a chance ... We cannot lead without knowledge.”

As the UN’s Cop27 summit begins in Egypt, there are warnings more must be done to avert climate breakdown

Last year’s UN Cop26 climate talks in Scotland were framed by John Kerry, the US special presidential envoy on the climate crisis, as the “last best hope for the world to get its act together” and avert climate breakdown. As world leaders gather in Egypt for Cop27, evidence suggests they have yet to fully do so.

The Glasgow conference drew collective promises by governments to “phase down” coal use, curb deforestation, advance remedial payments to developing countries hit hardest by floods, heatwaves and droughts, and to come back the following year with more ambitious emissions reduction targets.

37 million people are facing starvation in the Horn of Africa. Time for wealthier countries to adopt ‘loss and damage finance’

In September, I travelled from my home country, Uganda, to Turkana County in Kenya, which is suffering from a historic drought. One morning, I met a boy in a hospital where doctors see patients with the worst cases of severe acute malnutrition. His family had not been able to access the treatment he needed in time. By the time the sun set that evening, he had died.

The boy was one of 37 million people facing starvation in the Horn of Africa. After four failed rainy seasons, Kenya faces the acute risk of widespread famine. This suffering is set to get worse; experts predict that drought-stricken areas in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia will receive significantly below normal rainfall for the rest of the year.

For almost a decade, a desert community struggled to maintain their drought-stricken gardens and farms. Then the rains returned

• All photographs by Rehab Eldalil

Latest figures suggest the 10 park authorities will have to make cuts of £16m between them over the next three years

England’s national parks are facing a funding crisis that is forcing them to make plans to close visitors centres, make park rangers redundant, stop maintaining paths and introduce other cuts, in an effort to balance their budgets, according to the latest figures.

Funding has fallen by 40% in real terms over the last decade, and grants are expected to flatline until 2025 despite rising wage bills and costs. Government funding for national parks has been frozen since last year. Data compiled by National Parks England suggests the country’s 10 park authorities will have to make cuts of £16m over the next three years.

Brussels’ plan to oppose a a total international ban on trade in hippopotamus products puts species at risk, says letter signed by states, including Mali, Niger and Senegal

Ten African countries have accused the EU of jeopardising the survival of the common hippopotamus by not supporting a proposed commercial trade ban, in documents seen by the Guardian.

Illegal hunting for meat and ivory is thought to have wiped out hippo populations in five African states: Algeria, Egypt, Eritrea, Liberia and Mauritania. But Brussels is planning to oppose a bid to ban the global trade in hippo products at a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) conference in Panama from 14 November.

Microbes have made their way into water after heavy rain, raising risk of illnesses like gastro and diarrhoea, authorities say

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Melbourne residents are being urged to hit the swimming pool instead of the beach as Victoria’s ongoing floods continue to contaminate waterways.

Victoria’s chief environmental scientist, Mark Taylor, said microbes had made their way into waterways after heavy rains, bringing the risk of pollution, mosquitoes and water-borne diseases.

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Report co-written by Nicholas Stern says figure required to switch away from fossil fuels and cope with extreme weather impacts

• Cop27 live – latest news updates

About $2tn (£1.75bn) will be needed each year by 2030 to help developing countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the effects of climate breakdown, new data suggests.

The cash will be needed so that poor countries can switch away from fossil fuels, invest in renewable energy and other low-carbon technology, and cope with the impacts of extreme weather, according to a report that was commissioned jointly by the UK and Egyptian governments, and presented at the Cop27 UN climate summit.

Prime minister tells summit Britain will honour commitments but makes no mention of reparations

Rishi Sunak has said it is “morally right” that Britain honours its climate change commitments in his speech at Cop27, but he made no mention of paying reparations after Boris Johnson said the country cannot afford to do so.

The prime minister made a very short appearance on the world stage on Monday, after making a very public U-turn on his attendance in Egypt – the same reversal that may have left him living in Johnson’s shadow, as he was forced to speak hours after his rival.

Britain had said its aim was to ‘keep 1.5C alive’. The prime minister seems to want it dead

Rishi Sunak is not interested in the climate emergency – and everyone knows it. Forced to make a flying visit to Cop27, Mr Sunak’s intransigence made him an outcast at the UN summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. He did sit down with France’s Emmanuel Macron, and the Italian far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, to discuss a subject – “illegal migration” – that Mr Sunak obviously cares about. But most world leaders were not going to make time for a prime minister who had blocked Britain’s new monarch from attending the summit and only came because he feared being upstaged by Boris Johnson. When Mr Sunak did turn up, it was with his predecessor’s plan and slogans. Embarrassingly, Mr Johnson did take centre stage at Cop27 – from the sidelines.

