Environment | The Guardian

IFS suggests gifts of land before a certain date could be tax-free so that elderly farmers would not be caught outMinisters should give farmers an inheritance tax holiday for the next few years, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said as it warned that government changes to agricultural taxes risked treating some landowners unfairly.Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, announced in her budget last month that farmers with a business worth more than 1m could be subjected to 20% inheritance tax, prompting a tractor protest outside parliament. Continue reading...

Experts say financial movements mean poor nations will in effect get billions less in value from 300bn pledgeA failure to factor in inflation means the $300bn (240bn) climate finance deal agreed at Cop29 is not the tripling of pledges that has been claimed, economists have said.The international talks in Baku were pulled back from the brink of collapse early on Sunday morning when negotiators struck an agreement in which rich countries promised to raise $300bn a year by 2035. On paper, this is a tripling of the previous climate finance target of $100bn a year by 2020, and has been trumpeted as such by the UN and others. Continue reading...

Britain wanted much better outcomes on many issues, but seeing the ambition at the conference gives me hope for the futureThe climate crisis is all around us. And the world is not moving nearly fast enough. In that context, the Cop process for climate negotiations feels frustratingly slow. Yet it is the best mechanism for multilateral action we have, so we have to use it to do everything we can to speed up action.The UK went to Cop29 determined to play its part in a successful negotiation because it is in our national interest. As the prime minister said in Baku earlier this month, there is no national security without climate security. That is so clear from the effects of Storm Bert over the past couple of days. If we do not act, we can expect more and more of these extreme and devastating outcomes.Ed Milband is secretary of state for energy security and net zeroDo 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. Continue reading...

My negotiating team tried in vain to push up support for the global south. Lessons must be learned before the next summit in Brazil

After spending most of his life on commercial vessels, Guillaume Picard is now fighting to keep these vast liners out of the French port of Marseille

Mexico is a leading international pork producer, but Yucatan residents say the waste oozing from hundreds of enormous hog farms is destroying the environmentThe stink of excrement was the first thing the residents of Sitilpech noticed when the farm opened in 2017. It hung over the colourful one-storey homes and kitchen gardens in the Maya town in Yucatan, and has never left. Next, the trees stopped bearing fruit, their leaves instead covered with black spots. Then, the water from the vast, porous aquifer emerged from the well with a horrible, overwhelming stench.Before, we used that water for everything: for cooking, for drinking, for bathing. Now we can't even give it to animals. Today, we have to give the chickens purified water because otherwise they get diarrhoea," says one resident. The radishes grow thin and the coriander often turns yellow. This has always been a quiet town, where life was very good until that farm started," they say. Continue reading...

Female almost the length of a shipping container was found dead on a drumline in August, primary industries department has revealed

Growing infestations along the Logan river pose very high risk' of spreading downstream, Invasive Species Council says

The stakes are high for donors at next month's IDA summit in Seoul, but not investing in development means more instability globallyMultilateralism is under attack. A toxic brew of multiplying conflicts, worsening climate impact, new pandemics and spiralling debt has brought the system to its knees, appearing almost incapable of properly addressing these converging crises. Adding the unknowns of a Trump administration into the mix will do little to allay concerns.My own critiques of the current multilateral system are well documented, but I do not subscribe to the view that it has no future. What's needed is a total reboot. Continue reading...

