Auditor general finds no framework to maximise value from buybacks, including from company founded by Angus TaylorA highly critical audit of $190m spent by the federal government on water entitlements in 2017 without open tender has found that the department of agriculture did not develop a framework designed to maximise value for money.The acting auditor general, Rona Mellor, found that the department only negotiated on price in one purchase and then made just one counter-offer. Continue reading...

Activists protest at Samsung Electronics store in Sydney over debt purchase by affiliate Samsung SecuritiesA company in the Samsung Group invested in Adani’s Australian coal operation last year in a deal that has prompted environmental activists to call for a boycott of the Korean conglomerate’s flagship electronics products.Samsung Securities, a publicly-traded brokerage and part of the broader group of affiliated companies that includes Samsung Electronics, purchased a share of $120m of debt in the Adani-owned Abbot Point coal terminal last year with another Korean firm. Continue reading...

Acidic runoff from abandoned Urals mine puts spotlight on hazardous industrial wasteRussian prosecutors are inspecting a facility supposed to treat acid runoff from an abandoned Urals mine after videos emerged of streams running orange.Drone footage uploaded last week by an Instagram travel blogger showed a bright-orange landscape near the disused copper-sulphide mine close to the village of Lyovikha. Continue reading...

Across the world, failure of official advice to provide sustainable, healthy diets is shocking, say scientistsOfficial dietary advice across the world is harming both the environment and people’s health, according to scientists who have carried out the most comprehensive assessment of national dietary guidelines to date.Food is responsible for a quarter of the emissions driving the climate crisis and millions of early deaths. The analysis assessed all available dietary guidelines, covering 85 countries and every region of the world. The researchers said governments’ failure to help people eat good diets was “shocking”. Continue reading...

Plan reduces number of projects, such as pipelines and highways, subject to review and limits scope of investigationsThe Trump administration is rolling back major environmental protections that require the US government to comprehensively analyze how proposed projects like pipelines and highways affect surrounding communities.Trump announced the changes on Wednesday afternoon from a UPS airport hub in Atlanta, where he backed the widening of commercial truck lanes on Interstate Highway 75. The White House said projects like the Atlanta expansion would have taken seven years to permit and now should take less than two years. Continue reading...

Tiny west African country enjoys warm temperatures, which are cooler on its tourist-filled coastAs the smallest country on the African mainland – just 30 miles (50km) across at its widest point, and barely larger than Devon and Cornwall combined – you would not expect the Gambia to have a very varied climate. The low-lying nature of the country, which runs along the Gambia River, also means there is little or no altitudinal variation.But there is a difference in temperature, and especially humidity, between the Atlantic coast in the west and places further upriver: inland sites are noticeably hotter and more humid, especially from March to June. Hence the vast majority of the holiday resorts are situated along the 50-mile coastline, where pleasantly warm winds also offer some relief from the heat. Continue reading...

Egypt fears hydroelectric project will restrict limited waters on which its population dependsEthiopia has allowed a controversial dam built across the headwaters of the Nile to fill with rain water, raising tensions with Egypt and Sudan.The huge hydroelectric project on the Blue Nile, known as the Grand Renaissance dam, is at the centre of Ethiopia’s plan to become Africa’s biggest power exporter, but Egypt fears already limited Nile waters, on which its population of more than 100 million people depends, might be restricted. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Shine Energy, which has proposed a new plant at Collinsville in north Queensland, describes itself as a ‘traditional owner company’The company proposing a coal-fired power station at Collinsville in north Queensland, Shine Energy, is promoting itself as a representative of Birriah traditional owners without having consulted their formal native title body, a Birriah elder has said.Shine Energy – which has been promised $3.3m by the federal government to conduct a feasibility proposal on the controversial power station – describes itself as a “traditional owner company”. Continue reading...

Conditions at plants contributed to transmission of virus, experts say, as country remains second only to US for deaths

Scientists aren’t sure they can mitigate the spread of the virus, which causes fevers, internal bleeding and liver failureIn early March, Gary Roemer was walking in the hills of New Mexico with his dog, Duke. Usually Duke would chase rabbits, but never catch them. This time, though, he brought back a jackrabbit.Roemer, a wildlife biologist with the University of New Mexico in Las Cruces, initially thought the rabbit was just feeble. But the next day he found a fresh carcass with grisly conditions: it was bleeding from the nose and the anus. “That’s when I thought: this is pretty unusual,” Roemer says. Continue reading...

