The Guardian

Lake Tanganyika sustains life for millions but ever more erratic weather threatens the entire Congo

For thousands of years, Lake Tanganyika was an exquisite sight that soothed and supported generations of Congolese people. Those living by its shores in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have snoozed in hammocks under the tropical sun, watching their children splash in Africa’s oldest, deepest and longest lake. In the evenings, when boats head out for fishing trips, local people would light campfires on the beaches to fry their catch and dance to rumba.

But in the past two months, storms, torrential rain and flooding have killed at least 13 people and destroyed 4,240 homes and 112 schools along the DRC’s Lake Tanganyika coast. In less than a generation, the stretch from Uvira to Moba, 250 miles long, has become a place of catastrophe for the local people, who are dependent on the lake for food, trade, transport and their livelihood.

But the reef needs this listing to survive

This year is the 40th anniversary of the Great Barrier Reef being on the world heritage list. It should be a time to celebrate. Yet Unesco has released a draft report recommending the reef be put on a list of world heritage sites that are “in danger”.

Unesco has absolutely made the right decision. The reef is in danger. It is time for the Australian government to take ambitious climate action for the reef.

Queensland environment minister Meaghan Scanlon says ‘the world is watching’ and more needs to be done to protect the reef from climate change

• Great Barrier Reef should be listed as ‘in danger’

Queensland’s environment minister says UN officials recommending the Great Barrier Reef be placed on the world heritage “in danger” list shows the Morrison government must do more to deal with the climate crisis.

Meaghan Scanlon’s comments put the state government at odds with the federal environment minister, Sussan Ley, who has accused the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) of a “complete subversion of normal process”.

Exclusive: Environment Agency chair warned minister of ‘real-world impacts’, FOI request reveals

Vital work on river pollution and flood defences is being stopped or cut back because the Environment Agency has been underfunded for years, freedom of information documents reveal.

A shortfall in funding of tens of millions of pounds is having real world consequences for our rivers, according to a letter from Emma Howard Boyd, the chair of the EA, to George Eustice, the environment secretary. The letter was obtained by River Action, a campaigning body, under FOI laws.

While Morrison focuses on his noisy right flank, the ALP can establish its credentials as part of the global consensus

While the prime minister is holed up at the Lodge in quarantine, his Coalition partners have been infecting the body politic with a new Delta strain of climate denial by restoring Barnaby Joyce to the second-highest office in the land.

After barely surviving the “G7 plus besties” event in Cornwall with a combination of anti-China bellicose and embarrassed deflection on Australia’s dogged resistance to global action on climate, Scott Morrison returned home to find his country cousins in turmoil. Rediscovering this particular branch of the family was the last thing the PM was banking on as he was fossicking for his roots in his downtime.

Australian government ‘stunned’ by recommendation and will strongly oppose draft decision, environment minister Sussan Ley says

The Great Barrier Reef should be placed on to a list of world heritage sites that are “in danger”, according to a recommendation from UN officials that urges Australia to take “accelerated action at all possible levels” on climate change.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization says the world’s biggest coral reef system should be placed on the list at the world heritage committee meeting next month.

Most cities likely to be affected by the pollutant, which is particularly harmful to children’s brains

Toxic lead from petrol that was banned 20 years ago still lingers in the air in London, a study has shown, with researchers saying the legacy of leaded fuels is likely to hang over most cities.

While levels are much lower than at their peak in the 1980s, they remain far above natural background levels. Lead is extremely poisonous and there is no safe amount of exposure. It is of particular concern for children, as it damages their developing brains and ability to learn.

The system would also have very little impact on the environment, in contrast to livestock farming, scientists say

Combining solar power and microbes could produce 10 times more protein than crops such as soya beans, according to a new study.

The system would also have very little impact on the environment, the researchers said, in stark contrast to livestock farming which results in huge amounts of climate-heating gases as well as water pollution.

A powerful form of clean energy already exists – and it is far more reliable than wind and solar

On 30 April, the Indian Point nuclear power plant 30 miles north of New York City was shut down. For decades the facility provided the overwhelming majority of the city’s carbon-free electricity as well as good union jobs for almost a thousand people. Federal regulators had deemed the plant perfectly safe.

Related: Earth is trapping ‘unprecedented’ amount of heat, Nasa says

Marsupials introduced to Maria Island north-west of Tasmania to safeguard their numbers but have decimated birdlife

An attempt to save the Tasmanian devil by shipping an “insurance population” to a tiny Australian island has come at a “catastrophic” cost to the birdlife there, including the complete elimination of little penguins, according to BirdLife Tasmania.

Maria Island, a 116-square-kilometre island north-west of Tasmania, was home to 3,000 breeding pairs of little penguins around a decade ago.

Economic growth is inextricably linked to the climate crisis, but the past year has taught us that such growth isn’t essential

Some of the most striking images from the early days of the pandemic, when public health orders and lockdowns ground economies to a halt, were the arresting photos of the Himalayas, suddenly visible from across northern India, as decades of unrelenting smog finally abated. Unbelievably, some locals glimpsed the immense mountain range for the first time in their lives.