In today's newsletter: The view from Azerbaijan is of disappointingly low direct finance guarantees to the developing world, although it is less bad than nothing' Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First EditionGood morning. Cop29 in Baku finally finished at 5.31am local time yesterday, more than 35 hours after it was due to conclude - and the extra time did not lead to a triumphant outcome.On the biggest issue under discussion, the transfer of climate finance from the developed to the developing world, the headline figure in the agreement was $1.3tn (1tn) by 2035. But that masked much smaller commitments in direct finance, mostly in the form of grants and low-interest loans, which amounted to only $300bn. Nor is the outcome an injustice whose impact is limited to the global South, of course: if the money isn't there to support a green energy transition in developing economies, temperatures will rise all over the world.UK weather | Storm Bert is expected to cause further disruption on Monday after torrential downpours caused devastating" flooding over the weekend and a major incident in Wales. At least five people have died in England and Wales since the storm hit.Economy | A defiant Rachel Reeves will rebuke critics of her tax-raising budget on Monday, telling disgruntled business leaders at the Confederation of British Industry that they have offered no alternatives". CBI director-general Rain Newton-Smith will meanwhile accuse Reeves of jeopardising economic growth, saying: Tax rises like this must never again be simply done to business."Britons detained abroad | Families of prominent British prisoners detained abroad have urged the foreign secretary to deliver on pledges to help secure their release with signs of growing resistance from diplomats. There are fears that they are resisting a plan to appoint a special envoy on those detained abroad without a fair trial lest it affect trade deals.Middle East | A Guardian investigation has found that Israel used a US munition to target and kill three journalists and wound three more in a 25 October attack in south Lebanon which legal experts have called a potential war crime.Europe | A little-known, far-right populist took the lead in Romania's presidential election on Sunday, and will probably face leftist prime minister Marcel Ciolacu in a runoff in two weeks, an outcome that has rocked the country's political landscape. Calin Georgescu led the polls with about 22% of the vote after nearly 93% of votes were counted.The money could come not just in the form of the grants and very low-interest loans that developing countries need, but ... from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral and alternative sources". Money will be mobilised" rather than provided - a nice distinction that allows for the inclusion of private sector co-investing to be counted alongside public money from government budgets and development banks. Continue reading...

Nearly all observers believe Chris Bowen is strongly committed to action. Most agree that can't be said for his partyCop29 in Baku has concluded but its outcome is disappointing - in many dimensions. Its decisions on finance - agreeing that the developed world would provide US$300bn a year by 2035 - come nowhere close to what's needed. Ultimately, it may even be poisonous because of its lack of ambition and muddled scope - it does not even cover loss and damage.Baku saw little sense of urgency or increased climate action, despite the universal message from scientific studies, including the Climate Action Tracker. Our global update this year found that in the last three years there's been virtually no improvement in either action on the ground, nor ambition to take action in the future. And this is despite a series of seemingly never-ending, global warming-linked deadly catastrophes unfolding around the world. Continue reading...

A rushed final text in Baku strains trust between nations, as inadequate climate finance commitments leave vulnerable countries calling for justiceThe hasty imposition of a deal at the UN climate conference, Cop29, in Azerbaijan, over the objections of poorer nations has fractured global trust and undermined recent progress. This was supposed to be the finance Cop" when two dozen industrialised countries - including the US, Europe and Canada - promised to pay developing nations for the damage caused by their rise. Instead, developing nations - led by a group including India, Nigeria and Bolivia - say this weekend's agreement for $300bn a year in 2035 is too little, too late. Worse, rich-world governments will be able to escape their obligations by being able to rely on cash from private companies and international lenders.Independent experts say the developing world, excluding China, would need $1.3tn a year by 2035 to fund its green transition and keep temperature rises in line with the Paris agreement. The climate finance target, pushed through by the Azerbaijani chair, is described by poor nations as a death sentence for those already drowning under rising seas and facing devastating costs.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. Continue reading...

Some countries say deal should not have been done and is abysmally poor' compared with what is neededThe climate finance deal agreed at Cop29 is a travesty of justice" that should not have been adopted, some countries' negotiators have said.The climate conference came to a dramatic close early on Sunday morning when negotiators struck an agreement to triple the flow of climate finance to poorer countries. Continue reading...

Away from the brutal main negotiations, there were important strides forward. The science can - and must - rise above politicsThe resolutions reached at Cop29 on tackling the climate crisis, in the early hours of Sunday morning, are gravely disappointing but much better than nothing. And nothing" was almost the result of this climate conference in Baku. This was one of the most difficult of the 29 Cops I have followed.The deal falls a long way short of hopes at the start of the climate summit, and even further behind what the world urgently needs. But coming after negotiations that frequently teetered on the very edge of collapse, the result does keep climate talks alive despite Donald Trump's second coming, and has laid the first ever international foundation, however weak, on which the world could finally construct a system of financing poor countries' transition away from fossil fuels. Continue reading...