Oklahoma no longer has legal authority to prosecute cases involving Native Americans across about 3m acresThe news alert about a ruling from US supreme court took Kimberly Tiger by surprise.On Thursday, the court ruled that the federal government never formally disestablished the expansive reservation that is home to Tiger’s tribe, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, in Oklahoma. Continue reading...

Plan to stamp out ‘lethal’ plastic, which gets stuck in airways of wildlife and pollutes waterways, follows South Australia’s proposalThe Queensland government will move to ban plastic straws, cutlery, stirrers and plates in a bid to stem the destructive effects of plastic on marine life and waterways.The government introduced legislation on Wednesday that would ban the single-use items, making Queensland the second state after South Australia to put such a proposal before parliament. Continue reading...

G20 countries aim their pandemic bailout spending at fossil fuel industries, leaving Paris climate change targets in doubt

Conservationists say timber millers may be ‘subject to legal exposure’ if they accept logs from VicForests ‘salvage logging’A proposal by Victoria’s state-owned forestry agency to log forest burnt in the summer bushfires would affect habitat for more than 30 threatened species, according to analysis by The Wilderness Society.VicForests has proposed opening 59 new coupes in the state’s north-east and East Gippsland regions for so-called salvage logging of burnt native forests. Continue reading...

IPPR says 12m homes will need to be refitted to meet net-zero targets but £3bn earmarked is not nearly enoughThe government’s new plans to upgrade the energy efficiency of homes will make only a fraction of the progress needed to help the UK meet its legally binding climate targets, according to a new study.A report by IPPR, a left-leaning thinktank, has found at least 12 million homes will need to be fitted with low-carbon heat pumps and energy efficiency measures, such as insulation, over the next 30 years for the UK to meet its net zero targets. Continue reading...

Move to help finance climate ambitions follows calls from campaigners and economistsThe UK government is poised to reveal plans for a new state-backed green bank to help finance Britain’s climate ambitions, three years after ministers agreed to sell the UK’s Green Investment Bank.Kwasi Kwarteng, the energy minister, said that he expects the government to set out how it plans to create a successor to the Green Investment Bank “in the not-too-distant future”. Continue reading...

Loop will offer 150 products from major brands in refillable containers, with more to followThe UK’s first online shopping service that delivers food, drink and household essentials from leading brands in reusable packaging is to launch on Wednesday, aiming to kickstart moves to reduce single use plastic that stalled as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.Loop – already established in the US and France and due to be rolled out to Japan, Australia and Canada next year – is one of the most ambitious attempts yet to eliminate plastic waste from the household shop. It is backed by major consumer goods companies such as Unilever and PepsiCo, who have created eco-versions of popular brands – including Tropicana, Persil and Hellmann’s – to sell via the website. Continue reading...

Tourism, transport and the climate crisis found to be major drivers of rise in alien plants and animals, which can decimate ecosystems

Proposal outlines $2tn for clean energy infrastructure and climate solutions, to be spent as quickly as possible in next four yearsJoe Biden has unveiled a new, more aggressive climate and jobs plan which advisers say he would take to Congress “immediately”, if elected president.The new proposal outlines $2tn for clean energy infrastructure and other climate solutions, to be spent as quickly as possible in the next four years, what would be the Democrat’s first term in office. Last year, he proposed $1.7tn in spending over 10 years. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Guardian Australia understands discussions between the government and Queensland firm Shine Energy have become fraughtThe federal government has not yet paid a $3.3m grant for a feasibility study on the proposed Collinsville coal-fired power station in north Queensland – more than a year after the study was first announced – because negotiations to establish a formal funding agreement with the proponent have stalled.The federal Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources told Guardian Australia it had not reached a funding agreement or provided any money to the tiny company Shine Energy for the study on the power station proposal, which was announced in March 2019 as a concession to pro-coal Queensland Nationals. Continue reading...

Greens deride $4.7m funding for technologies that may shade corals and make clouds more reflective as ‘Band-Aid solutions’A government-backed research program to make the Great Barrier Reef more resilient to global heating will spend $4.7m this financial year developing technologies that could shade corals and make clouds more reflective during marine heatwaves.The announcement confirms the development of a technique known as marine cloud brightening, trialled on the reef in March, will be backed as part of the government’s $443m grant being coordinated by the not-for-profit Great Barrier Reef Foundation. Continue reading...