It’s never too late to clear things up. And the pandemic has revived a movement that has its roots in the 18th century, when the word “sustainability” was first coined (in German) to describe a new approach to forestry enabling a continual harvest of wood. It’s a movement widely believed to have entered the mainstream with the 1987 Our Common Future report – a UN-backed initiative, overseen by Norway’s then prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, which laid out an ambitious pathway towards a “sustainable economy”. This left us with the enduringly relevant definition of sustainability as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

Alliance of doctors and nurses calls for environment bill to include reduction in small particle pollution limits

Medical leaders are urging Boris Johnson to cut legal levels of air pollution in the UK to below World Health Organization limits in response to the death of the schoolgirl Ella Kissi-Debrah from toxic air.

Members of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change are calling for the reduction in limits of PM2.5 to be included in the environment bill, which returns to parliament this week.

Conservationists warn of impact on world’s largest mammal migration, key to seed dispersal across Africa

Plans to create a huge commercial farm next to a national park in Zambia could have a “catastrophic” impact on wildlife, conservationists have warned, threatening vital habitat for bats undertaking the world’s biggest mammal migration.

Every October, about 10 million straw-coloured fruit bats descend on the evergreen swamps of Kasanka national park in central Zambia from across Africa, feasting on figs and fruit and berries in the surrounding area, and dispersing seeds across the continent in their epic journey. The park is home to 479 bird species and 114 mammals.

Proposals would allow common plastics to be used despite valid concerns about possible harms, scientists say

New rules on chemicals to be debated by the EU this week would allow most polymers to be used without further checks, according to a group of scientists.

Only about 6% out of about 200,000 polymers would require extensive safety checks under proposals being discussed as part of Europe’s Reach chemicals regulations.

Majority support subsidising EV purchases and setting a date to ban import of petrol-powered cars, while others prefer a carbon tax to lower emissions

Australia’s top economists overwhelmingly back government measures to speed the transition to electric cars in order to meet emission reduction targets.

An exclusive poll of 62 of Australia’s preeminent economists – selected by their peers – finds 51 back measures to boost the takeup of electric cars including subsidising public charging stations, subsidising the purchase of all-electric vehicles, and setting a date to ban the import of traditionally powered cars.

Countrywide scheme is flourishing after being set up to reverse a 75% decline in insect populations

To escape the Berlin bustle on a summer afternoon, all that Derek O’Doyle and his dog Frida have to do is lap the noisy building site outside their inner-city apartment, weave their way through the queue in front of the ice-cream van, and squeeze between two gridlocked lorries to cross over Baerwaldstrasse.

Bordered by a one-way traffic system lies a bucolic 1,720 sq metre haven as colourful as a Monet landscape: blue cornflowers, red poppies, white cow parsley and purple field scabious dot a sea of nettles and wild grass as armies of insects buzz through the air. Two endangered carpenter bees, larger than their honey bee cousins and with pitch-black abdomens, gorge themselves on a bush of yellow gorse.

Financial aid ‘critical’ to help developing countries limit fossil fuels – and make Cop26 a success, says UN

The head of climate change at the UN has warned that world leaders are still “far away” from securing a deal to limit the disastrous effects of global heating, with less than five months to go before a key summit in Glasgow.

Time is now running out, said Patricia Espinosa, who was formerly foreign minister of Mexico but now leads the UN on climate policy. She told the Observer that although advances had been made at the G7 meeting in Cornwall last weekend, progress had not been made on honouring past commitments to find $100bn (£72.5bn) a year to help developing countries invest in green technologies.

Exploratory project in Botswana and Namibia is threat to ecosystems, local communities and wildlife, conservationists say

Tens of thousands of African elephants are under threat from plans for a massive new oilfield in one of the continent’s last great wildernesses, experts have warned.

Campaigners and conservationists fear the proposed oilfield stretching across Namibia and Botswana would devastate regional ecosystems and wildlife as well as local communities.

Student Climate Network planning more demonstrations over oil firm’s funding of climate crisis exhibition

A group of activists who were threatened with arrest on Saturday evening after staging an “occupation” of the Science Museum in London have vowed to renew their fight on Sunday.

The London branch of the UK Student Climate Network (UKSCN) organised a demonstration at the museum in protest at its decision to accept sponsorship from fossil fuel giant Shell.

Australia sees a high-profile show of political backing for gas even as world leaders and investors exert pressure to shift away from fossil fuels

It took a major international investment group with $279bn under its control to break through the climate-laden rhetoric of geopolitics last week.

You may not have heard of Robeco Institutional Asset Management, but on Thursday the Netherlands-based asset manager made a stunning declaration, singling out Australia as a country with a “particularly high-risk profile” that it wants to pressure to transition out of fossil fuels.