Countries agree on how to create, trade and register credits to meet climate commitmentsIt was once among the most promising ways to funnel climate finance to vulnerable communities and nature conservation. The trading of carbon credits, each equal to a tonne of CO that has been reduced or removed from the atmosphere, was meant to target quick, cost-effective wins on climate and biodiversity. In 2022, demand soared as companies made environmental commitments using offsets, with the market surpassing $2bn (1.6bn) while experiencing exponential growth. But the excitement did not last.Two years later, many carbon markets organisations are clinging on for survival, with several firms losing millions of dollars a year and cutting jobs. Scandals about environmentally worthless credits, an FBI charge against a leading project developer for a $100m fraud, and a lack of clarity about where money from offsets went has caused their market value to plunge by more than half. Predictions that standing rainforests and other carbon-rich ecosystems would become multibillion-dollar assets have not yet come to pass. Continue reading...

The broadcaster thinks if he fires up his farming fanbase they can shield him from his obligation to contribute his fair share to societyI read Andrew Michael Hurley's new novel, Barrowbeck, in preparation for co-hosting Tales of the Weird, a timely event on the folk horror genre at the British Library earlier this month. I'm not the most informed commentator on this literary subset by any means, but I am, after Mark Gatiss, one of the most famous, and so I am often asked to pontificate about it. That's the way the world works, I'm afraid. That's why Hugh Dennis and David Baddiel are presenting a new show for Channel 4 about cycling across France, instead of the cyclist who cycled across France earlier this year and won the Tour de France cycling race, whoever he was.Barrowbeck follows the fortunes of a Yorkshire hamlet, from an itinerant tribe making a pact with their gods 2,000 years ago, in which they promise to honour the land, to the near future of 2041. There, climate change has seen that same land flooded, some inhabitants holding on in hope as a cycle of life that stretched back millennia indisputably ends, as it will for all of us, sooner, it seems, rather than later. And these are the doomed lands our wealthiest farmers are taking to the streets to inherit (at half the inheritance tax anyone else would pay).Stewart Lee tours Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf next year, with a Royal Festival Hall run in July. He is also a guest of all-female Fall karaoke act the Fallen Women, at the Lexington, London on 28 December Continue reading...

Countries must curb production now and tackle plastic's full life cycle, says Norwegian minister Anne Beathe Tvinnereim ahead of key UN talks this weekThe world will be unable to cope" with the sheer volume of plastic waste a decade from now unless countries agree to curbs on production, the co-chair of a coalition of key countries has warned ahead of crunch talks on curbing global plastic pollution.Speaking before the final, critical round of UN talks on the first global treaty to end plastic waste, in Busan, South Korea, this week, Norway's minister for international development, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, acknowledged the split that had developed between plastic-producing countries and others. She represents more than 60 high ambition" nations, led by Rwanda and Norway, who want plastic pollution tackled over its full life cycle. Crucially, this means clamping down heavily on production. Continue reading...

Despite its imperfections the process of tackling the climate crisis will not be derailed, even in the face of US backtrackingIt was never an indication of great things to come when the chief executive of Cop29, Elnur Soltanov, was filmed attempting to broker gas and oil deals for Azerbaijan in the slipstream of the past fortnight's UN climate summit in Baku.More than 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists have been operating in and around Cop29, outnumbering delegates from the 10 most climate-vulnerable countries combined. Many, including Greta Thunberg, now argue that the UN climate process has been entirely hijacked by corporate interests, reduced to a global stage for greenwash.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

The deal was met with long applause, cheering, whistling and embraces but few are happy with itMarching in silence with their arms crossed high, activists from around the world protested the draft deal at the Cop29 venue last night.Pay up or shut up!" the campaign group Demand Climate Justice said in a post on social media. Continue reading...

Deep divisions remain after high-stakes talks end with agreement to help developing world shift to low-carbon economyRich and poor countries concluded a trillion-dollar deal on the climate crisis in the early hours of Sunday morning, after marathon talks and days of bitter recriminations ended in what campaigners said was a betrayal".The developing world will receive at least $1.3tn (1tn) a year in funds to help them shift to a low-carbon economy and cope with the impacts of extreme weather, by 2035. Continue reading...

Rich countries resist increasing their contributions to poor countries that are bearing the brunt of global heatingTalks on a new trillion-dollar global deal to tackle the climate crisis dragged on late into Saturday night, as rich and poor countries fought over how much cash was needed, and who should pay.Rich countries want to offer only about $300bn out of the $1.3tn a year needed from their own coffers, with the rest to come from other sources including potential new taxes and private investors. Continue reading...