Experts decry Tory policy that fails to ban new-builds in UK areas at high risk of floodingThe government’s long-awaited strategy for tackling floods in England does not go far enough and appears to conflict with Boris Johnson’s “build, build, build” plan for more housing, experts have said.Billed by ministers as the most comprehensive flood defence plan in a decade, the fresh approach will mean more money spent on natural solutions to counter floods, such as capturing water on fields. Continue reading...

WildEast aims to convince farmers, councils and others across East Anglia to pledge land to wildlifeReturning an area the size of Dorset to wild nature, reintroducing extinct lynx, pelicans and beavers and championing regenerative farming to restore soil health are the radical aims of a new charitable foundation.But the most revolutionary feature of WildEast may be that it is founded by three farmers in the most intensively farmed region of Britain. Continue reading...

New rules will allow large energy storage projects to bypass national planning systemGovernment ministers hope to triple Britain’s energy storage capacity by relaxing the planning rules which threatened to stifle a nationwide battery boom.The government will pass secondary legislation on Tuesday to allow large-scale energy storage projects to move ahead without the red tape and higher costs of navigating the national planning system. Continue reading...

Dismissal came days after release of new data showing increasing deforestation in the Brazilian AmazonBrazil’s government has fired an official at the national space agency Inpe whose department is responsible for satellite monitoring of the Amazon rainforest, just three days after June deforestation data reflected a continued increase in degradation.Lubia Vinhas was the general-coordinator of Brazilian space agency Inpe’s Earth Observation Institute, which is an umbrella for divisions that monitor the Amazon and panels to debate climate change with civil society organizations. Continue reading...

Report says there are substantial economic benefits to be had from ocean conservationInvesting in the marine environment offers many coastal states the possibility of a “blue recovery” from the coronavirus crisis, according to a report setting out substantial economic benefits from ocean conservation.Ending overfishing and allowing stocks to recover while ensuring fish farms operate on a sustainable basis would generate benefits of about $6.7tn (£5.3tn) over the next 30 years, according to an assessment of ocean economics by the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy. Continue reading...

World’s largest soaring bird flaps wings only 1% of time in flight, study shows

New water-sharing plans use data that ends at 2004 to calculate extractions from major tributaries in the Murray-Darling systemThe former NSW water minister Kevin Humphries has defended controversial legislation that effectively excludes some of the driest water years from figures used to calculate sustainable water allocations for irrigators, towns and the environment.Humphries, who confirmed he had been referred to the Independent Commission Against Corruption over unspecified decisions he took as water minister, told a NSW parliamentary committee that the 2014 legislation he introduced was to give greater certainty to all water users. Continue reading...

Investors give greenlight to $35bn worth of projects worldwide in first half of 2020

Diageo aims to begin bottling Johnnie Walker whisky using ‘world’s first’ design next year

MMTC-PAMP, a supplier to Apple and others, accused of not fully investigating alleged violationsA corporate watchdog is calling for the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) to suspend the membership of one of the world’s biggest gold refineries for its alleged failure to act over claims of human rights and environmental abuses at a mine in Tanzania.The UK-based Raid group says the Swiss-Indian venture MMTC-PAMP, which supplies gold to Apple, Nokia, Disney, Amazon, Tesla and others, has not fully investigated claims police guarding the North Mara mine have beaten, shot and sometimes killed locals. Continue reading...

€2bn, 475-mile Viking Link cable will share renewable energy between UK and DenmarkConstruction work has begun in Lincolnshire on the world’s longest subsea power cable, which will run between Britain and Denmark to share renewable energy between the two countries.The 475-mile (765km) cable is a joint-venture between National Grid in the UK and Denmark’s Energinet. By 2023, the high-voltage, direct-current link will transmit the equivalent of enough electricity to power 1.5m British homes between Bicker Fen in Lincolnshire and the South Jutland region in Denmark. Continue reading...

Thirty-three rivers break water level records as relief funds criticised as inadequateTorrential rains have continued to batter China, destroying homes and rendering millions of people homeless as residents fear they may be facing a repeat of floods that devastated the country more than 20 years ago.The country has raised its national emergency response to the second-highest level as water levels broke records not seen since 1998, when floods killed more than 3,000 people. Continue reading...