The prime minister’s track record reveals a politician who governs in the Tories’ narrow political interest rather than the national one. Slashing fuel and air duties as chancellor just days before the last Cop summit – hosted by the UK – showed his true colours. Pledges to curtail onshore wind and solar development during the Conservative leadership campaign signalled that personal ambition was more important than climate goals. In Cop26, countries signed up to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to limit global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures. Britain had wanted to “keep 1.5C alive”. Mr Sunak seems to want it dead.

Images from Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt where world leaders are gathering to discuss the climate crisis

• Cop27 live coverage: latest updates

The dramatic vanishing of polar ice sheets will cause catastrophic sea level rise that will threaten cities, according to a major new study

The climate crisis has pushed the planet’s stores of ice to a widespread collapse that was “unthinkable just a decade ago”, with Arctic sea ice certain to vanish in summers and ruinous sea level rise from melting glaciers now already in motion, a major new report has warned.

Even if planet-heating emissions are radically cut, the world’s vast ice sheets at the poles will continue to melt away for hundreds of years, causing up to three metres of sea level rise that will imperil coastal cities, the report states. The “terminal” loss of sea ice from the Arctic during summers could arrive within a decade and now cannot be avoided, it adds.

Secretions of Sonoran desert toad have long had hallucinogenic reputation but authorities want you to keep your tongue away

The US National Park Service is warning people to stop licking one of the largest toads in America, due to a toxin it secretes from its glands that can create a hallucinogenic experience.

The Sonoran desert toad, which emits a quick, “weak low-pitched toot”, can make someone sick if they touch it or lick it, NPS said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, told world leaders gathered at the climate conference in Egypt: 'We know what it is to remove slavery from our civilisation, to find a vaccine within two years for a pandemic, to put a man on the moon', but that when it came to the climate crisis, we needed to understand why we were not moving any further. Speaking at Cop27, she said  'the simple political' needed 'to make a definable difference ... seems still not to be capable of being produced'

• Cop27 live - latest news updates

‘It seemed like the community was just left to do your best with what you have’, says one local

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Residents of Lithgow are using kettles to prepare water for bathing and restaurants with bottled gas are cooking warm meals for locals, as the regional New South Wales town waits up to a month for a broken gas pipeline to be repaired.

Locals in towns including Lithgow, Bathurst, Wallerawang and Oberon woke up on Thursday to find their homes had been cut off from natural gas – the result of a leak in the pipeline between Young and Lithgow. More than 20,000 people are affected.

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Al Gore made an impassioned call on Monday for leaders to 'choose life over death' by ending the use of fossil fuels that are stoking the climate crisis. The former US vice-president, a long-time environmental campaigner who was among the first to raise the alarm about climate change, told leaders at this year's United Nations climate summit in Egypt that they should turn away from destructive behaviour, insisting that 'we have other choices' in the form of renewable energy

• Cop27 live - latest news updates

Blending lentils or vegetables into meat products could have huge benefits for the environment, animal welfare and human health

Our current level of meat consumption is unsustainable. Animal farming is a major driver of global heating and tropical deforestation. The meat industry keeps most animals in intensive, inhumane conditions. And red meat is linked to multiple health problems including heart disease and colorectal cancer.

The food industry has committed to change – chains such as McDonald’s and Burger King have signed up to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, to zero deforestation by 2030, and to multiple health targets too. But how can these giant companies, and indeed the whole food sector, possibly follow through when we consume 340bn kilos of meat a year globally, and demand is still rising? Do we just hope that consumers will go vegan or vegetarian of their own accord?

Joseph Poore researches agriculture and the environment at the University of Oxford. Hannah Ritchie also contributed to this piece

Government embarks on campaign to raise awareness over weather threat as England remains in drought

Severe flooding caused by La Niña is predicted for February despite England remaining in drought, the Met Office has said.

Two-thirds of people at risk of flooding were unaware of the situation, the government said on Monday, as it embarked on an awareness campaign. This average cost to a flooded household is £30,000, figures show.

António Guterres told delegates gathered at the start of the conference in Egypt that humanity was 'on a highway to climate hell with our foot – still – on the accelerator'. The UN secretary general's speech set an urgent tone as government representatives assembled for two weeks of talks on how to avert the worst of climate breakdown

• • Cop27 live – latest news updates

New president of Brazil expected to join initiative at Cop27 covering a third of world’s forests

• Cop27 live – latest news updates

Rishi Sunak has pledged the UK’s continued support for conserving threatened forests around the world, through a funding programme covering a third of the world’s forests, at the Cop27 UN climate summit in Egypt.

Brazil is expected to join the initiative, under the incoming president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and new funding from the public and private sector will take the spending for forest conservation above $20bn over the next five years. The moves form part of efforts to tackle emissions from land use, the second biggest driver of global heating, of which tropical deforestation is a significant component.