Forever chemicals' pose health threat to developing children and linked with preterm birth, shorter lactationHigher usage of personal care products among pregnant or nursing women leads to higher levels of toxic PFAS forever chemicals" in their blood and breast milk, new research shows, presenting a serious health threat to developing children.The new study helps connect the dots among previous papers that have found concerning levels of PFAS in personal care products, umbilical cord blood, breast milk and shown health risks for developing children. Continue reading...

Exclusive: News of changes to usually non-editable document risks placing climate summit in jeopardy'A Saudi Arabian delegate has been accused of directly making changes to an official Cop29 negotiating text, it can be revealed.Cop presidencies usually circulate negotiating texts as non-editable PDF documents to all countries simultaneously, and they are then discussed. Giving one party editing access risks placing this entire Cop in jeopardy", one expert said. Continue reading...

Targeted research must be launched urgently to save sea creatures and plant life, oceanography centre warnsBritain is facing a future of increasingly catastrophic marine heatwaves that could destroy shellfish colonies and fisheries and have devastating impacts on communities around the coast of the UK.That is the stark conclusion of a new report by the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), based in Southampton, which is pressing for the launch of a targeted research programme as a matter of urgency to investigate how sudden temperature rises in coastal seawater could affect marine habitats and seafood production in the UK. Continue reading...

Among sweeping rightwing electoral victories across the globe, the big loser of the elections has been climate'An unprecedented year of elections around the world has underscored a sobering trend - in many countries the commitment to act on the climate crisis has either stalled or is eroding, even as disasters and record temperatures continue to mount.So far 2024, called the biggest election year in human history" by the United Nations with around half the world's population heading to the polls, there have been major wins for Donald Trump, the US president-elect who calls the climate crisis a big hoax"; the climate-skeptic right in European Union elections; and Vladimir Putin, who won another term and has endured sanctions to maintain Russia's robust oil and gas exports. Continue reading...

Fourth consecutive year that seals have bred at Orford Ness, where more than 130 pups were born last seasonThe first grey seal pup of the season has been born at a remote shingle spit that was once a cold war weapons-testing site.The birth at Orford Ness on the Suffolk coast marks the fourth consecutive year of seals breeding there, which began in 2021 after a reduction in visitor access because of the Covid pandemic. Continue reading...

EU and nations including the UK, US and Australia indicate they will make the increase in exchange for changes to a draft text, sources sayMajor rich countries at UN climate talks in Azerbaijan have agreed to lift a global financial offer to help developing nations tackle the climate crisis to $300bn a year, as ministers met through the night in a bid to salvage a deal.The Guardian understands the Azeri hosts brokered a lengthy closed-door meeting with a small group of ministers and delegation heads, including China, the EU, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, the UK, US and Australia, on key areas of dispute on climate finance and the transition away from fossil fuels. Continue reading...

Conservationists failed to capture elusive insects this summer, so Kristina Kenda offered to step inWhen British conservationists flew to Slovenia this summer hoping to catch enough singing cicadas to reintroduce the species to the New Forest, the grasshopper-sized insects proved impossible to locate, flying elusively at great height between trees.Now a 12-year-old girl has offered to save the Species Recovery Trust's reintroduction project. Kristina Kenda, the daughter of the Airbnb hosts who accommodated the trust's director, Dom Price, and conservation officer Holly Stanworth in the summer summer, will put out special nets to hopefully catch enough cicadas to re-establish a British population. Continue reading...

Talk grows of a walkout from poor countries in response to unacceptable' and insulting' finance proposalDeveloping countries were being urged by civil society groups to reject a bad deal" at the UN climate talks on Friday night, after rich nations refused to increase an insulting" offer of finance to help them tackle the climate crisis.The stage is set for a bitter row on Saturday over how much money poor countries should receive from the governments of the rich world, which have offered $250bn a year by 2035 to help the poor shift to a low-carbon economy and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather. Continue reading...