The coronavirus lockdown adds to challenges for those on the frontline of the war against poaching

Species classed as ‘conservation dependent’ under national laws so can be commercially traded despite suffering 90% drop in numbersA shark routinely sold in Australian fish shops has been listed as critically endangered by an international conservation body, prompting environmentalists to call for stronger protection of the species.It comes as the government is due to release an interim report into Australia’s national environmental laws, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Continue reading...

Conservationists say at least three females have produced offspring in the Forest of Dean

Exclusive: Australian Conservation Foundation escalates FOI battle over development at protected wetlands site near BrisbaneThe Australian Conservation Foundation has launched a legal bid to access documents – kept secret by the federal government – related to meetings between a major political party donor and authorities assessing plans for a development on protected wetlands near Brisbane.Walker Corporation plans to build a marina, hotel, shops and more than 3,000 apartments at Toondah Harbour. Continue reading...

Conservation charity aims to help restore 150,000 hectares of bee-friendly corridors to save the insects from extinctionAndrew Whitehouse has been on the cliffs at Prawle Point, south Devon, searching on his hands and knees for a rare bee. He saw only one last year, and so far this summer there has been no sign of the six-banded nomad bee with its striking yellow markings.Whitehouse fears it is on the brink of extinction because, as a parasitic bee, it depends on a host – the long-horned bee – in whose nest it lays its eggs, and the host is now also scarce. Continue reading...

While oil and gas are not alone in struggling in the economic slump, the reality of the climate crisis is starting to bite, analysts sayThe global oil and gas industry has crashed. In mid-June, BP – formerly British Petroleum – slashed the value of its assets by US$17.5bn and revealed plans to cut its workforce by 15%. It forecast the price of oil would be a third lower than expected for decades to come and said it may be forced to leave new fossil fuel discoveries in the ground.It was later joined by Royal Dutch Shell, which announced its own US$22bn writedown, with its vast gas business – including major liquefied natural gas (LNG) developments in Australia – expected to take the heaviest toll. Continue reading...

Architect is ignoring his own environment pledge, say critics

Emergency crews responded to the incident near Grafton but were unable to save teenage boy’s lifeA shark attack on New South Wales’s north coast has claimed the life of a 15-year-old boy.Witnesses have told police a shark attacked the teenager while he was surfing at Wilsons Headland at Wooli Beach, near Grafton, just before 2.30pm. Continue reading...

The state energy ministers still need to deliver on their promises, but imagine if any of them held the federal portfolioSometimes it just takes a bit of leadership.Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull likes to say that we must choose “engineering and economics” over “idiocy and ideology”. The New South Wales energy minister, Matt Kean, has been making the right choices. Continue reading...

Labor calls for greater transparency into fundraising of foundation, which was awarded $443m by Coalition

The pick of the world’s best flora and fauna photos, including a ring-tailed lemur and a spiky sea cucumber Continue reading...

Tehran says incident in early hours in garrison town of Gamdareh was a power outageIran has denied reports that fresh mysterious explosions have rocked two towns close to Tehran, accusing the west of waging psychological warfare by spreading false messages on social media.Reports suggested that the blasts had occurred in the early hours of Friday in Gamdareh, a residential town that houses a number of military garrisons, including bases of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and in Shahr-e Qods. Officials insisted the reports were false but accepted there had been a power outage. Continue reading...

Designed in 1984 and expected to be in service a decade ago, the project is still incomplete

Last week the PM claimed conservation causes construction delays – but newts are not the pantomime villains developers would have us believeLingering in the shallows of a south Norfolk pond, voracious amphibians are resting ahead of a night gorging on slugs, worms and insects. The pool network, long grasses and shrubs in Silfield newt reserve are a perfect habitat for the great crested newt – the pantomime villain for housing developers.The UK’s largest newt, which takes its name from the striking, jagged crest that males display in the spring breeding season, is a protected species under British law, thanks to the the EU habitats directive, which the prime minister’s father, Stanley Johnson, had a key role in creating. Despite that, its numbers have declined rapidly over the past 60 years. Continue reading...

Exclusive: reduced congestion most likely reason for lower nitrogen dioxide, scientists say