Residents concerned as North Carolina city lifts boil advisory and scientists detect lead in water at area schoolsWhen the western North Carolina town Swannanoa was battered by Hurricane Helene in September, two large trees crushed Stephen Knight's home. His family of six was launched into a complicated web of survival: finding a temporary home, applying for disaster relief, filing insurance claims.The new logistics of living included the daily search for food and water. Until earlier this week, most residents of this town east of Asheville had no drinkable tap water for 52 days. After the storm damaged infrastructure around the region, water had been partly restored in mid-October. It was good for flushing toilets but not safe for consumption. In some places, sediment left the water inky like black tea. Continue reading...

Chancellor understood to be determined to keep policy despite Treasury analysing ways to soften impactRachel Reeves is holding firm against a U-turn on inheritance tax for farmers, despite the Treasury analysing ways of softening the impact.The chancellor is understood to be determined not to drop the policy even though some Labour MPs - and even ministers - are worrying about the political fallout that has led to farmers protesting in Westminster this week. Continue reading...

Text decides' on $250bn for developing countries by 2035 - but faces criticism from African Group of NegotiatorsA new text of the Cop29 deal has yet to emerge, but civil society activists have not given up hope, reports Damian Carrington, Guardian environment editor.Hilda Nakabuye, 27, from Fridays for Future campaign group in Uganda, said:We are holding on to hope. As a mother I am here to represent my people, my community, but also future generations that we hold close and dear to our hearts and why we are all in this fight. The ones least responsible for climate change undergo its worst effects.We know what power we hold: the power to act. We are in an emergency. This COP is all about the money, but communities on the ground are not seeing the money. When the climate hits we need to respond like any other emergency, because it is an emergency. We all know deep down there is more than enough money to fill the loss and damage fund with trillions, so why are we still pleading for the bare minimum? Continue reading...

Cop29 is taking place in a country whose economy has long been dependent on its oil reservesOil runs deep in Azerbaijan, the host country of this year's UN climate summit. Just 30 minutes south-west of the Cop29 conference centre lies the site of the world's first industrially drilled oil well, opened in 1846.Just metres away sit a handful of operating oil wells, nodding away. The Guardian spoke to an employee of Azerbaijan's state-owned oil and gas company, Socar, who was working on one of the wells. Asked what oil meant for Azerbaijan, the 47-year-old worker said: Too much!" Continue reading...

Levels in people's blood for 37 chemicals linked to health issues declined after they were designated under Prop 65California's nation-leading restrictions on toxic chemicals in consumer products reduced the population's body levels for many dangerous compounds linked to cancer, birth defects, reproductive harm and other serious health issues.New peer-reviewed research showed levels in residents' blood for 37 chemicals the authors analyzed had declined after the substances were designated under Proposition 65, which regulates toxic chemicals in consumer goods. Continue reading...

Labour inherited a dire situation that needed desperate change - but powerful lobbies make any tax reform near-impossibleThat was a state-of-the-nation image, those thousands of farmers in Whitehall protesting about inheritance tax (IHT). Their little inheritors on toy tractors could hardly have offered a better portrait of a Britain where even modest reforms of wildly irrational tax reliefs are near-impossible. The country loves Old MacDonald and detests IHT.This is a symbol of the great malaise those same contrary voters feel about the profound unfairness in this most unequal of countries. Few think it's OK for the top 1% to own almost a quarter of all wealth, or the top 0.1% to take about 60 times more income than their population share, while we are living through the greatest decline in living standards since records began.Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The best of this week's wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...

Petrostate's rebuke comes as Saudi Arabia and allies try to derail transition promise made at climate talks last year

This blog is now closedHeatwave conditions are building over parts of Victoria and New South Wales today.According to the Bureau of Meteorology, much of Victoria will experience heatwave conditions, with maximum temperatures in the mid to high 30s. Continue reading...

Who better to ask than corvids

The return of Trump demands extreme watchfulness. But effective vigilance also requires energy and strength, mental and emotional recharge and balanceA long walk in the mountains last weekend brought sudden perspective to just how heavily the shoutiness and anger was weighing.Suddenly there was only birdsong, the rustling tree canopies, the gentle burbling of the Snowy River and the wind whispering through the trunks of ancient ghost gums. This was anything but a quiet quietness. But it was the sound of a serenity that only nature can gift - a noise of extreme unplugged-ness if you like. Continue reading...

Rich country budgets are stretched amid inflation, Covid and Ukraine war, Mary Robinson tells Cop29Poor countries may have to compromise on demands for cash to tackle global heating, a former UN climate envoy has said, as UN talks entered their final hours in deadlock.In comments that are likely to disappoint poorer countries at the Cop29 summit, Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and twice a UN climate envoy, said rich country budgets were stretched amid inflation, Covid and conflicts including Russia's war in Ukraine. Continue reading...

Climate crisis, habitat loss and poaching have reduced its numbers - but will Trump put the kibosh on protections?They are the tallest animal to roam the Earth and have become an icon of children's books, toys and awed wildlife documentaries. But giraffes are in decline, which has prompted the US government to list them as endangered for the first time.Giraffes will be listed under the US Endangered Species Act, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed in a move that will cover five subspecies of the animal. The agency hopes the listing will crack down on the poaching of giraffes, as the US is a leading destination of rugs, pillowcases, boots, furniture and even Bible covers made from giraffe body parts. Continue reading...

This live blog is closedBritish prime minister Keir Starmer says he is deeply saddened" to hear that Prescott has died, and called him a true giant of Labour".In a statement on X, he said, I am deeply saddened to hear of the death of John Prescott. John was a true giant of the Labour movement. On behalf of the Labour Party, I send my condolences to Pauline and his family, to the city of Hull, and to all those who knew and loved him. May he rest in peace."He possessed an inherent ability to connect with people about the issues that mattered to them - a talent that others spend years studying and cultivating, but that was second nature to him.He fought like hell to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol and was an unwavering champion of climate action for decades to come. I'm forever grateful to John for that commitment to solving the climate crisis and will miss him as a dear friend." Continue reading...

Former climate minister for Canada reacts after Saudi delegation said it will not accept any text that targets any specific sectors, including fossil fuels'My colleague Patrick Greenfield is following the plenary where countries give their formal response to the draft text.Cop29 president Mukhtar Babayev gets the plenary started. He asks countries to give their thoughts on the latest iterations of text to inform future versions. He says that with collective effort, he believes that the summit can be finished by 6pm tomorrow. Continue reading...

Adani rejects allegations that press releases and social media posts implied members of the group were not legitimate' Aboriginal people with a connection to sacred site

Consulting giant had said it engages with clients to help them transition to cleaner energy even as it knew they were in line to exceed climate targets

The prime minister, Keir Starmer, has hit out at the lack of Conservative support for climate targets and said it shows 'just how far the party has fallen'. 'It's a shame,' he said. 'When Cop was in Scotland, there was a real unity across the house about the importance of tackling one of the most central issues of our time,' Starmer said in Commons after returning from the G20 and Cop29

Local and state initiatives can act as proof of concept' for transformative climate and jobs legislationAs Trump and Trumpism devastate the American political landscape, how can people counter this destructive juggernaut? For the past five years, I have been studying how people are actually implementing the elements of the Green New Deal through what has become a Green New Deal from Below. This framework, which ordinary people are already putting into practice, is an approach to organizing that can form a significant means for resisting and even overcoming the Trump agenda.The Green New Deal is a visionary program designed to protect the Earth's climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice and eliminating poverty. The Green New Deal erupted into public attention as a proposal for national legislation, and the struggle to embody it in national legislation is ongoing.Jeremy Brecher is the author of the new book The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy. He is the author of more than a dozen books on labor and social movements and the co-founder and senior advisor of the Labor Network for Sustainability Continue reading...

Four-day exclusion zone an improper use of Marine Safety Act, judge rules, despite skilful' submission from transport minister Jo Haylen

Exclusive: Trail would help region with few areas where people can walk in countryside, report saysA new trail along the east coast of England should be created, a Tory thinktank has said, because farmland is preventing those who live there from having access to nature.A report from Onward has found that in most rural areas, people enjoy extensive rights-of-way networks. But across the east of England, there are many areas where people have barely anywhere they are allowed to walk in the countryside. This, the report says, is because of large areas of high-grade farmland in that area, but also because Lincolnshire has the largest backlog for recognition of historical but unrecorded rights of way, with more than 450 outstanding applications. Continue reading...